My Nightmare Ski Season in Japan

Out with the swimsuit and sunnies, in with the snowboard boots and ski goggles…I was leaving tropical Thailand for snowy, below-freezing northern Japan and I. Could. Not. Wait. After sweating profusely for four months straight, I was absolutley buzzing to be in the cold again! Warm, cozy nights by the fire with hot chocolate, hot wine and ice festivals, snowy trees and winter wonderland landscapes, introversion and introspection…ahh I absolutely love winter! I was going to the snowiest place in the world and was ready for the most epic ski season ever!

Or so I hoped…

Just to give you a quick recap on the nightmare that this season ended up being, in my short three months in Japan, I was employed by the single most awful human being I’ve ever met, managed to get fired from three different jobs (for pretty unjustifiable reasons), got kicked out of three different houses, lived in an abandoned crematorium turned into a used car parts garage, sleeping next to a man in a tent named Dodgy Yoshi, which I eventually got evicted from, got denied a visa extension by the government and wound up scrubbing toilets for $10 an hour while living alone in the middle of nowhere in a house with no heating or running water…

Yea…not quite the adventure I was dreaming of.

Oh, and to top it off, Niseko, the place I was living, is famous for having the best snow in the entire world. This year just happened to have the lowest snowfall record in decades… It’s almost comical how many things went wrong. So yea, even nature wasn’t in my favor this season.

 

To start from the beginning….

Unfortunately, as an American, I was not eligible for a Japanese Working Holiday Visa, which allows young adults to work and travel in other countries, typically for one year. I tried all of my luck, but also could not find anyone to sponsor me for a proper working visa either. As you could probably imagine, it can be incredibly difficult to find a job in another country without having legal working rights.

After applying for about fifty different jobs, I finally got a positive response! I had a phone interview with this Australian guy named Prash who was opening an 80s-themed après ski bar in Niseko, Japan and needed fun, outgoing, party-ready bartenders. Okay, seriously?? How much more of a fun job could you ask for?! He said that he doesn’t normally hire staff without a visa, but he was impressed with my experience and liked my energy and said he was willing to pay me under the table.

I accepted and booked my flight straight away. I was on my way to spending winter riding the best snow in the world! To say I was excited was a vast understatement.

Two months later, I stepped off the plane into absolute blizzard conditions! My new manager, Shinga, picked me up from the train station and took me to my new home for the next four months.

The staff accommodation was a large yellow house at the bottom of the hill packed to the absolute max with seasonal ski bums. I was given a tour by Emily, the housing manager and found out I would be living in this place with forty-two other staff members all sharing two showers and one kitchen. Forty-two humans. Two showers. One kitchen. Well this should be fun…

I moved in to my four-bed bunkroom and met my roommates. They were really sweet, but wow, super young! Being 29, there is a massive life gap between me, an 18, 19, and 20-year-old. Again, this should be fun…

The “fun” started straight away on my first night.. My bunkmate just below me decided to have a very intimate evening with her boyfriend… The discomfort that you feel in that moment when two people are getting it on literally two feet below you while the bed is rocking is almost indescribable. Well, that was a nice warm welcome to the house…

After a pretty sleepless night, I met with Shinga the next morning to discuss work. One of the first thing he asks was if Prash had told me what was happening with the bar. I said nope and he rolled his eyes and gave a nervous laugh. He goes on to tell me that the bar where I’m supposed to be working full time starting the next day was not done being built yet. Wait, what?? The bar is not built yet…? Sooooooo, what the heck does that mean for the staff? He said that until it’s ready to open, we will basically be the construction crew…. Well, that’s quite a change from what I signed up for.

To be honest though, I really wasn’t too upset about that. I had worked many random construction jobs while traveling and I quite enjoy it. The part I didn’t love was working with a team of 18-22 year-olds who had absolutely zero desire to work in construction and who’s work ethic included moving tools around for hours to look like they were being productive and walking to the convenience store every hour for coffee and snacks to give themselves a break after all of their hard work…

To be fair though, I did sympathize with them. This was not the job we were hired for and I don’t necessarily blame them for slacking off. Especially since Prash basically gave us a laundry list of things that needed to get done, gave us absolutely no guidance on how to accomplish any of these tasks and then got on a flight to Singapore for the next two weeks leaving us to finish building his bar for him…

He did not leave a good first impression on me before he headed off, which was a terrible way to start the season. As he was walking the team around the property telling us what all needed to get done, he mentioned the gelato shop next door that should be opening soon and looks at me and says, “And Meg, that’s where you’re going to be mostly.” I’m sorry, what?? I looked at him questioningly and said, “Uhmm, wait, what? I thought I was going to be full time bartending…” He said, “No, I told you that you could be working at any of our locations and that’s where I put you.” And then he turned away and moved on with the walkthrough.

Well, that is not what I signed up for at all… I took very detailed notes from our interview and I am 100% sure he never said I would be working at any other location besides the bar. I wanted to push back more and stand up for myself but he definitely gave off an attitude of ‘I know I’m right and there’s nothing you could say that would change my mind about that’. Well damn…I was so freaking excited to bartend again. What a terrible way to go into a new job when you’re told on the first day that it’s actually a completely different job than what you were hired for.

I get a text from him later that day saying we need to talk, so I called him and immediately got torn apart… He had the sternest voice and asks who I told about not being on a working visa because apparently the whole town knows about it! What???? I maybe told like two people. I told one of my roommates when I first moved in and then I told Shinga because he was asking when I wanted to go to the town hall to fill out all my paperwork.

Prash starts yelling at me telling me that he thought I was smarter and more mature than that. He said that the police are coming in to every establishment and taking photos of all the employees to compare with those at the immigration office and there is a high chance I could get deported especially since being American puts a massive target on my head. He told me that I better get good at lying because I need to tell people that I am from Canada and I need to go back and change my story to all of the people I told I didn’t have a visa. He said he thought I was better than this and that he’s not going to tell me how to act when I’m breaking the law and then hangs up the phone…

What. The. Actual. Hell.

What a terrible terrible terrible way to start working for someone. That was the most toxic and manipulative conversation I’ve ever been a part of. ‘When I’m breaking the law’… What about him?! He’s breaking the law much worse than I am! I legitimately could not believe how rude and undermining and manipulative he was to me. Wow, I had no desire to work for him anymore after that. But, I had a job and I had a place to live. I needed to just keep my head down, keep my mouth shut, and do the minimum of what I needed to do for work and focus all of my energy on snowboarding.

The next couple of weeks were a bit of a bummer. It had stopped snowing and we had the occasional unlucky rain storm, which is about the worst thing that can happen at a ski resort. So, most of the ski resort was closed, the season hadn’t really kicked off much, so there wasn’t much going on around town, and I was having a really tough time making friends. Not exactly the wildly amazing adventure I had been looking forward to for months.

The bar was coming along, but our opening date kept getting pushed back over and over again and I was definitely getting antsy to actually start working.

Even with him being in a completely different country, my view of Prash got worse and worse by the day. We were working long shifts, doing manual labor, working our asses off to get this bar finished and we were being treated like dogs. None of our work was being appreciated, basically everything we did, we were either told off because it wasn’t done well enough or we had to redo it, and we weren’t even being given shift meals. Every other employee in every single other company was getting at least one, sometimes two shift meals per day and sometimes even food to take home. And we were getting nothing. It said in our contract that we should get a meal per shift, so we all started vouching for it.

Prash did not like at all that we were standing up for ourselves and once he was back in the country called for a team meeting to “discuss what the contract actually says.” He comes in with a hot head saying that a “shift” is eight hours and you can get a meal once you’ve worked an 8-hour shift. That is absolutely not what the contract says, it just says one meal per shift, not specifying any specific time frame. But also, none of us are even being given eight-hour shifts anyway, so it’s even more unfair!

We all started getting very passionate and tensions were rising very high. Prash was being extremely rude and demeaning to all of us and my coworker Sophie was not about it. She took out her phone and started recording the conversation. Not that I necessarily agree with her doing that without communicating it, I do understand her reasoning. He was treating us in an absolutely unacceptable way and she wanted to have proof if we needed to fight against him in any way. After a few minutes though, Prash noticed what she was doing, and yelled at her to turn it off. She refused and they had words back and forth at each other and he eventually looked at her with the most awful, power-hungry eyes and said, “Your contract is now terminated, you no longer work for this company, and you have to move out of the house in four hours.”

You could have heard a pen drop.

The room was dead silent. He looked at her with such disgust and then moved on with the meeting. About thirty seconds later, he looks at Sophie again and says, “Is there a reason you’re still here? This is a staff meeting and you are no longer staff.” She looked stunned. Eventually she grabbed her stuff and walked out and we continued with the meeting as if nothing happened. After much arguing and push back on our part, Prash finally agreed that we can get a 1,500¥ allowance for food if we work a five-hour shift.

Alright, at least we got something in the end. Or so we thought. That night, basically to just prove to us how much power he has over us, Prash went in and changed the schedule so there was never a shift that was more than four hours. What an absolute and complete jerk. How awful can you be to treat your staff so terribly…

The day just got worse and worse because I had asked earlier in the day if Prash could meet with me individually after our team meeting just to discuss a few things. I wanted to make sure we were on the same page about the job and I had a few ideas of how to make things better and I also wanted to ask for more responsibility and possibly even a management role.

In our 20-ish-minute conversation, his response could be summed up almost word-for-word by, “Meg, you don’t exist. You have absolutely no say in this company. You are not allowed to speak in any more staff meetings and if you do, I will blatantly ignore you. And if the police find you and deport you, I don’t care. I do not care what happens to you.”

………….

Three months later as I type this, I still have no words for his response to me… I mean, what the actual f***……???? I am literally coming to you saying that I want to help you build your business up and I am willing to take on more responsibility and that is how you respond? What happened to you to make you so so so awful?

I lost every single ounce of respect for him in that moment. I even had feelings of hatred boiling up towards him, which is a terrible state to be in. I’m honestly not sure if I’ve ever genuinely hated another human being until I met this man.

I decided in that moment that I was going to the absolute bare minimum for my job. I was not going to put in a single ounce more of my energy than I needed to to get by. He does not deserve me at all.

Thankfully, it was taking a while for both the gelato shop and the sushi restaurant to be ready to open, so all of my shifts were at the bar, which I was loving. As long as Prash wasn’t around, I honestly really really enjoyed my job. It was fun, the customers were always great, I was meeting so many people, and it was just an all-around good vibe.

Things still weren’t really working out though with my roommates though. I like to go to bed around 10:00 or 11:00 and get up early. They, on the other hand, like to go out at 10:00 or 11:00 and get home around 4:00, invite their friends over, turn on all the lights, and blast the heater to around 85oF (30oC). I almost never slept and just constantly felt uncomfortable.

I asked Emily if there was space in another room I could move into and thankfully there was a bed available in the attic with one of my other coworkers who I liked alot. So, I moved into that room and things were starting to look up. Well, however much things can look up when you’re living in an attic with no windows..

Until I got my schedule for the next week.

I was scheduled in the sushi restaurant six nights that week. I honestly could not stand working in the sushi restaurant. I am legitimately the worst waitress on the planet. It is a tiny tiny tiny place, so you’re constantly bumping into people, there’s never room to be able to do anything, you feel so claustrophobic, and you are the only one working there besides the sushi chef, so you alone are in charge of taking orders, bringing out drinks, washing dishes, bussing the tables, resetting the plates and cutlery, taking payments, and everything else that goes into running a restaurant. It was so stressful and I did not like working there at all.

I called Prash to ask if we could talk about my schedule. I told him that I don’t mind working in the sushi shop, I’ll do it, but it’s not my favorite and I would really prefer to work in the bar more or even in the gelato shop. He told me that he thinks I should start looking for a new job. Well, that’s not really what I said, but I was completely miserable in this job and I honestly had already been looking for a few weeks. I said sure, I would start looking and I would keep him updated if I found anything. Then I asked if I could have Mondays off for the next roster since I had asked at the beginning of the season for that to be my regular day off. His response was, “No, I’m just not putting you on the roster next week. I’ll find someone to replace you by next roster and you need to move out by Monday.”

Wait……..whattttt?! What the hell!!!!! That’s not what I said! I told him that I could keep working until I found something new and he said, “Well, you just told me that you don’t like working there, so why would I want you working for me…?” I tried to say that I don’t mind working there and I’ll stay and work hard until I find a new job. Wow, I hate that I was basically begging him for my job. He told me that the only way I can stay on the roster for the next week is if I work on Mondays. How freaking manipulative can you get?! There were ten other people who could work there! Put literally any other person in the restaurant on Mondays! My anger towards him was building up so high and I had no desire to let him have that power over me. I said no, fine, I’ll find a new job and I’ll be out by Monday.

Crap….

Just lost my job and my house. I now have five days to find a new job and a new place to live. What the hell am I supposed to do?! I started panic searching around town walking to every single business asking if they were hiring and if they had housing available. I got ‘no’ after ‘no’ after ‘no’. Either places weren’t hiring, they had no accommodation available or they wouldn’t hire me without a visa.

The company I was currently working for was co-owned by Prash and another guy named Dennis. Dennis and I had a relatively good relationship and he liked me because he saw my work ethic and how hard of a worker I was. He is the absolute worst person for responding to calls or text messages, so I went on a wild goose chase around town to try to corner him to see if he could help me.

Outside of his businesses with Prash, he alone owns multiple other bars, restaurants, and cafes, all of which needed staff. I finally cornered him in the gelato shop and asked if there was any way he could help me out. I know hiring me without a visa is hard, but I could just work in exchange for accommodation. I basically started crying saying that I feel like I’m really getting screwed over after working so hard for this company and then getting fired and kicked out for an non-justifiable reason. He finally took pity on me and said he would see what he can do. Thank you thank you thank you!

That night, as I’m working my shift at the sushi shop, none other than Prash comes in and takes a seat at the bar. He goes on to introduce me to the replacement that he’s already found for me and proceeds to order dinner for them both.

You have got to be kidding me.

To fire me for almost no reason, give me four days to find a new job and a new place to live, and then to have the sheer audacity to come in to my workplace and literally bring my replacement and make me serve you dinner and drinks…. What an awful awful awful human being. I don’t think I’ve ever had someone treat me that terribly. I honestly could not believe he did that. I bit my tongue though, smiled, gave them great service, and moved on.
Over the next few days, I finished up my last shifts at the sushi restaurant and started to pack up my things. I get a text from Prash on Friday telling me that he actually needs my bed earlier than originally planned and I have to be out by tomorrow.

Tomorrow?!

Ahhhhhhhhh how does it keep getting worse? Honestly, I was so freaking ready to be out of that house and out of that job, so I wasn’t terribly mad about it, I just had nowhere to go. Thankfully, he found a tiny little spec of sympathy for me and said I could stay at another staff accommodation for a little while until I could find a new place to live. Well, at least I wasn’t going to be homeless in the middle of winter.

The next day, I actually had the biggest smile on my face as I walked down the hill with my backpack, guitar and snowboard. I was free. Free of that awful awful human. Free of a job I couldn’t stand. Just free. I could start fresh. I had no idea what was going to happen, but of all the shitstorms I’ve gotten myself into while traveling, I knew I would figure something out.

That night, while hanging out at Bills Grill with some of my friends, Amber, the HR manager came up to me and said that she had a solution for me for the next two weeks. I could move into Mt. Merry staff accommodation, I wouldn’t pay rent, but I would work a few dishwashing shifts at the cafe and tapas bar. I could not believe it! I was beyond excited! Basically all of my friends lived at Mt. Merry and I had been trying to move there for weeks. What luck! Things were finally on my side.

I was glowing as I told everyone I was moving in tomorrow! When I talked to Lachy, the housing manager, I told him that Amber had said it was only for two weeks though. He rolled his eyes, looked at me and said, “Nah, we got you.” Shut up! Does that mean I’ll be able to stay there the whole rest of the season?! Well, damn, getting fired and kicked out of my house might have been the best thing that could have happened!

The next morning, I packed my stuff again and walked back up the hill to my new home! Wow, I loved my new house and all my amazing housemates. I could not have imagined a better solution.

A few days later, I get a text from Amber telling me to work my first shift at the cafe the next day from 2-10. On my first day, everyone was really nice and welcoming, which was a nice change to what I had been used to.

I was so incredibly grateful to have a job and a house and was in no position to complain, but damn, washing dishes for eight hours straight is not an enjoyable experience… Your back and neck get wrecked, you’re dealing with people’s nasty food waste, and it becomes an incredibly mundane and monotonous task.

Also, I technically didn’t even get off at 10. We stopped serving food around 9:45 and were still cleaning until 10:45ish. What a long, long, long shift.

But hey, only a few days a week of this. I could suck it up to stay in this house that I was already in love with. Or so I thought.

I saw Amber the next day and she told me that my schedule was posted up on the board and I was on for the next five days. I looked at her a bit shocked and said, “And eight-and-a-half-hour shifts each time?” She said yea. I gave her a bit of a questioning look and said, “I think that’s a bit much for just volunteering.” Again, I am in no position to be complaining, but I also have no desire to be completely taken advantage of. Working a 40+ hour work week doing a bottom-of-the-totem-pole job for free is not really okay. I’ve done many work-for-accommodation jobs and it’s pretty standard to work around 25 hours per week and that also typically includes food as well. She said she would look into it and get back to me.

I was taken off one shift that week and a few of my shifts were dropped down to six hours instead of eight. Well, yea that’s better, but I was still working about 30 hours. With the average wage being 1,400 ¥/hour and rent for my room being 40,000 ¥/month, I technically only needed to work 7 hours per week to earn my stay. It’s a pretty sh*tty feeling when you realize how much you are being taken advantage of. I was in a vulnerable and desperate state, so they could just exploit me and there wasn’t much I could do about it since I needed a place to live and this was my only option at the moment.

Even though Amber had originally said this was only a two week fix, every single sign pointed towards this actually being a permanent thing. The kitchen was losing so many employees in a few weeks, the bed that I was staying in was not getting filled, and I was literally doing the most unwanted job for free. There was absolutely no reason for them to not let me stay.

Until I get a text from Amber a week and a half later reminding me that this is only a temporary solution and I need to move out Sunday. Wait….seriously?? Why??? Yall need me! The kitchen is so understaffed!

I asked if there was any way to convince Dennis and Saori (his wife) to let me stay. She said unfortunately not, Saori is really strict about it and does not want me there.

Noooooooooooooooo….

I was finally starting to settle back down and get into a better mental state.

I talked to Dennis a few days later and basically begged him to let me stay there. I told him that I’m so low maintenance and I could literally just set up a mat in the board waxing room and live there. He said no, that wouldn’t work. I also told him that I was willing to just pay rent to stay in my room until the bed got filled. He would legitimately be making money off of me! And he still said no…. I don’t understand! I told him that I literally have nowhere to go. His response…”I’ve been stranded before and I figured it out.”

Thanks Dennis. Thanks for that. I just don’t understand how you can be so heartless to literally kick someone out onto the streets in the middle of winter when you have a place where they can stay. It’s all business in this town. We aren’t seen as human beings, we are literally just seen and treated as numbers. Numbers who make them millions of dollars.

I started to look for a new housing solution, but backup plan after backup plan after backup plan fell through. I am not even kidding when I said I had about ten different alternative solutions of new places to live and every single one was no longer going to work out…

I was panic-venting to my friend Tom about the fact that I was legitimately going to be homeless in a few days and had absolutely nowhere to go. He had bought a car from a man called Dodgy Yoshi who lived in the next town over legitimately in an abandoned crematorium that he turned into his used car parts garage. Tom said there was a room in his place that looked like a hospital ward in a war zone, with beds all lined up, but it looked like people lived there. He said if I was absolutely desparate, I could reach out to him. I was absolutely desperate and it looked like this might be my only option.

I sent Dodgy Yoshi a message and he said I could live there for 40,000¥/month. I asked if I could do a work exchange and live there for free instead. He said yes, I just needed to work 10 hours/week doing things like snow clearing and I could stay. I said okay and he said I could move in whenever.

Sadly, the day arrived when I had to be out of Mt. Merry, so I packed up my stuff and Tom and Josie gave me a ride out to my new house. We arrived and it was honestly worse than I expected. The first two rooms were just piles of junk and looked like a car-obsessed hoarder’s house. The hallway was completely empty except for two small chairs in the middle of the room, set up in front of a broken TV mounted on the wall. It looked like a scene from a horror film…

It kept getting weirder. Passed the hallway, there was a warehouse-sized room filled with about 2000 used tires, with a camping tent pitched right in the middle, surrounded by piles and piles and piles of random junk.
What the hell was this place…? Did I just move into a cult house?

I found the dorm room and it was not as warm or welcoming as the photos Yoshi had sent me. There were mats and heaters sprawled all over the room, the one actual bed frame was broken in half, and there was a pile of pillows and blankets in the corner which did not look very clean.

Well, home sweet home I guess. We figured out how to get one of the heaters sort of working and I claimed one of the beds in the corner. Tom asked if I was going back to Hirafu with them, but I had nothing to do there and no way to get back, so what would be the point? They gave me a hug and went on their way. As I watched them drive away, I sat down on my bed and just cried.

How much more pathetic can I get? I’m a 29-year-old with a college degree who’s solo traveled to 31 countries and I’ve now gotten kicked out of two houses and just got fired from a dishwashing job that I legitimately was not even getting paid for and now I was living with a couple of 19-year-old boys in a cold and dreary car garage with an old Japanese man who literally calls himself Dodgy Yoshi… What the actual f*ck is my life.

I had called Yoshi the night I moved in but he said he was in Sapporo and wouldn’t be back for a few days. I really didn’t spend much time at home, but even when I was home, he was never around. He knew I was living there, but never communicated expectations or told me when he wanted me to work. I knew he was a busy man, so I figured I was just kind of slipping under the radar, which I was honestly okay with. Free place to live? Can’t be mad about that.
Well, I guess karma caught up with me for that one.

I was leaving to go snowboarding one morning when I finally ran into Yoshi. I walked up to him with a big smile and said, “You must be Yoshi, I’m Meg! Nice to meet you.” With an unamused look on his face, he said, “Yea, I know who you are.” Uhm, okay…I guess I’ll just uhm pull my hand back. He kept going and said, “So what, you think you can just live here for free?” I said, “No, I was wondering. You’ve just never told me when you want me to work.” He said, “I don’t want you to work for me anymore. So you need to pay me rent.” I was completely appalled. Wait what??? You hired me. It should be your job to tell me when I’m supposed to go to work. Not the other way around. I tried to say that but he kept cutting me off and speaking over me. Getting angry, I almost yelled at him and said, “Can you please let me speak?!” He responded with, “I don’t have time to listen to your stories and excuses. I’m a very busy man.” He was literally standing outside, smoking a cigarette doing absolutely nothing! After arguing back and forth for a while, I realized I was going to get absolutely nowhere with him, so I just bit my tongue and accepted it. He finally said, “You either pay me 40,000¥ right now or you move out.”

F*ck

Well, I don’t have 40,000¥ and I absolutely would not pay that much to live in this sh*thole anyway. So I said nothing, walked back inside and started to pack my things up. For the fourth time. Good thing everything I own fits into a backpack..

I did my absolute best to hold myself together. This was my backup backup plan. I had nowhere to go. I was properly homeless. It’s gonna be okay Meg. It’s gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay. You’ll figure something out. I had to repeat that to myself over and over and over again. I refused to let Yoshi see me crumple and fall. I did not allow a single tear to come out as I grabbed my backpack and guitar and walked out the front door not acknowledging his existence in the slightest. Sayonara, jerk.

When I finally made it around the corner, I had no way of stopping the absolute tsunami of emotions that came from my body. I broke down. The aggressive sobbing was inconsolable. I legitimately had nowhere to go and I had been kicked while down again.

I called Tom sobbing and asked if he could come pick me up. I stood on that street corner and looked down at my pitiful existence. My torn up thrift store backpack, my $4 guitar that never stays tuned, a plastic bag of frozen pizza, a packet of cup noodles, a tube of mayonnaise, and a half-eaten carrot, standing outside of the trash hole car parts garage that I just got evicted from…

This might actually be one of the lowest points of my life.

Tom and Josie pulled up a little while later and they just hugged me as I cried. Wow, I was so grateful for them. They took me back to their house and cooked me breakfast as I tried to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do.
I had met a guy, Dan, on the chairlift a few days before and mentioned my horrid living situation. He had said that he potentially could have a place for me to stay but he was working crazy hours that week and the house wasn’t really ready yet, so he would get back to me the next week.

I texted him and told him that I just got kicked out and desperately needed somewhere to go, hoping his place would work out. He said the house wasn’t really ready but I could move in whenever. Oh my gosh, thank you!! Wow, thank freaking goodness! I had somewhere to go!

One of my friends drove me there the next day and wow, was it in the middle of nowhere! Again, I was beyond grateful to have a place to sleep, so I hate complaining, but dang it was in a verrrryyyy inconvenient location for someone who doesn’t have a mode of transportation.

It was honestly a super cute house though. Very traditional Japanese with the paper walls and bamboo floors. It looked like a sweet old Japanese grandma’s house. So cute! I was so confused though because it was literally a five-bedroom house that was completely empty. The housing crisis in this town is honestly a nightmare. So many people struggle desperately to find a place to sleep and here was this massive house that could easily house so many people, but yet was completely empty.

When Dan was telling me that the house wasn’t ready to be lived in yet because it didn’t really have the proper amenities, that honestly went in one ear and out the other because I was so desperate to have a place. I told him it was fine and that I am a super low-maintenance person. I guess I didn’t exactly realize the reality of what he said until I properly moved in. There was no heating or running water or internet. Perfect.

No place to shower or wash clothes or wash dishes or brush my teeth or warm up. It was a cold, empty little house in the middle of nowhere. Yea, this is exactly what I was hoping for…

I had a place to live though and for that, I was grateful.

My tourist visa was expiring soon and I needed to start figuring my life out. For some absolutely bizzarre, unknown reason, I decided that I was gonna go to the immigration office and try to renew my visa so I could stay for another three months. Meg. What the actual hell are you doing?! You are miserable here, why on earth would you want to stay longer? I genuinely have no idea why I thought that was a good idea.

I mean from one perspective, I really don’t like having time limits on my travels, so the fact that no matter what happened, I absolutely needed to be out of the country in three weeks just stressed me out. Three weeks did not seem like a very long time and I guess for some bizarre unknown reason, I just wanted to stay and keep trying to make it work.

Again, Meg, come on… You’ve been trying your hardest for three months to make this place work and it is just not happening. This town does not want you here! The universe does not want you here. Listen to the signs.
Well, if the universe is telling you something for a long time and you’re not listening, it will start to yell at you. A few of my friends were also not on working holiday visas, so we decided to make a road trip out to the city to all get our visas renewed together.

When we first arrived at the immigration office, I was already turned off by the fact that I had to spend 1,000Y to get visa photos printed out and the visa extension would cost another 4,000Y. When you don’t have a regular income coming in, you really have to be cautious about where you spend your money. I honestly didn’t even know if I wanted to stay any longer, so why was I going to spend all this money to make that happen?

All of my friends’ visas were approved, then it was finally my turn. The immigration officer looked at my application and said, “No, can’t extend.” Uhm, okay, why? All of my friends just submit the exact same application and they were all approved. He said British can but Americans can’t. I asked why and his response was, “Rules”, shrugged his shoulders, apologized, and handed me back my application.

Well, there was my answer. The final push. The universe finally shouted loud enough at me to finally listen. It was time for me to cut my losses and get out of this place that has been so undeniably unkind to me. I now had no choice. The government was forcing me out.

Honestly, the amount of relief I felt while walking out of that office building was shocking. I was finally going to give up on trying to force this place to work for me. I’m out. I was literally being kicked out and I couldn’t have been happier. Onto a new adventure that will hopefully be more peaceful and fulfilling and actually enjoyable and fun. It was time to start figuring out my next steps.

While I genuinely love solo traveling, it gets so exhausting when you have to make all decisions alone. With no plans and an entire world to see, it can be insanely overwhelming when trying to decide where to go next. Back to Europe that I love so much? Back to Southeast Asia to rock climb where my heart felt so free? Pacific islands? Africa? South Korea? Back home? Wow, so many optionssssssss.

With my time running out and the age limit approaching for my Australian and New Zealand working holiday visas, I figured I should do that before it’s too late. After an incredibly toasty summer in southeast Asia, I honestly never wanted to be hot ever again. With the southern hemisphere having opposite seasons to us, I could keep winter going and do a ski season in New Zealand. I applied for my visa and got accepted! Wow, the relief of being able to work legally…what a relief that will be!

With winter not starting for another few months though, I knew I wanted to find a place in between to mentally reset after this whirlwind of the last three months. I found a WorkAway on a farm in the middle of the jungle on a small island in the Philippines and booked my flight!

Three weeks seemed like an insanely short amount of time when I was first planning my big escape. However, as the days went by, I wish I would have booked my flight much, much earlier. There were still a few things I wanted to do before leaving Japan and I’m honestly insanely obsessed with snowboarding and wasn’t ready for my season to be over. However, with Niseko being the single snowiest place on the planet, we have had the actual most sh*t snow season ever. December was mostly full of rain with a few snowstorms towards the end of the month, it snowed here and there in January, and after a few dumps the first few days of February, it hasn’t snowed again. The irony of coming to the one place on the planet to guarantee endless powder days and being here for the worst season in decades is almost comical. Yea, it’s time to leave.

I tried to snowboard every day to get my last bit of snow fix in, but at this point, even the one thing that was keeping me going wasn’t that enjoyable anymore. So, snowboarding during the day, eating a cheap lunch at a convenience store, and then somehow trying to find my way back to my lonely little empty house in the middle of nowhere became my daily routine.

I resorted to crashing on different friends’ couches in town just to avoid going to my sad, cold little house. There was one point where I didn’t go home for five straight days.

After getting with Daniel, the houseowner though, we finally got the main heater working and basically put it on full blast to defrost the house. Well, it worked because one day I got home to all the faucets on and a completely flooded bathroom. Perfect. All the pipes were busted. The plumber had to come in to shut the main water source off. So, back to no water.

Honestly, can just one thing work out for me here?!

I talked to Daniel and thankfully he had a room available in his house for a few days, so I was able to move into there the few days before I left town. At least I had a warm place to sleep, somewhere to shower, and internet to use to plan out my next steps.

The day finally came when it was my time to leave this hell hole that I had unfortunately found myself in. I wrote my hitchhiking sign for “Noboribetsu”, hit the road and didn’t look back. See ya, Niseko, thanks for….uhm….well, not much. I probably won’t be coming back.