The flight to Japan was fourteen hours of existential crisis at 35,000 feet.

I’d never traveled this far from home—hell, I’d barely traveled without a full itinerary approved by Gunther Wallace, CEO of my former life.

Now I was hurtling through the atmosphere toward a country where I couldn’t read street signs, armed with nothing but a few phrases from Duolingo and the kind of blind faith usually reserved for cult members.

Turbulence hit somewhere over the Pacific, and I white-knuckled my armrest while contemplating whether this was the universe’s way of saying “plot twist: you die before your rebellion bears fruit.”

“You okay?” Caleb’s hand covered mine, steady as always.

“Peachy. Just realizing I’ve never been this far from a Starbucks.” My attempt at humor came out shaky, like my grip on reality.

“They have Starbucks in Tokyo,” he assured me. “Also better coffee, but we’ll work up to that.”

By the time we landed, I felt like I’d been through a spin cycle—wrung out, disoriented, vaguely damp. Tokyo greeted me with neon dreams and humidity that hit like a wet slap.

The airport alone was sensory overload: announcements in Japanese flowing over English translations, signs I couldn’t parse, the efficient chaos of thousands of people who knew exactly where they were going while I stood there like a lost toddler at a mall.

“Come on,” Caleb said, navigating us through customs with the ease of someone who’d done this dance before. “Let’s get you home.”

Home. The word sat strange in my mouth, foreign as the language surrounding us.

The first week was brutal. Without Caleb, I would’ve starved to death in front of a vending machine, unable to decode which button dispensed water versus whatever the fuck “Pocari Sweat” was.

He translated menus, taught me train etiquette, and gently corrected my attempts at Japanese that apparently sounded like I was having a stroke.

“The shopkeeper thought you were asking for a medical professional,” he explained after one particularly disastrous convenience store interaction.

“I was trying to buy eggs!”

“Yes, well, the Asian languages are tricky.” His smile was too amused for my liking. “Though your pronunciation of ’emergency’ was spot on.”

But he never made me feel stupid. Never acted like my guardian or savior, just… my person.

The one who held my hand through the overwhelming and whispered encouragement when I wanted to hide in our apartment forever.

Once Caleb dove into work—the actual reason we were here, beyond my dramatic life implosion—I made a decision. I could either wallow in culture shock and homesickness, or I could build something.

Twenty-two years of being Gunther Wallace’s daughter had taught me one thing: when life gives you lemons, you better figure out how to make something profitable from them.

So I started a blog. “Gaijin in Love”—chronicling my disasters and small victories as an expat who’d literally fled her own wedding. The internet, it turns out, loves a good trainwreck redemption story.

“Today I successfully ordered coffee without accidentally proposing to the barista,” I wrote. “Progress is relative.”

I bought notebooks and filled them with hiragana and katakana practice, my characters looking like drunk spiders had attempted calligraphy. Met other expats at language exchanges, where we bonded over our mutual butchering of Japanese grammar.

Even befriended a retired professor who invited me to local history talks I understood maybe 10% of but attended anyway because his enthusiasm was infectious.

“You’re thriving,” Caleb observed one night, finding me surrounded by Japanese textbooks and half-eaten konbini snacks.

“I’m barely surviving,” I corrected, but I was smiling. “I asked for directions today and only got lost twice.”

“That’s thriving in Tokyo,” he insisted, kissing my temple. “Trust me.”

The group chat with Josie and Anthony became my lifeline to sanity. They’d send Milo updates—the dog had his own Instagram now, because of course he did—while I sent photos of weird vending machine drinks and my attempts at origami.

“Start dating already!” I texted after they posted yet another photo together at some brewery. “I won’t be mad! I’ve moved on to international disasters!”

“We’re just friends,” Josie replied, followed immediately by Anthony’s “She won’t stop stealing my fries though.”

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