{"id":37953,"date":"2025-11-07T01:01:37","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T01:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-left-a-corporate-job-in-canada-to-spend-more-time-with-my-family-it-took-moving-to-2-countries-to-get-it-right\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T01:01:37","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T01:01:37","slug":"i-left-a-corporate-job-in-canada-to-spend-more-time-with-my-family-it-took-moving-to-2-countries-to-get-it-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-left-a-corporate-job-in-canada-to-spend-more-time-with-my-family-it-took-moving-to-2-countries-to-get-it-right\/","title":{"rendered":"I left a corporate job in Canada to spend more time with my family. It took moving to 2 countries to get it right."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/690855280be9845f2dc590ca?format=jpeg\" alt=\"A man posing in front of gacha machines in Japan\"\/><figcaption>Brendan Pon and his family moved from Canada to Thailand and then to Japan in search of a slower life.<\/p>\n<p>@BrendaninJapan<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Brendan Pon and his family left Canada in May 2024 to pursue a slower life abroad.<\/li>\n<li>They initially moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand, but felt that it wasn&#039;t the right fit for their family.<\/li>\n<li>They ended up buying a house remotely and moved to Osaka, Japan, over a year later.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brendan Pon, 36, an entrepreneur and part-time <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@BrendanInJapan\/videos\" rel=\"noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"><em>content creator<\/em><\/a><em> in Osaka, Japan. It has been edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I was born and raised in Toronto. I spent 10 years as a recruiter specializing in senior-level accounting roles. Before that, I was an accountant myself.<\/p>\n<p>My wife and I had a comfortable, predictable life with our two kids, but we wanted something new. They&#039;re both under five, and we wanted to make the most of these early years by being present in their lives.<\/p>\n<p>In North America, it feels like you have to prioritize working just to keep up with the cost of living. We felt that moving abroad would allow us to take a step back, work less, and spend more time with our kids.<\/p>\n<p>It made more sense to take the leap sooner rather than later. That way, if it didn&#039;t work out, we&#039;d still have time to make money again or adjust our careers.<\/p>\n<h2>Moving across the world to Asia<\/h2>\n<p>We moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand, in May 2024. Even though we&#039;d visited before, once we settled in, we realized it wasn&#039;t the right fit.<\/p>\n<p>Itfelt like we were living in an expat bubble, and we struggled to integrate into the local community. It didn&#039;t help that the weather was super hot all year round.<\/p>\n<p>That&#039;s when we started looking again. Japan had always been on our radar, and with the yen at a low, we began exploring its real estate market. <\/p>\n<p>We discovered visa options that could make a move possible and decided on Osaka. It had an international airport, good food options, and all the conveniences of Tokyo, but on a more livable scale.<\/p>\n<p>We wanted to be in a family-friendly neighborhood with easy access to parks, grocery stores, and train stations. We also wanted something newly built and move-in ready.<\/p>\n<p>We visited Osaka in November 2024. While we toured a few properties on that trip, none of them ended up being the one we bought, although the experience helped us get a sense of the market.<\/p>\n<p>After returning to Thailand, we found the house we wanted online. We bought a new house remotely, with the help of a real estate agent, for 49.8 million Japanese yen, or about $320,000.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/690855270be9845f2dc590c9?format=jpeg\" alt=\"The exterior of a house in Japan.\"\/><figcaption>They bought their house in Osaka remotely, while they were still living in Thailand.<\/p>\n<p>@BrendaninJapan<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>We officially moved to Osaka in July. Our neighborhood is about 98% Japanese. There&#039;s a retirement home down the street, but there are also numerous young families living here.<\/p>\n<p>We&#039;ve gotten to know our Japanese neighbors well, and we hang out with them a lot.<\/p>\n<p>That said, the language barrier has been the hardest part of the move, especially when dealing with paperwork and bureaucracy, but everyone&#039;s patience and kindness have helped. I have also started language lessons.<\/p>\n<h2>More time together<\/h2>\n<p>Our son attends a local kindergarten, and our daughter goes to a part-time international nursery.<\/p>\n<p>We don&#039;t have a car, so we bike everywhere. After picking up the kids from school, we usually head to the pool or playground.<\/p>\n<p>On weekends, we try to do a lot of bigger things, like taking the train or renting a car for an overnight trip. But we&#039;ve only been here for a few months, so we&#039;re still developing a routine.<\/p>\n<p>We also have a dog, which we brought over from Canada, so we make sure to take him out for walks and help him socialize, too.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69085528c007ca8c27381935?format=jpeg\" alt=\"A man posing with a pamphlet.\"\/><figcaption>He says his two young kids have adapted well to the international moves.<\/p>\n<p>@BrendaninJapan<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Moving to two countries in just over a year showed me how resilient we are.<\/p>\n<p>My daughter is still very young, so she doesn&#039;t really know what&#039;s going on. But my son, who&#039;s turning five, has been really open-minded and adjusted well both times we moved. It helped that we looped him in on all the conversations from the start.<\/p>\n<p>Our kids have adapted easily, and the slower pace has allowed us to be fully present as a family.<\/p>\n<p>We did this whole journey because we wanted to be in control of our lives. Too often, people don&#039;t realize there are other paths out there \u2014 they just keep doing the same thing their whole lives.<\/p>\n<p>It took financial planning and courage to make this leap, but so far the experience has been rewarding.<\/p>\n<p><em>Do you have a story to share about relocating to a new city? Contact this reporter at <\/em><em>agoh@businessinsider.com<\/em><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brendan Pon and his family moved from Canada to Thailand and then to Japan in search of a slower life. @BrendaninJapan Brendan Pon and his family left Canada in May 2024 to pursue a slower life abroad. They initially moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand, but felt that it wasn&#039;t the right fit for their family. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37954,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-37953","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}