Nice to meet you. I’m Motchan, and I’ve been living in the US, Mexico, and Peru for over 10 years since I left Japan. As stated in my profile, I was originally from a children’s home in Tokyo. I lived in the home for many years and was bullied and abused. As a result of this rebellion, I started to engage in delinquent behavior, playing around with women as a minor, using violence against adults (in self-defense), drinking, smoking, wandering around at night, and running away, all with friends who were considered bad groups.
After that, she got married at a young age, got divorced, had her child taken away by child protection agencies, suffered from depression and poverty, and decided to go to the United States, prepared for criticism, in order to change herself. She studied at an American undergraduate school with the money she had saved, with no English skills. However, even in the United States, she used up almost all of her savings, dropped out of undergraduate school, became homeless, and faced the risk of having difficulty returning to Japan. With only $200 in her bank account, she was unable to return to Japan and took a gamble by going to Mexico.
With almost no money on hand, she decided to stay in Nezahualcoyotl, the most dangerous part of Mexico City known to all Mexico City residents, for six months. The surrounding area was dangerous, and she was chased by wild dogs every day and was almost kidnapped twice. During the day, there were security guards with machine guns around banks and malls, and at night, it was chaotic with not only the police but also the military patrolling. Despite preparing for death, she earned money for college tuition by working online and locally, and applied to transfer to prestigious state and private universities in the United States, and was accepted into five of the six applications she applied to.
Aiming to graduate from the state university he transferred to, he began balancing work and studies. He took a total of three leave of absences to save for tuition and concentrate on work. He worked in digital transformation consulting, IT, import sales, and privately setting up a Japanese language school. He then obtained permanent residency in Mexico, and traveled to Thailand and Peru for work. He was captivated by Peru’s charm and began living there. He began living in three countries, the United States, Mexico, and Peru, while working. He graduated from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities almost entirely on his own while balancing work and studies.
After graduating, he felt that work alone was not enough, so he decided to go to graduate school. To gauge his potential, he tried to get into a higher-ranking university than the one he graduated from. He applied to only three Ivy schools in the top American university group: Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell University. Perhaps this unusual experience worked, as he received acceptance letters from all of the graduate schools. His first choice was the University of Pennsylvania, the number one program in the nation, but he decided to go to Harvard Graduate School after listening to the opinions of those around him.
Widener Library
After entering graduate school, I was shocked to find that there were many students who were all talk and were student council presidents. I also thought that I would develop imposter syndrome because of the image of Harvard as an elite and excellent school, but there was not much difference between me and the students in the program I entered, and many of them were not that excellent. After that, I was disappointed with the program and thought about dropping out of graduate school, but with the support of my friends around me, I successfully graduated in May 2024. In the last semester, I found out what I wanted to do. That was to support educational access for people from child welfare institutions, foster parents, and other families, and to support social emotional learning (SEL) education. Not only in Japan, but in many countries including the United States, the rate of university enrollment and employment for these people is very low, and I am currently discussing with several friends what we can do to solve these issues.
Well, from now on, I would like to share with you through this blog the experiences I have had and how I have come this far despite being a socially vulnerable person, in a non-fiction format. Even those who grew up in child welfare institutions, are socially vulnerable, or have done bad things can start their lives over again. I hope that you can feel at least a little bit of hope in that way. I also want to talk about the problems in sIn child welfare institutions, are socially vulnerable, or have done bad things can start their lives over again. I hope that you can feel at least a little bit of hope in that way. I also want to talk about the problems in society as seen from my experience as a socially vulnerable person.
Lastly, let me say this…
Failed parents? Socially vulnerable? It doesn’t matter.
We are all members of society.
There may be inequalities.
If politicians and society don’t do anything, we need to speak out louder.
If we gather many of our voices together, we can make a social impact.
If we can make a social impact, society will change.
We have more unique backgrounds than the average family.
Let’s have more confidence.
Let’s have more confidence.
We only live once.
Since we don’t know when we’ll die, do what we like so we don’t have any regrets.
There’s no more pathetic life than dying with regrets.
Be aware of the risks.
What’s important in life is whether you have the courage to take a step forward.
もっちゃん
Comments