Did You Eat?

In May, I posted a video about three different ways Japanese people say “I love you.”

More people watched it than anything else I have made.

A few days later, someone left a question in the comments.

“In English, parents say ‘I love you’ to their children almost every day. Is there really nothing like that in Japanese?”

It was a good question, so I made a second video to answer it.

I said that Japanese parents do not often say those words out loud.

But I also said that love does not disappear. It is simply kept somewhere else.

It is in questions like these.

ご飯食べた？

Did you eat?

ちゃんと寝てる？

Are you sleeping enough?

無理しないでね。

Do not push yourself too hard.

“Did you eat?” is not really about food. “Are you sleeping enough?” is not really about sleep.

They both mean the same thing.

I am thinking about you.

And I said one more thing that I meant completely.

I have never once in my life felt unloved by my family.

All of that is true. I still believe it.

But there is something I did not say in that video.

For years, I had not treated my family the way I should have.

It was not that I disliked them. I really am lucky to have the family I have.

But embarrassment often got in the way. Sometimes I simply did not make the effort.

There was also a period when I kept my distance because I assumed they would not understand me.

I quit teaching. I moved abroad. I became deeply interested in investing. I started posting on social media. Nobody around me had done any of those things.

I did not think a life like mine would make sense to them, so I stopped explaining myself. After a while, I stopped talking about my life much at all.

In a way, I was running away.

I convinced myself that they would not understand me, and I used that as a reason to keep them at a distance.

I only saw this clearly during a period when nothing in my life felt stable.

I had left my job. I had no fixed income and no clear idea of what I was going to do next.

The people who stayed close to me then were the same people who had always stayed close to me.

They were my family.

They never called me crazy. They never treated me like a burden. I am sure they do not fully understand everything I do, but they never demanded that I explain myself either.

They simply stayed on my side.

I did not fully understand any of this until I left Japan.

And when I finally realized how much my family meant to me, the first thing I felt was not gratitude.

It was shame.

I had been telling strangers that Japanese people show love through their actions while barely replying to messages from my own family.

I turned down invitations to eat together. I rarely stopped by. I thought back over the way I had treated them for all those years.

It has been a few months since I came back to Japan.

These days, I try to do the obvious things.

Eat together sometimes. Stop by without needing a reason. Reply to messages as much as I can.

Written down, it all sounds so ordinary that it seems like I am doing nothing special.

But these small things were exactly what I was talking about in that video.

I still want to keep traveling, and I want to live abroad again someday.

But I have come to understand that going far away and taking care of your family are not two things you have to choose between.

When I am living nearby, I will do what I can in person.

When I am far away, I will do what I can from there.

Whatever happens from here, that is one thing I do not plan to change.