In this video, Nick Kemp shares his journey navigating challenges while living in Japan and how those experiences shaped his understanding of Japanese culture. In Japan, communication often flows differently, and it’s not always about verbalizing the obvious. Unlike the direct approach common in the West, it is essential in Japan to focus on the present situation and work towards shared goals without dwelling on past issues.
Learning from meaningful obstacles
Nick: I learned a lot. We had our challenges at times, differences, and I think looking back, if I was to do it again, I'd probably approach it with more acceptance and understanding of Japanese culture; that in Japan, things are done differently.
And there's often less communication; you don't always have to say what's obvious. I think I learned not to talk things up. So in the West, we often talk things up and say, ‘We're going to do this, it's going to be great. And ‘You should have done that.’ And ‘Why don't you do this?’ So we're very direct with our language.
But I definitely learned the power of, yeah, this is the situation, let’s accept or move from here and focus on what we want to achieve, rather than worry about who's done what, or if there's been a problem, just move past it.
So yeah, it really helped me grow and understand relationships in Japan, and accepting different points of view, and not being overly stressed. As you know, I used to get really stressed about things. Like all the time—do we have enough students at the school and, and all that sort of thing.
But this is really interesting, because we had these shared experiences, and often ikigai is understood as a very personal experience. Every person's ikigai is unique and different, yet, we did have these shared experiences.
And they were meaningful challenges, they lasted quite a long time. And yeah, they were sources of ikigai. Quite deep and meaningful because they weren't always easy. So it really challenged us and helped us grow. So they were very meaningful.