Naija to japan japa guide

"One feeds you. The other tempts you." You're hungry in Japan. Not "I could eat something" hungry. You're properly hungry. So you have two choices. On one side, there's the bright little convenience store you've already learned to trust. On the other, there's a huge Japanese department store that looks like it was designed to make ordinary shopping feel important. Both sell food. But they are playing completely different games. The convenience store says: "You're hungry. Let's fix that." The department store says: "You want something special? Come downstairs." And that second option can lead you into one of Japan's most fascinating food experiences: the department-store basement. If you've never heard of a depachika, prepare to have your understanding of "shopping for food" rearranged. First, the Easy One: The Konbini If you've been following Japanaijazen, you've alre...

You land in Japan at 11 p.m., jet-lagged, disoriented, and starving in that very specific way where you'd eat almost anything. The hotel restaurant is closed. Most of the places around you look shut. Google Maps isn't helping. Then you see it. A small glowing sign with a 7-Eleven logo. You walk in expecting a sad bag of chips and perhaps a lonely hot dog doing circles under a heat lamp. Fifteen minutes later, you're walking out with hot fried chicken, an onigiri, a surprisingly good egg sandwich, a drink, maybe a dessert — and you're wondering: "Wait. This is a convenience store?" Welcome to konbini culture. Japan's convenience stores are not simply places to grab snacks when you're in a hurry. They are part food shop, part ATM, part payment counter, part parcel point, part ticketing hub, part printing centre and, occasionally, the place that saves you from making a very dramatic 11 p.m. mistake. Once you get used to them, the word ...

It's your first nomikai. Your new team is gathered at an izakaya. Someone is pouring beer down the table. Glasses are being topped up left and right. And you do what feels completely normal: you reach for the bottle and top up your own glass. Nobody says anything. That's the problem. Nobody says anything. You just feel the temperature in the room shift half a degree, and you have no idea why. Here's the thing about Japanese work culture: a lot of it isn't written down anywhere, and it often isn't explained to you directly because, to everyone around you, it's simply how things are done. It's the workplace equivalent of knowing that you take your shoes off before walking onto a tatami mat. Nobody needs to announce the rule. One of the hardest parts for a foreign employee isn't learning the Japanese language. It's learning the small social signals that everyone else seems to understand automatically. So let's write down some of ...

You see ¥100,000 in a Japanese bank account. Then you convert it. Depending on where you're from, your brain immediately translates it into something else: "That's about $630." Or: "That's more than ₦850,000." And suddenly the number feels either surprisingly small or surprisingly large. That's the problem with currency conversion. A Japanese salary can look tiny when you convert it into dollars. A Nigerian salary can look enormous when you convert it into yen. But neither number tells you what that money can actually buy. If you're planning to move to Japan, this matters more than the exchange rate on your phone. Because once you arrive, your rent isn't charged in dollars. Your train ticket isn't priced in naira. Your supermarket bill doesn't care what the exchange rate looked like when you were sitting at home planning the move. You'll earn yen, spend yen and build your life around yen. So let...

You get the offer letter. ¥3,200,000 a year. You open a currency converter, do the naira or dollar math, and your stomach drops a little. That's it? Maybe you've spent months thinking about moving to Japan. You've researched the visa, looked at apartments, calculated flights and imagined what your life there might actually look like. Then you see the salary. And suddenly you're wondering whether the whole plan makes sense. That number gets repeated everywhere — in forums, comment sections and sometimes by the person who has never lived in Japan but is very confident that they know how much Japan pays. "Japan doesn't pay well, you know." Here's the thing: That number isn't necessarily bad. But looking at the number alone can give you the wrong picture. What matters is what the salary represents, what is included in it, what gets deducted, where you'll live, what kind of visa you're entering on and what your actual month...

Imagine building a life somewhere for more than a decade. Your children go to school there. They speak the language. They make friends there. Maybe, to them, that country is the only home they really know. Then one day, you're told you have to leave. That is the fear sitting underneath Japan's latest immigration crackdown. In 2025, Japan recorded its highest-ever number of government-funded deportations carried out with an immigration escort: 318 people. The number itself is enough to make anyone considering Japan stop and ask a difficult question: Is Japan becoming hostile to foreigners? But there is an important detail hiding behind the headline. Those 318 people were not the entire number of foreigners deported from Japan. In total, 7,563 people were sent back under deportation orders in 2025. The 318 figure refers specifically to people repatriated at government expense with an escort. Another 505 were repatriated at government expense without an escort, whi...