From Curry to Sushi: The cultural shock I experienced when I moved from India to Japan 🇮🇳 🇯🇵

Moving from India to Japan, I found many thing which are common and different between the two cultures. This article shares what I experienced and what I learned living in Japan as an Indian.

Abhimuralidharan
6 min readJun 15, 2024
Generated with AI by the Author ∙ June 15, 2024 at 8:49 PM

“Konnichiwa” (こんにちは) meaning “hello,” is one of the first words you learn in Japanese.

I had to travel to Japan for work, and let me tell you, I had zero experience working abroad. Japan was the first country outside of India that I ever traveled to. Before that , I was using my passport as an ID proof 😄.

I moved to Japan by the mid of 2022. The flight landed at the Narita airport. It was during the CORONA era and I was supposed to do the quarantine for 2 weeks. After the quarantine, when I stepped out, it felt like entering a different world. As an Indian, I was familiar to a vibrant, bustling environment filled with color, noise, and lot of chaos.

Japan, on the other hand, presented itself as a land of order, awesome landscapes, and subtle…

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