37 FramesThere are goodbyes you brace for… the ones you mark on calendars, the ones you prepare speeches for. And then there are the quiet ones. The ones you only feel in hindsight. The smell of your family kitchen. The sound of familiar footsteps on the stairs. The casual knowing of how the light falls through your bedroom window at 4 p.m.
This is the soft unraveling that no one tells you about when you choose to live abroad.
For us, it happened in slow motion. Not with a grand departure or an airport farewell soaked in tears, but in a hundred tiny ways. A one-way ticket to Tokyo that turned into decades. A business dream that began as a whisper. A life that changed because we had the courage to say yes to the unknown.
We thought we were just coming to Japan for a season. Maybe a few weddings. Maybe a little adventure. Just enough to fill a photo album and tell our future selves, “We did something brave.”
But living abroad doesn’t just change your zip code. It changes you. It rearranges the furniture inside your heart. And while it takes some things away, it gifts you new things you never knew to ask for.
1. You Become Fluent in the Language of Letting Go
Oh, the goodbyes. They’re constant. And not just the dramatic airport ones (though we’ve had our fair share of those… passport in one hand, tissues in the other). We mean the everyday ones.
You say goodbye to certainty. To knowing where to buy your favorite cereal. To having five friends on speed dial who understand your weird jokes without explanation.
But in those goodbyes, you learn how to hold lightly. To stop gripping so tightly to permanence. You learn that people don’t have to stay forever to mean something. That some friendships arrive like summer storms… brief, brilliant, and enough.
2. You Learn to Trust the Process (Even When the Process is…Weird)
Building a business abroad? Not for the faint of heart.
Trying to explain the concept of a wedding and event planning business (and photography and film studio) to a local city official who thinks you’re applying to run a bento shop? Been there.
We’ve filled out more forms than we can count, been lost in more translations than we care to admit, and yet… it all came together.
Because trusting the process means showing up even when you don’t have the perfect words. It means understanding that progress isn’t linear. It means laughing through missteps (like the time we accidentally told a venue we needed “a very strong rice spirit” instead of “strong lighting assistance”).
3. You Redefine Home
At some point, you stop seeing home as a postal address. It becomes something else.
It becomes the 7-Eleven down the street that carries your favorite onigiri. The train station musician whose tunes soundtrack your Tuesday nights. The dear friend who brings you cut fruit when you’re too busy in wedding season to cook.
You start building home wherever you go… in people, in routines, in the way you curl up on a tatami mat just so.
4. You Discover a Gentler Kind of Strength
Living abroad isn’t about toughness. It’s not about surviving the hard things with a stiff upper lip.
No, it’s about the softness that keeps you going.
It’s the grace you extend to yourself when you mess up the honorifics again. It’s the mercy you offer your past self, the one who had no idea what she was doing but leapt anyway. It’s the quiet courage of asking for help, of starting again, of staying present when it would be easier to retreat.
We’ve learned that bravery isn’t always loud. Sometimes it looks like staying. Sometimes it looks like staying kind.
5. You Start to Celebrate the Ordinary
There’s something about being a foreigner that makes you fall in love with the mundane.
You marvel at the seasonal change of konbini snacks. You take more photos of your neighborhood than of Mt. Fuji. You start calling your local ramen chef by name.
When you live abroad, you notice more. You find wonder in the details. And suddenly, a quiet Tuesday becomes a moment you want to hold onto forever.
6. You Build a Business That Feels Like an Extension of You
37 Frames was born not just out of a passion for love stories and photography, but from a love of connection.
We built this business with the same hands that waved goodbye to our families years ago. With the same hearts that knew what it felt like to be new, to feel out of place, to long for something familiar. That’s why our weddings feel different. Because we know what matters.
We don’t just photograph moments; we witness transformations. We document families coming together across cultures. We plan weddings that honor heritage and hope.
And we get it. We really get it. That’s the magic of living abroad… you become an expert in empathy.
7. You Realize How Much You’ve Grown
You might not notice it at first. But then you find yourself explaining a complicated visa process in Japanese, and you think— “Oh. I’m not the same person who arrived here with two suitcases and a dream.”
You become your own safety net. Your own soft place to land.
And even when no one claps, even when the milestones go unnoticed by the world, you know. You see the version of you who kept going, who chose this life again and again.
And you celebrate her.
Living abroad changes you. It humbles you. It stretches you. It teaches you how to love again, and again, and again, in a hundred new ways.
And for us, it has been the greatest love story of all… Not just with Japan. But with ourselves. Our business. Our people. Our purpose.
So if you ever find yourself in a new country, heart beating too loud, wondering if you made the right choice… pause.
Look around.
Look at who you’re becoming.
Trust the process.
And know that home is not just a place. It’s a life you build, one brave day at a time.
37 Frames
