In 2022, I hit ten years of living in Japan—my 10-year “Japanaversary,” if you will.

Permanent residency had always been something I wanted eventually, but for a long time it felt like a future goal rather than something I was actively working toward. I still had time left on my visa, so there wasn’t necessarily any urgency. By 2022, though, that started to change.

I had been at the same company for several years. I had worked through COVID, gone from working from home to being called back into the office, watched coworkers leave, and seen my responsibilities shift drastically over time. Eventually, I started feeling stuck. I don’t think the specific details of why really matter anymore, but mattered was that I had reached a point where I was questioning what I wanted to do next, while still knowing that my ability to live in Japan depended heavily on my employment and residence status.

In September 2022, around my ten-year mark, I went back to the U.S. to visit my family. I remember talking to my parents about what my next steps should be. Ten years had always been this milestone in my head, but now that I was actually there, I wasn’t even sure whether I would qualify for permanent residency or whether my application would be approved.

Their response was basically, “Why don’t you just apply and see what happens? The worst they can do is say no, and you can apply again later.”

So I did.

I applied for permanent residency in December 2022, and in June 2023, I got it.

After all those years, I no longer had to structure my life around maintaining the right job so I could maintain the right visa so I could continue living in the country where I had built almost my entire adult life. It was relief, validation and freedom all at once.

More than anything, though, permanent residency felt like a badge of everything it had taken to get there. The path had been harder than I imagined when I was younger. I had changed jobs, struggled with Japanese office culture, questioned myself, and slowly learned when I needed to push through something and when I needed to pivot. Through all of those smaller changes, the larger goal had stayed remarkably consistent: I wanted to stay in Japan and build a life here that was actually sustainable.

Eventually, I did.

A few months after receiving PR, I left my company in September 2023, and at the beginning of 2024, I went freelance. For the first time, I didn’t have to choose a job partly because I needed it to justify staying in Japan. I could make decisions based on what actually worked for my life, and that freedom is probably what permanent residency means most to me now.

I can spend more time in the U.S. with my family. Visa issues aren’t hanging over my head anymore. I don’t have to stay in a job simply because I need it for immigration purposes. Instead, I get to ask myself a completely different question: what do I REALLY want to do now that the life I built here is fully my own?

I’m still figuring that out, and I think that’s part of what makes this stage of my life feel so different from everything that came before it. For years, so much of my energy went toward figuring out how to stay. Now I’ve reached the point where staying itself isn’t the main question anymore.

There’s another part of this story that feels very full circle to me. For roughly ten years, I barely consumed anime or manga at all. After moving to Japan, I became much more interested in Japanese music and Johnny’s groups. At the time, that felt more connected to “real life” Japan, and it became the part of Japanese pop culture I followed most closely.

Then COVID happened. My interest in that world had already started changing for a lot of reasons, and I eventually found myself going back to anime and manga again. At around 30 years old, I fell down that rabbit hole all over again, except this time the experience was completely different.

I understood the cultural context behind what I was watching and reading. I understood jokes that would have gone completely over my head when I was younger, and most importantly, I could understand the language. The kid who had desperately wanted to learn Japanese because she wanted to experience manga and anime without always relying on translations had actually done it.

There was no single moment where I suddenly realized, “I can understand Japanese now.” It happened gradually, just like almost everything else in this story. One day, the things I had once wanted so badly were simply normal parts of my life, and maybe that’s why it feels so satisfying to look back on now.

Anime and manga never “caused” me to move to Japan. They opened a door. I explored what was on the other side, and one interest kept leading to another. Anime and manga led me deeper into Japanese media. Japanese music expanded my interest into contemporary Japan. That pushed me further toward the language, which eventually led to studying abroad. Studying abroad was where I discovered that I didn’t just like visiting Japan—I actually liked living here. That led to graduate school, then work, then years of learning, struggling, adapting and growing up.

Eventually, all of that led to permanent residency.

One thing I do want to make clear is that even though my future husband had been part of my personal life since 2017, he had nothing to do with my visas or permanent residency. I built my residence history through school and work, and I received PR before we got married. This was a path I had already been building for years on my own.

When I was younger, I got the sense that some people probably assumed my obsession with Japan was a phase. To be fair, at one point it probably was my entire personality. It isn’t anymore. Japan is an important part of my story, but it isn’t my entire identity, and what I take more pride in now is what the journey taught me about myself.

My family used to call me stubborn. Someone later told me that maybe what they were describing wasn’t stubbornness at all…. Maybe it was courage. I was scared plenty of times, I was naive, and I definitely didn’t know everything, but none of that stopped me from starting.

Over time, that naivety became experience. I learned that you should research as much as you can before making a major decision. I had been to Japan many times before I ever decided I wanted to live here, and I think that mattered. But research can only take you so far. Eventually, you have to act and see what happens when the idea meets reality.

After that, you need enough resilience to figure out when to hang in there, when to pivot, and when to admit that one particular path isn’t working even if the bigger goal still matters. That’s probably one of the biggest things I’ve learned over the years. Perseverance doesn’t always mean refusing to change course. Sometimes it means changing the route while keeping your eye on where you ultimately want to go.

I wouldn’t change any of it. Even the painful parts gave me experience and shaped the person I became.

If I could tell the middle-school version of myself anything—the girl carrying worn-out manga around in her backpack—it would probably be to keep that spark, keep that interest, and not let anyone make her feel weird for caring about it. You really never know where one interest might take you when you give yourself permission to follow it.

In my case, I walked through that first door, explored what was there, decided I liked what I found and kept going. The specific goals changed many times over the years, but the bigger one stayed remarkably consistent: I wanted to build a life in Japan.

I put my mind to it, and I proved to myself that I could.

Now that I’ve built that life and know it’s sustainable, I finally get to ask a different question: what do I want to do with it now?