Personal Essay
Last year, I bought a house of my own, a four-story high building right at the heart of Tokyo. I will never forget the exact date, October 23rd not only because I shopped around for 10 months, visiting over 10 real estate agencies to check out over 30 other houses, but because only 19 years ago, I came to Japan with nothing.
In fact, it would take thousands if not more pages to write a book on my life in Japan, how I started out in a tiny dorm (shared with a roommate at that), and how I took on all kinds of 3D jobs (serving and washing dishes at an udon diner which left my hands with scars from burns, and working at a bakery shop, a job I needed so that I could take left-over bread home). But the greatest ordeal was having to pack my bags to leave for Korea after a year because I had no money despite all the efforts.
But I returned after working hard to earn money.
Thus, in many ways, this house, to me, although I still have a huge mortgage to pay off (as its price tag is $850,000), is not only my precious No. 1 asset, but it also represents years of tears and hard work.
But more than anything, it stands for that stability which I never had – in fact I never really had a home. After my parents divorced when I was only eight, my mother raised my older sister and me as a single mom. But with only an elementary school education, she had no option but to start a tiny diner working from dawn to dawn.
Thus, buying a place of our own – that was simply a luxury we did not even dare to dream of as we had to live paycheck to paycheck. It was a question of survival.
And later, reality continued to be harsh for my family. With my mother gone later (after 30 years of excruciating hardship, her body couldn’t take it anymore and she found consolation in religion, becoming a Buddhist nun) and thus with no one to take care of my older sister, my only sibling, who is disabled (cancer decapacitated one arm) and her child (she is a single mom herself), I had to be the strong one – the one holding the family together.
Thus, I bought a house for my sister and niece and gifted them $500 every month for years since their welfare simply wasn’t enough.
In total, I must have spent over a half million for my family.
But I have absolutely no regrets. No. I am happy that I could help my beloved family.
Along the way, I also walked away with many realizations about who I am. For one, I realized that I am the type who becomes even stronger in the face of greater adversities. Of course, I am only a human and do cry. But then, after a good crying session (which is very short-lived), I get up, roll up my sleeves and go to work. Japanese language, for instance, I had to master it. Thus, I studied day and night, and now I can literally pass as a Japanese.
All these took immense effort. For one, I promised myself that I would be the first to arrive at work and the last to leave – and I kept this promise (now, it has become a habit). In the case of job fairs, I gave my 500% to support over 250 client-companies’ booths. And later when I became the branch manager of our branch in Seoul, an office I helped to start, my already hectic life became even busier as I appeared on TV three times every month for years to promote my company while encouraging Korean youths to seek opportunity in Japan. For those live broadcasts, I also had to decide on the contents, and I even wrote the scripts. At the same time, I wrote a book that is a steady seller today.
As such, I was lucky if I could sleep four hours per day, while all-nighters were all too common.
But I loved it. And all these experiences, every one of them, really count for something. For one, I realized the power of dreaming. For many, a harsh reality is a dream killer. But to me, dreaming of a better future was the only way to cope with the reality. And I reminded myself non-stop that this “tunnel” like other tunnels will have an end, an exit. This is how I kept going.
I am also very grateful – to my mom who scraped every penny to give me some money to get started in Japan, and my boss who refused to accept my resignation in the first year saying that I can do it, that he sees immense potential in me. The list goes on to include even the kindness of total strangers.
As such, I got healed by people. For example, operating a guest house out of my house really helped. Over 1,000 guests come every year, bringing so many stories – their life stories.
And as I soothed mothers who were concerned about returning to the workforce after many gap years, and as I encouraged the youths who had come to Japan to escape from their reality in Korea for at least a few days (unemployment, a job they hate and so forth), I found myself getting healed day by day, one guest after another.
Along the way, I learned to love myself.
Today, my other most precious asset is the box of thank you letters I get from my guests as I prepare breakfast for them, rain or shine, making sure that the children don’t get hurt by ensuring there is nothing pointy in my guest house.
I want to devote myself to the well-being of people for the rest of my career-and life.
