Without Firsthand Experience, Globetrotting is Frustratingly Unimaginable

"Could I...ask a completely unrelated question?" One of the attendees hesitantly spoke up in our online discussion session. As I saw him lower his head in the grainy video thumbnail, he quietly muttered, "How...does your life end up like that?" And before I could inquire what he exactly meant, he intoned, his voice a bit louder and even angrier, "I'm interested in living in different countries too....but it just doesn't seem like it plays out that way." I opened my mouth and closed it again before I could say a word. I had to think for a moment after realizing it was a much more sensitive question than I had expected.

It had all been quite routine for me until that point. As I have done multiple times every year for the past few years, I was part of a new employee orientation training for a Japanese corporation, where the firm's newest and youngest members work with foreigners like us to determine how the company's product and service offerings may appeal to non-Japanese clientele. And as I have done so many times before, I gave my self-introduction, establishing my credibility as someone who can speak about potential foreign customers based on my experience living in more than ten different countries.

What I did not expect was anyone actually digging into my self-introduction. I am fully aware that my globetrotting background is highly unusual. But I assume that my Japanese audience will simply see that as a curiosity, relevant to their work, not to their daily lives. After all, most of them, born and bred in Japan, with the full expectation of spending their entire working lives in Japan for Japanese companies, would not see foreign countries as anything more than destinations for a few weeks of holidays and a few years of career-promoting secondment.

The attendee's hesitant inquiry jolted me out of that assumption. Many people may look at my background and not comment on it simply because they cannot relate. But not all refrain from engaging with it purely out of emotional detachment. Others may do so out of envy, if not outright jealousy. Many a Japanese media personality, YouTuber, or keyboard warrior may exalt the luck of being born in Japan, surrounded by wealth, safety, and convenience. That self-praise, I am now more aware, may come from a certain insecurity of not being realistically able to experience life in another country.

To be sure, I am aware of the privilege that allows for globetrotting. Every time I give my little spiel about my past adventures in Africa or Southeast Asia, a part of me worries whether my audience simply concludes that I was born into wealth, with parents unstingy in their investment in my acquiring different languages and cultural experiences. Even when I am at pains to stress how the adventures were done entirely solo, I can sense the skepticism of it being possible without some resources that the majority of "normal" people may not even know about.

It is refreshing, however, to question that privilege directly in my face, forcing me to confront it rather than accept it as a matter of fact. I reopened my mouth, carefully explaining how it was thanks to my parents' multiple career changes that I jetted across continents at a young age. Then I spoke of how I job-hopped to other countries, encouraging the inquirer to also utilize the ever-expanding roster of online job search sites to find opportunities elsewhere. They were all truths. But it felt unconvincing to those who, presumably, grew up in a monocultural environment.

The Japanese media has, in recent years, popularized the term "keiken kakusa" (経験格差), or experiential inequality. Many children grow up in households that never take them to meet people of different cultural backgrounds, taste exotic cuisines, or travel to foreign countries. Of course, poverty is partly to blame. All these experiences cost much more in a country with a depreciating currency and increasing job insecurity. But just as important is a lack of imagination. Many may just grow up in households that feel interacting with something different is simply unnecessary for day-to-day survival. 

Without that experience, it is no wonder that, as adults, these kids summarize their frustration into "doesn't seem like it plays out that way." I was unconvinced by my answer to the sensitive question, because I just could not authentically channel the optimism that "anyone can become global if they try" vibe. My privilege is not just that my parents moved around. It is that I got to move around with them, being thrown into the deep end of the pool every time, forced to swim or sink. Those who grew up in Japan's warm cocoon would never understand.