Shadowing Practice: I Left The U.S. For Japan — Here's How Much It Costs - Learn English Speaking with Video
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119 sentences
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1
When I landed in Tokyo for the first time, something about it felt right.
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What surprised me the most about the cost of living in Japan is being able to afford everything on my own.
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What's a Japanese 7-Eleven without a giant variety of cup ramen?
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That's like 80 cents.
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I mean, I'm living alone.
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Like, I've never been able to live alone.
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That was my dream.
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Welcome to my Japanese apartment.
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Hello.
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There's a lot of space out here.
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I just don't really know what to do with it.
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It's too hot to go outside.
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No. I'm Ashley Peters.
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I'm 23 years old, and I moved to Tokyo, Japan in January, 2025.
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Shibuya.
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Currently, I live in Kanagawa.
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My city is Nakahara.
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From Shibuya, it's about a 15-minute train ride.
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So it's really close to the center of Tokyo.
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I grew up in Irvine, California, in Southern California.
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Until high school, I never really had interest in travel at all, actually.
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I thought that I wanted to stay in America my entire life.
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Going abroad didn't even occur to me until after I graduated college, and I found that I could become an English teacher in Japan.
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I saw a TikTok, I looked up teaching English in Japan, and then I applied to the first one that I saw.
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And that same weekend I interviewed, and then a week after, I got the job.
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My mom actually helped me move to Japan.
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She said she wants to go home, we just got here.
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I was working as an English teacher from February to August.
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I was making 277,000 yen a month.
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The hours were a little difficult, and then I quit.
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Now I'm doing social media content for a language app.
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I'm also working as a digital marketing assistant as a freelancer.
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So right now we're in Shibuya, and we're on top of this building called the Yashira Park.
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And my favorite Starbucks is here.
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Ta-da!
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For the social media content with the language app, I make $175 a week, so $700 a month.
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For the digital marketing assistant, I make $25 an hour.
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It ranges from 10 hours to 20 hours a week.
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In California, I was living in a one bedroom apartment with my boyfriend
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and I believe our rent was close to $2,800 split between the two of us.
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But in Japan, I pay 74,460 yen a month.
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Welcome to my Japanese apartment.
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There's no stove, but that's okay.
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I have an electric stove right.
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Here in Japan, you need to separate your trash.
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So I bought this thing from Amazon to separate all of my trash.
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Very convenient.
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I can only take cardboard boxes out on Saturdays, and it's Thursday.
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So these boxes will be in my apartment for two more days, and I can't do anything about it.
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Bathroom area.
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Their bathrooms always include a bath because it is very prominent in Japanese culture to take a hot bath every single night.
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Next is my separate toilet from the sink.
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Laundry machine right here.
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I installed a pole to hang dry since it's really uncommon for Japanese apartments to have dryers.
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Next, coming through my sliding doors is the living area.
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If you follow me to the balcony.
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Something that is different in Japan I'm not used to.
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Metal panels for blocking out sunlight since Japanese summers are extremely hot.
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And then my favorite part of the apartment, the reason that I bought it, was because of the tatami room.
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Usually these rooms are used for tea ceremonies, but I wanted to feel like I was living the Japanese anime life, so I put my bed in here.
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For electricity, it depends on the season.
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In the winter, I was paying like 1,500 yen, but now it's closer to 5,000 yen.
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For gas, I pay 1,200 yen a month.
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For Wi-Fi, I pay around 5,910 yen a month.
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In California, I budget tracked like crazy.
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I literally wrote down every single expense.
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I would limit how often I eat out.
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Sometimes I avoid, I didn't like, I'm not gonna say, I just like don't eat because I didn't want to pay.
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But here, if I'm hungry, like I just eat.
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Salmon, avocado, onions, mayo.
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Limited area special.
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Salty pork ribs and tuna.
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Another thing that I really like about living in Japan is the convenience store culture.
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They have packaged chicken and produce.
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Now we're at one of the most popular convenience stores in Japan, which is none other than 7-Eleven.
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What's a Japanese 7-Eleven without a giant variety of cup ramen?
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Most of these sandwiches range from $2.50 and anywhere to $4.10.
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You can really make an entire meal just off of convenience store foods.
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Okay, here's everything that we got from 7-Eleven.
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So, first things first, onigiri,
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protein shake, chocolate, bread, piccati sweat to stay hydrated with electrolytes.
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And I got all of this for $5.95.
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Pretty good haul if I do say so myself.
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I would say it's really safe in Japan.
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When I was working late nights, I would go to the gym after I got home from work.
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So there's multiple nights that I would get home around 1 a.m.
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Especially as a woman, I would never do that back home in California.
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But it's a really safe area where I live.
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One of the biggest challenges moving here is definitely the language barrier and also adjusting to the difference in bureaucracy.
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And because I don't speak Japanese and because they're using really specific Japanese words, it makes it really difficult to communicate situations, especially since I left my job.
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There's also procedures for that.
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They don't like to leave the mail outside your door if you're not home, but because I don't speak Japanese, it's difficult.
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There's a lot of procedures for getting a bank account in Japan.
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Thankfully, my company settled that for me, but there's been already multiple times where like I'll type in my pin code wrong two times
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and then unless I go to the bank in person
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and I ask them to fix it I just can't use my card.
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I'm currently in that situation I haven't been able to pull out cash for like two months
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because I just don't want to go to the bank because I'm scared.
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Doctors appointments too.
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There was a time that I needed to schedule an online phone call with a doctor
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but that didn't go well because we couldn't understand each other so I just didn't get the medicine.
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Just a lot of there's actually a lot.
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Maybe some differences between here and the United States.
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Bullet points.
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I rely on AI a lot actually to help me navigate through the language barrier in situations like this
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and making friends and asking them for help.
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So there has been times where I've had my Japanese friends like call my phone carrier or call my bank for me.
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I don't know, I think I just like living here enough to deal with it.
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Also because it kind of motivates me to learn the language more.
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When I was working full-time, I never had the time to do that.
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And now that I have flexible jobs, I can study the language more.
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My social life here is definitely less than when I was in America, just because it is a little harder to make friends.
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You have to really go out of your way.
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And I'm extroverted, so it's okay,
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but it gets tiring here because I can afford my rent and I can afford living by myself.
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It's a lot easier to pursue things that I'm interested in, like studying the language and doing my own content, when I'm not constantly worried about, okay, how am I going to pay rent next month?
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Now that I'm here, I'm just trying to appreciate every single day that I'm here, because unless you're a permanent resident, you kind of have to keep renewing your visa.
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And I think in the long term, I don't want to keep dealing with those bureaucratic processes, especially since I mentioned that it's really difficult to do if you don't speak the language.
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That's why I just want to enjoy every single day while I'm here.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “I Left The U.S. For Japan — Here's How Much It Costs”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: Japanese, Japan, language, month, yen. This video has 119 sentences and 1368 words to shadow. The speech runs for 9:43. The speaker talks at a steady 141 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. Only 80% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| convenience noun | /kənˈvinjəns/ | The quality of being convenient. |
| ramen noun | /ˈɹɑːmən/ | Soup noodles of wheat, with various ingredients (Japanese-Chinese style). |
| stove noun | /stoʊv/ | A heater, a closed apparatus to burn fuel for the warming of a room. |
| barrier noun | /ˈbæɹi.ə/ | A structure that bars passage. |
| avocado noun | /ˌɑvəˈkɑdoʊ/ | The large, usually yellowish-green or black, savory fruit of the avocado tree. |
| bureaucratic adjective | /ˌbjʊəɹəˈkɹætɪk/ | Of or pertaining to bureaucracy or the actions of bureaucrats. |
| electrolyte noun | /ɪˈlɛk.tɹəˌlaɪt/ | A substance that, in solution or when molten, ionizes and conducts electricity. |
| extroverted adjective | /ˈɛkstɹəˌvəɹtɪd/ | Turned or thrust outwards, especially |
| freelancer noun | /ˈfɹiˌlæn.səɹ/ | Someone who freelances. |
| hydrate noun | /haɪˈdɹeɪt/ | A solid compound containing or linked to water molecules. |
| onigiri noun | /ˌoʊ.nɪˈɡɪɹ.i/ | A Japanese food made by putting ingredients into white rice, wrapping the outside with laver, and shaping it into a triangle. |
| tatami noun | /təˈtɑːmi/ | Straw matting, in a standard size, used as a floor covering in Japanese houses. |
| dryer noun | /ˈdɹaɪɚ/ | One who, or that which, dries; any device or facility employed to remove water or humidity, e.g. a desiccative |
| bureaucracy noun | /bjʊˈɹɑ.kɹə.si/ | Government by bureaus or their administrators or officers. |
| rib noun | /ɹɪb/ | Any of a series of long curved bones occurring in 12 pairs in humans and other animals and extending from the spine to or toward the sternum. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| come through verb | To come into a room or other space through a door or passageway. | |
| look up verb | /ˌlʊk ˈʌp/ | To have better prospects. |
| pull out verb | To withdraw; especially of military forces; to retreat. | |
| write down verb | To produce or set (something) down in writing; to record something. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 45 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, didn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- Long words — get the stress right: avocado /ˌɑvəˈkɑdoʊ/, bureaucratic /ˌbjʊəɹəˈkɹætɪk/, electrolyte /ɪˈlɛk.tɹəˌlaɪt/, extroverted /ˈɛkstɹəˌvəɹtɪd/, onigiri /ˌoʊ.nɪˈɡɪɹ.i/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like convenience, ramen, stove.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.