It was a chilly morning in March 2014, when I met Claire for our first interview. It took me a few minutes to find her at the Japan Railways Shinjuku Station South Exit gate, reminding me that this was not the best meeting point for a busy Saturday morning. Finally, I spotted the dark blonde woman among the crowd of shorter Japanese teenagers, and we made our way to one of Shinjuku Southern Terrace’s coffee shops. Shinjuku is one of Tokyo’s bustling commercial centres, and, at this time of the day, it was full of young shoppers and middle-aged people dining at exclusive lunch gatherings.

Claire is French. I met her at a university-affiliated dance circle, where university students and early-career Japanese and foreign employees mingle, dance, go out and form friendships, and, sometimes, romantic relationships. Claire invited me to one of her house parties, an attempt to deepen her networks in her chosen country of residence – Japan. At the party, I met her French and Japanese friends, both young employees and students in their final years of university. Claire’s network reflected her personal development in Japan. A major in Japanese business management, Claire encountered Japanese communication and working culture through university exchange and an internship. Friends from these pre-full-time employment stays in Japan made up her network to date, but her initial inspiration was her brother, who had migrated to Tokyo ten years earlier. She jokingly remembered how ‘he wrote my name in katakana, and it was so cool that I really wanted to learn this language’. Claire’s parents’ accounts of life abroad before she was even born and the family’s extended travel sparked her desire to live abroad as an adult herself. After her decision to major in Japanese studies, Claire realised that her résumé did not fit the French labour market, where she had never worked. ‘Jobs are hard to find in France, [but] here I am exceptional as a foreigner. I have something more, though also something less. I bring diversity, so it is an advantage, compared to being in France.’