About This Project

On August 23rd the Youtuber and artist struthless decided to make a Youtube video that wasn't only about giving advice or doing another one of his inspirational help-videos - don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with those, some of his advice really helped me with my mental health. No, this video was different. It was a call to action.

He decided to start a challenge and I was lucky enough to have watched the video just in time to not feel like I was "left behind again". For once in my life, my Youtube doomscrolling helped me find something that not only inspired me in a "uhhuh, interesting"-way, but rather a "let's get up and do this!"-way.

In most of his other videos, the main focus always seemed to be on videomaking or making art in the drawing sense. Many of his tips were broad, but never broad enough for me to actually adapt them to use for my personal art form of expression - writing.

Until now.

With him creating the Alphabet Superset Challenge he tried to be as broad as possible, so that it could be adapted to any kind of art form - and even more so, he decided to offer this undoubtedly work-intensive project as a course for free, so anyone had the opportunity to join.

Which is why I decided to join.

My name is EFA and I was born and raised in Germany. During a three-week trip in 2013 I fell in love with Japan, particularly its countryside. I decided to start studying Japanese, as well as applying for a one-year stay which finally happened in 2016.

This is where I really fell deeply in love. All the people I have met, experiences I was able to have - the good as well as the bad -  made me realize I wanted to live here for good. I went back to Germany and into university studying Japanology. Different from most of my peers however, I only started uni to acquire enough knowledge to be able to live in Japan. I wanted to be able to speak the language somewhat fluently, know about the most important historical events and mythical figures, learn about Japanese society as well as media and art to have the ability to live my life here full-time. So when in 2019 I decided to drop out, although it was mainly due to the pandemic, I didn't feel like I "lost out". The thing I originally went to uni for I was able to accomplish for myself - and I try not to care about how other people might see dropouts as losers.

I certainly did not lose - in 2020 I married my long-distance partner of two years and have been living together with them ever since.

Not only my consecutive experience of living here for the past four years without leaving the country, but also the exposure to being here on a Student Visa as well as a Working Holiday Visa make for some interesting stories I want to share!

Starting from the beginning of September I will be posting a blog entry every week for 26 weeks (with 4 extra weeks of breaks scattered throughout), each one on a topic which was inspired by that weeks letter of the alphabet. The overall topic will be about Life in Japan as a foreigner.

I have done more than one blog about Japan, but this will be the first time ever for me to write texts in English, as well as trying to challenge myself to keep up writing and posting consecutively. I really want to share my experiences with a broader audience - and I honestly just can't shut up about Japan and all the interesting stuff I have learned about it over the years!

If that sounds interesting to you, well then you're in for a treat - look forward to my posts. :)

Glad to have you along for the ride!