This is not the life I planned. It is better.This blog is for people who really want to do something — as a caregiver, or in life. It is about experience, not fiction. Every word here is something I have personally lived. This blog is for people who lost their way.
It started with anime
I am from Nepal. And like many children who grew up watching Japanese anime, I developed a quiet dream — to one day see Japan with my own eyes. Not to live there. Not to build a life there. Just to satisfy a deep curiosity about what this country actually felt like from the inside.
So I made a plan. I studied Japanese for six months and sat an exam. I passed with an A grade. Then I bought a ticket and came to Japan — just to see. Just to know.
That was eight years ago.
How Japan became home
I enrolled in a Japanese language school and studied for two years. During that time, something happened that I did not expect. I fell in love with Japan — not in a dramatic, sudden way, but slowly and quietly, the way the most important things in life tend to happen.
It was the silence that got me first. In Japan, silence is not empty — it is full. Nobody disturbs it unnecessarily. For someone like me, who has always needed space to think and breathe, that silence felt like home in a way I could not explain.
Then the air. The food. The seasons. The way people move through the world with a quiet consideration for those around them. One day, two years into my studies, I looked around and realized something — Japan had become my home without me even noticing.
I had not planned to stay. Life had other ideas.
The door that closed — and the one that opened
Not everything went smoothly. Due to circumstances involving my previous company and a careless mistake, my visa was cancelled. In that moment, I faced a choice that many foreigners living in Japan dread — go home, or find another way.
I was not ready to leave. Japan was my home. So I searched the internet, and I found the SSW — Specified Skilled Worker — visa. It opened a door I had never considered before: caregiving.
I did not choose caregiving. Caregiving chose me. And I have come to believe that this is simply how life works. The paths we plan rarely take us where we need to go. It is the unexpected turns that do.
Two years in kaigo
I have now been working as a caregiver in Japan for two years. It is the hardest work I have ever done — physically demanding, emotionally heavy, and often misunderstood by the world outside. The salary does not match the effort. The respect is not always there. But the meaning is.
I show up every day for elderly people who need someone to be present with them. I do it in my second language, inside a culture that is not the one I was born into, and I do it as honestly as I can.
I am also pursuing the SSW qualification — learning the system, navigating the paperwork, and figuring it out one step at a time.
Why KaigoJourney exists
I started this blog because I could not find what I needed when I was searching. There was no honest, personal, English-language voice talking about what it actually means to be a foreign caregiver in Japan. No one talking about the visa confusion, the physical exhaustion, the cultural gap, the low salary, the unexpected moments of beauty in this work.
So I decided to be that voice.
KaigoJourney is for anyone considering caregiving in Japan. It is for foreigners navigating life here. It is for people studying for the SSW. It is for anyone who has ever found themselves somewhere they did not plan to be — and had to figure out what to do next.
Most of all, it is for people who lost their way. Because sometimes, losing your way is exactly how you find where you were always meant to go.
Welcome. Everything here is real. 🇯🇵