It's been 9 years now and I like it a lot. It really is just like anime (within reason, of course). But I think it's not for most people. You really do have to give up everything to make it work. Your old culture and way of doing things, ties in your old country, literally everything. You have to live like a Japanese person, work at a Japanese company, and do things the same way as everyone else or else life here would become hell. And fluency in Japanese is an absolute must.

But it's all worth it, at least to me it was anyway. A few years back I gave up my hamburger citizenship and became a Japanese citizen so I even have a Japanese name now. I get teased online by foreigners for it, but irl I feel more accepted after changing my name. It's hard to explain but attitudes are different.

Unfortunately Akiba sucks now though, so some of the otaku stuff I used to like in the old days is dead now and everything either went online or moved elsewhere, but the newer hubs don't hit the same level as Akiba used to :(

And I don't know what happened but it seems like overseas anime fans changed a lot during covid or something? I didn't used to, but I get a bad taste in my mouth from them these days. What happened?