I (US citizen) moved to Japan to studying Japanese in August 2008, the last thing I had in mind was dating a Japanese girl as I'd heard awful stories from friends regarding relationships with Japanese women. Of course it is always when we are NOT looking that we find what we want. I met a nice country girl, not at all like the typical city girl that my friends had told stories about. We started dating a couple months after we met and I didn't really view it as a serious relationship. However the more time we spent together, the more I realized that she was different from any girl I'd dated previously, and we found our relationship getting more serious. About 9 months into my time in Japan I just got sick of being there and didn't feel like I belonged so I looked at what options were available. Our relationship was definitely not at a stage where I would consider marriage, but one option came to the front that would enable us to keep dating, stay together and move out of Japan.
When we had first met, my girlfriend told me she was planning on moving to Australia within two years because she had spent three months there and loved it. Before I moved to Japan I had spent a year and a half in Australia studying and I also loved it. In the end we both decided to apply for working holiday visas in Australia, and continue our relationship there. It's been over 9 months that we've been in Australia and our visas will expire in February, so we're considering the next step. Which is why I'm here on VJ We've been dating over two years now, and traveling and living together for almost a whole year so I feel a lot more comfortable making a decision about our relationship now, then I did in mid-2009 when I was sick of living in Japan.
