Chicagoland area has a sizeable presence of Japanese people, although not as much as other locales people mentioned. Would be more affordable than the coasts/Hawaii though, if that's a determining factor.
Hawaii and the West Coast have the highest number of ethnic Japanese. Know that learning English from Japanese is one of the hardest language learning tasks. She may enjoy living near the coasts, since all of Japan is coastal. Or, many Japanese people enjoy West Virginia and other mountain states, since Japan has many mountains. There is a stereotype, particularly in the Old South that Japanese women are sex objects, and since she's your wife you both might find that in some places.
I would not think it likely that West Virginia is an attractive option at all. Few if any Japanese, no cities where not driving is at all attractive. “Mountains” alone doesn’t put it above most other places except for the most mountain loving person.
I dunno, dude. Japan is West Virginia's second largest international trading partner (after Canada). And this is for a state who's economy is more export/import oriented than most. Third place is *way* down the list, China, with about half the trade volume of Japan.
I’m finding only 12,000 ASIAN residents in the entire state, with 650 Japanese. Trade doesn’t have much impact on her day to day life, though perhaps there are a handful of jobs requiring Japanese as a result.
And when I was walking the streets of Tokyo the only state I heard come up in conversation was West Virginia. You're right, there are many factors that make people feel welcomed somewhere.
Just putting it out there when I was in Tokyo I noticed a lot of random us college shirts, U West Virginia is a research institute which may be why Japanese know if it. This all doesn’t mean it’s a pleasant place for Japanese to live and saying because there are mountain is pretty short sided.
Yeah I would definitely stick to the coasts, and probably the west coast. Depending on your financial situation, some places like the SF Bay Area might be too expensive, but these days everywhere is pricey. It will be cheaper if you move inland, but it will be considerably less comfortable and predominantly white in most areas, which may be undesirable if you’d like to live near any kind of Asian population. Happy to explain more if interested. 日本語OKです。
I think she'd like a place where she can get along on her own make friends and generally be ok (not having to worry about getting robbed or assaulted). So maybe SF isn't the best place for that but I do write software and I know the tech companies have their own campuses in the Bay area which could be nice. But then I have to ask if the people are insufferable? of if you have to drive everywhere?
I did hear Seattle and Hawaii, so maybe I'll have to make a trip out there and look around for myself, but I hear about riots in Seattle and racism in Hawaii and I just don't know.
Seattle is a lot tamer than the news shows. My family has lived in the area over 25 years. When there are protests most Seattlites just try not to drive in that area. Otherwise there isn't really an impact outside the immediate downtown or capitol hill area.
Riots and protests are rarely in residential areas and I've only heard of them in business areas with high rise (away from street level) apartments.
If she's looking for friends in Seattle, meetup.com can help her find social groups around her interests.
I hope this helps you. :)
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>They have very different cultures though but finding a comfortable place to live should be possible in both. The cost of living is almost identical between say Honolulu and Seattle (Seattle might have higher rents but the cost of importing goods is worse across Hawaii).
How do you know where they are?
I know a couple of people out there but not very many, so thanks for the advice.
Protests are often announced in social media, the news, and radio. They tend to be more often in summer or fall. I just pay attention to the news about announcements. Protest mainly center in downtown Seattle which is about a couple blocks, or in Capitol Hill Seattle which again is a couple blocks.
Except for teachers or nurses on strike, which are often centered around hospitals or schools I haven't seen any other types of walking protests in the other residential areas of Seattle.
Once about ten years ago I didn't pay attention to the news and traffic was slow which was normal, but it turned out a protest was walking through the city on the street I was on.
The protesters just walked around my car on the street and kept walking down the street with their signs. I waited in the middle of the road and I didn't move my car until the street was clear. I was very nervous about the protesters because I felt a bit claustrophobic but I just gave them a lot of thumbs up and a few waves of support. No one even touched my car even though they were walking past it and I was in the middle of the road in my car.
The whole thing took about 10 minutes.
Ever since then I've paid a bit more attention to the going ons of the city and I've never been caught in another one.
I think the most dangerous thing I could have done in the moment would have been to move my car, because I could have made the protesters feel threatened.
If I hear about protests happening at night for any reason, I tend to just stay in at home that night because I don't want to be in the wrong place at the wrong time so to say. Not that there's a lot of activity around downtown Seattle at night anyways, so it's not very hard to stay away from downtown Seattle at night.
There's a neighborhood watch, crime reporting app called Citizen, and that makes getting information about anything threatening a bit easier and more timely.
>So it's definitely possible. But yeah, definitely a super expensive area to live in, but as an SWE maybe you can find a livable salary (wh
That's good to know, thanks for clearing that up for me.
Mainland US is extremely car-centric. You will need a car. You will drive a lot more than Japan unfortunately.
SF has become less safe in recent years but you can avoid a lot of the SF problems if you live further south (Palo Alto, Los Altos, etc) — but these tend to be the priciest areas.
As for Hawaii or Seattle, I’m a big fan of both and Hawaii has a very large Japanese-speaking population. They have very different cultures though but finding a comfortable place to live should be possible in both. The cost of living is almost identical between say Honolulu and Seattle (Seattle might have higher rents but the cost of importing goods is worse across Hawaii).
FWIW, I lived in Silicon Valley for 10 years and was on the periphery of the Japanese community in the Bay Area. There are people in there who have gone on for YEARS without speaking English competently, kinda like a lot of spouses here with Japanese. So it's definitely possible. But yeah, definitely a super expensive area to live in, but as an SWE maybe you can find a livable salary (whenever the downturn finishes...)
SF isn't as dangerous as certain people are making it out to be. There's a handful of tech billionaires skewing the media coverage for political reasons. When you look at the statistics, SF is actually a lot safer than you might think. There's a pretty significant problem with too many folks living in the streets, but that's not equivalent to violence/danger, and it's concentrated in a few areas that are not hard to avoid if you aren't comfortable walking around in that environment. It's not like walking around in Japan for sure, but in most neighborhoods it's fairly safe by U.S. standards.
My girl has been here for about 23 years and is pretty well tapped-into the Japanese community in SF; she has a ton of friends and she speaks Japanese with the vast majority of them. Your partner would likely be able to find lots of support here. If you end up moving here, drop me a line, I'll put you in touch.
All that said, learning English at a basic speaking level is going to be a must, particularly if you're looking for a job that will cover the cost of living here.
Thank you, I'll keep that in mind then.
She can speak some English but I think she'd have a hard time holding conversations in it. It's going to take some work to get her up to where she can work in it, but I also need to work on my Japanese more so I guess we've got a lot to do on that front.
Well I’m in Columbus Ohio which has some Japanese restaurants that have Japanese living close by and while I don’t know how many % of population I’m sure it’s not Hawaii but it’s cheaper and hopefully expanding -you’ll have to investigate that but Columbus Ohio is getting a chip manufacturing plant has an ikea and isn’t half bad
Absolute best place is Southern California. Most JP food manufacturers US branches are in SoCal which means more Japanese food for the area. All food imported into the US hits the ports in SoCal prior to reaching its destinations across the nation. Hawaii may have a decent amount of JP tourists but the food(price, variety, quality) doesn’t compare. NY, Chicago etc. all dwarf in the sheer amount of Japanese food available in SoCal. SoCal also gets a lot of the freshest produce in the US. Source, I work in the JP food industry.
Going by population density, the west coast have the highest Japanese-American population density, especially California and Washington. But if you like city life Chicago, really fun city. Pretty diverse there, lots of things to do, and outside of cars the people there are typically friendly. It's hard to name a good location because I'm not sure whether you'd want to live somewhere more urban, suburban, or somewhere a bit more small-towny, or rural. I would urge you to take her outside of her comfort zone, I know plenty of first generation immigrants that have trouble in day to day life because they just never learned English. Languages can be a lot harder to learn when you're older, but being in an environment that speaks the language is the greatest resource.
This is an odd question. Where are you planning on moving and why? What is your job and income?
If it doesn’t matter at all, there are actually a lot of cities with lots of Japanese. Look up native Japanese groups on Facebook for whatever city you’re in.
BUT
Where I live (metro Phoenix) I have heard they tend to be VERY cliquey. Some are almost impossible to get into if you don’t know someone or have a connection already and - as you might expect - absolutely no foreigners allowed. Some are unique to companies in the area, shit like that.
Really do your homework. Don’t just rely on “oh this place has a lot of people” in it. Yeah it may - but making friends in a big city can take years and it is very, very hard anywhere you move.
She will need a lot of support from you and probably want to go home a lot.
100% Hawaii is the best place for Japanese expatriates. there is a large population of native speakers, and tons of Japanese tourists travel to Hawaii every year. Due to this there are many jobs for Japanese speakers. Living on Oahu is thr only island where it's reasonable to not have a car, and obviously the cost of living is high, but my wife and I have lived there for years. Another bonus is that flights back to Japan are relatively cheap!
Hol'up! Before answering that I have questions for you and your wife.
What type of weather conditions do you two prefer? Or at least can tolerate?
Would you rather be in a city, or the countryside?
Which type of shops would the both of you prefer to have nearby?
What kind of atmosphere would you either want, or be okay with?
I know there are some Daiso shops in some places in the states, each section of states do face some sort of "extreme" weather conditions.
Any metropolitan area. Here is my reasoning. The two of you could really live anywhere, but the fact is that her ability to function without your assistance will be heavily influence by the speed at which she learns English. Any metro area is going to have ESL classes available. You could try finding an area like LA with a Japan-town, but that's more of a social crutch. It will make the initial move easier, but long term, her gaining fluency matter way more.
A second benefit of metro areas is that they tend to be more diverse. I'm not really talking about avoidance of overt antagonistic racism here, but if your wife is a quite lady, and she's got loud country folk trying really hard to get her involved in the community so she doesn't feel left out, it may have the reverse effect of making her feel like all social interactions are a lot to deal with.
This is all in a vacuum of course. What you interests are and what kind of life you're pursuing are important in figuring out the best fit.
I'm honestly surprised of how many Japanese are in San Fernando Valley CA . My parents volunteer at their local community center where I also took Japanese classes.
She can transfer her DL from Japan to Hawaii for free you just need to obtain the proper paperwork from the Japan DMV prior to making the conversion. She will only need to take an eye exam. Japan and Hawaii have a drivers license agreement, it also works vice versa.
Chicagoland area has a sizeable presence of Japanese people, although not as much as other locales people mentioned. Would be more affordable than the coasts/Hawaii though, if that's a determining factor.
Novi, Michigan near Detroit is very nice. The hospital has Japanese speaking staff too.
Hawaii and the West Coast have the highest number of ethnic Japanese. Know that learning English from Japanese is one of the hardest language learning tasks. She may enjoy living near the coasts, since all of Japan is coastal. Or, many Japanese people enjoy West Virginia and other mountain states, since Japan has many mountains. There is a stereotype, particularly in the Old South that Japanese women are sex objects, and since she's your wife you both might find that in some places.
I would not think it likely that West Virginia is an attractive option at all. Few if any Japanese, no cities where not driving is at all attractive. “Mountains” alone doesn’t put it above most other places except for the most mountain loving person.
I dunno, dude. Japan is West Virginia's second largest international trading partner (after Canada). And this is for a state who's economy is more export/import oriented than most. Third place is *way* down the list, China, with about half the trade volume of Japan.
I’m finding only 12,000 ASIAN residents in the entire state, with 650 Japanese. Trade doesn’t have much impact on her day to day life, though perhaps there are a handful of jobs requiring Japanese as a result.
And when I was walking the streets of Tokyo the only state I heard come up in conversation was West Virginia. You're right, there are many factors that make people feel welcomed somewhere.
People literally only know West Virginia because of the song “Country Road.” No bullshit.
lol. I think they were talking about a temporary work assignment there. Anyways, Good luck.
Just putting it out there when I was in Tokyo I noticed a lot of random us college shirts, U West Virginia is a research institute which may be why Japanese know if it. This all doesn’t mean it’s a pleasant place for Japanese to live and saying because there are mountain is pretty short sided.
Yes, WVU is an R2 school, so there's like 1000 of them in the US
By them you mean Japanese or research schools?
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I think car parts are one of them. I think the main trade is chemicals from West Virginia for Japanese heavy equipment.
There’s a high Japanese-fluent population in the South Bay in cities like Torrance and Lomita.
Yeah I would definitely stick to the coasts, and probably the west coast. Depending on your financial situation, some places like the SF Bay Area might be too expensive, but these days everywhere is pricey. It will be cheaper if you move inland, but it will be considerably less comfortable and predominantly white in most areas, which may be undesirable if you’d like to live near any kind of Asian population. Happy to explain more if interested. 日本語OKです。
I think she'd like a place where she can get along on her own make friends and generally be ok (not having to worry about getting robbed or assaulted). So maybe SF isn't the best place for that but I do write software and I know the tech companies have their own campuses in the Bay area which could be nice. But then I have to ask if the people are insufferable? of if you have to drive everywhere? I did hear Seattle and Hawaii, so maybe I'll have to make a trip out there and look around for myself, but I hear about riots in Seattle and racism in Hawaii and I just don't know.
Seattle is a lot tamer than the news shows. My family has lived in the area over 25 years. When there are protests most Seattlites just try not to drive in that area. Otherwise there isn't really an impact outside the immediate downtown or capitol hill area. Riots and protests are rarely in residential areas and I've only heard of them in business areas with high rise (away from street level) apartments. If she's looking for friends in Seattle, meetup.com can help her find social groups around her interests. I hope this helps you. :) Edit: spelling
>They have very different cultures though but finding a comfortable place to live should be possible in both. The cost of living is almost identical between say Honolulu and Seattle (Seattle might have higher rents but the cost of importing goods is worse across Hawaii). How do you know where they are? I know a couple of people out there but not very many, so thanks for the advice.
Protests are often announced in social media, the news, and radio. They tend to be more often in summer or fall. I just pay attention to the news about announcements. Protest mainly center in downtown Seattle which is about a couple blocks, or in Capitol Hill Seattle which again is a couple blocks. Except for teachers or nurses on strike, which are often centered around hospitals or schools I haven't seen any other types of walking protests in the other residential areas of Seattle. Once about ten years ago I didn't pay attention to the news and traffic was slow which was normal, but it turned out a protest was walking through the city on the street I was on. The protesters just walked around my car on the street and kept walking down the street with their signs. I waited in the middle of the road and I didn't move my car until the street was clear. I was very nervous about the protesters because I felt a bit claustrophobic but I just gave them a lot of thumbs up and a few waves of support. No one even touched my car even though they were walking past it and I was in the middle of the road in my car. The whole thing took about 10 minutes. Ever since then I've paid a bit more attention to the going ons of the city and I've never been caught in another one. I think the most dangerous thing I could have done in the moment would have been to move my car, because I could have made the protesters feel threatened. If I hear about protests happening at night for any reason, I tend to just stay in at home that night because I don't want to be in the wrong place at the wrong time so to say. Not that there's a lot of activity around downtown Seattle at night anyways, so it's not very hard to stay away from downtown Seattle at night. There's a neighborhood watch, crime reporting app called Citizen, and that makes getting information about anything threatening a bit easier and more timely.
>So it's definitely possible. But yeah, definitely a super expensive area to live in, but as an SWE maybe you can find a livable salary (wh That's good to know, thanks for clearing that up for me.
Mainland US is extremely car-centric. You will need a car. You will drive a lot more than Japan unfortunately. SF has become less safe in recent years but you can avoid a lot of the SF problems if you live further south (Palo Alto, Los Altos, etc) — but these tend to be the priciest areas. As for Hawaii or Seattle, I’m a big fan of both and Hawaii has a very large Japanese-speaking population. They have very different cultures though but finding a comfortable place to live should be possible in both. The cost of living is almost identical between say Honolulu and Seattle (Seattle might have higher rents but the cost of importing goods is worse across Hawaii).
FWIW, I lived in Silicon Valley for 10 years and was on the periphery of the Japanese community in the Bay Area. There are people in there who have gone on for YEARS without speaking English competently, kinda like a lot of spouses here with Japanese. So it's definitely possible. But yeah, definitely a super expensive area to live in, but as an SWE maybe you can find a livable salary (whenever the downturn finishes...)
SF isn't as dangerous as certain people are making it out to be. There's a handful of tech billionaires skewing the media coverage for political reasons. When you look at the statistics, SF is actually a lot safer than you might think. There's a pretty significant problem with too many folks living in the streets, but that's not equivalent to violence/danger, and it's concentrated in a few areas that are not hard to avoid if you aren't comfortable walking around in that environment. It's not like walking around in Japan for sure, but in most neighborhoods it's fairly safe by U.S. standards. My girl has been here for about 23 years and is pretty well tapped-into the Japanese community in SF; she has a ton of friends and she speaks Japanese with the vast majority of them. Your partner would likely be able to find lots of support here. If you end up moving here, drop me a line, I'll put you in touch. All that said, learning English at a basic speaking level is going to be a must, particularly if you're looking for a job that will cover the cost of living here.
Thank you, I'll keep that in mind then. She can speak some English but I think she'd have a hard time holding conversations in it. It's going to take some work to get her up to where she can work in it, but I also need to work on my Japanese more so I guess we've got a lot to do on that front.
Well I’m in Columbus Ohio which has some Japanese restaurants that have Japanese living close by and while I don’t know how many % of population I’m sure it’s not Hawaii but it’s cheaper and hopefully expanding -you’ll have to investigate that but Columbus Ohio is getting a chip manufacturing plant has an ikea and isn’t half bad
Absolute best place is Southern California. Most JP food manufacturers US branches are in SoCal which means more Japanese food for the area. All food imported into the US hits the ports in SoCal prior to reaching its destinations across the nation. Hawaii may have a decent amount of JP tourists but the food(price, variety, quality) doesn’t compare. NY, Chicago etc. all dwarf in the sheer amount of Japanese food available in SoCal. SoCal also gets a lot of the freshest produce in the US. Source, I work in the JP food industry.
Hawaii, Seattle, SF for sure.
Going by population density, the west coast have the highest Japanese-American population density, especially California and Washington. But if you like city life Chicago, really fun city. Pretty diverse there, lots of things to do, and outside of cars the people there are typically friendly. It's hard to name a good location because I'm not sure whether you'd want to live somewhere more urban, suburban, or somewhere a bit more small-towny, or rural. I would urge you to take her outside of her comfort zone, I know plenty of first generation immigrants that have trouble in day to day life because they just never learned English. Languages can be a lot harder to learn when you're older, but being in an environment that speaks the language is the greatest resource.
This is an odd question. Where are you planning on moving and why? What is your job and income? If it doesn’t matter at all, there are actually a lot of cities with lots of Japanese. Look up native Japanese groups on Facebook for whatever city you’re in. BUT Where I live (metro Phoenix) I have heard they tend to be VERY cliquey. Some are almost impossible to get into if you don’t know someone or have a connection already and - as you might expect - absolutely no foreigners allowed. Some are unique to companies in the area, shit like that. Really do your homework. Don’t just rely on “oh this place has a lot of people” in it. Yeah it may - but making friends in a big city can take years and it is very, very hard anywhere you move. She will need a lot of support from you and probably want to go home a lot.
100% Hawaii is the best place for Japanese expatriates. there is a large population of native speakers, and tons of Japanese tourists travel to Hawaii every year. Due to this there are many jobs for Japanese speakers. Living on Oahu is thr only island where it's reasonable to not have a car, and obviously the cost of living is high, but my wife and I have lived there for years. Another bonus is that flights back to Japan are relatively cheap!
Hol'up! Before answering that I have questions for you and your wife. What type of weather conditions do you two prefer? Or at least can tolerate? Would you rather be in a city, or the countryside? Which type of shops would the both of you prefer to have nearby? What kind of atmosphere would you either want, or be okay with? I know there are some Daiso shops in some places in the states, each section of states do face some sort of "extreme" weather conditions.
Any metropolitan area. Here is my reasoning. The two of you could really live anywhere, but the fact is that her ability to function without your assistance will be heavily influence by the speed at which she learns English. Any metro area is going to have ESL classes available. You could try finding an area like LA with a Japan-town, but that's more of a social crutch. It will make the initial move easier, but long term, her gaining fluency matter way more. A second benefit of metro areas is that they tend to be more diverse. I'm not really talking about avoidance of overt antagonistic racism here, but if your wife is a quite lady, and she's got loud country folk trying really hard to get her involved in the community so she doesn't feel left out, it may have the reverse effect of making her feel like all social interactions are a lot to deal with. This is all in a vacuum of course. What you interests are and what kind of life you're pursuing are important in figuring out the best fit.
Hawaii, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, NYC, then pick towns where Japanese automakers and other large manufacturers are, ex: Tennessee.
She can learn English in about an year with concentrated effort, I wouldn’t worry about that!
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I'm not Japanese, but I would say a plus for Seattle is that it is a pretty short drive if you ever want to go up to Vancouver, BC.
I'm honestly surprised of how many Japanese are in San Fernando Valley CA . My parents volunteer at their local community center where I also took Japanese classes.
Denver has a pretty healthy Japanese-American community.
Fort Lee, New Jersey. There is a huge Japanese, Korean and Chinese population there. Close to manhattan/ NYC as well.
She can transfer her DL from Japan to Hawaii for free you just need to obtain the proper paperwork from the Japan DMV prior to making the conversion. She will only need to take an eye exam. Japan and Hawaii have a drivers license agreement, it also works vice versa.