Goodbye Japan - The High Price of Living

Let me just make it clear that I love Japan, and I love Tokyo. This city's been so good to me, and over the years I've gotten to know it so well. I've made lasting friendships and been on incredible adventures, but I've known for a while now that I wouldn't be here forever. There are quite a few reasons for that, and I'd say most of them are career-related.
 Japan's safety and general quality of all-around services are without parallel. Japanese people are unobtrusive, polite, and masters at avoiding conflict whenever possible. And Tokyo is an incredible city where the possibility of getting bored is nonexistent - it's the ideal city for a young adult.
 But at the same time, Tokyo, and Japan, demand a high price in return: a price which is reflected by back-breaking working hours, and a society which privileges only those who give to it the entirety of their lives. It's no exaggeration to say that Japanese people work their lives away to
provide for a family in which they are unseen. The average Japanese working man is the king amongst modern-day hunter-gatherers, in the sense that making money for the family is the sole sink in which all their time goes. They work uncompensated overtime hours, are frowned upon for using paid vacations unless absolutely incapacitated. This is the standard condition of the working man, who must provide for a wife who most likely will stay at home after childbirth, not because of her own preferences, but because of a system that disinherits women of equal opportunities in the workplace. So, too, must money be provided for the future of a child whose career depends on being able to enter and graduate from a decent university - one which costs a fortune which can only be provided by the hard-working head of the household.
 This is the reality of day-to-day life in Japan - what I like to call the "High Price of Living."

There are those, of course, who live outside of the system. Very few of the friends I've made here are part of it, in truth. There are those who choose to work by their own means, and provide for themselves instead of under the umbrella of a company - which, in itself, is fine too. But I personally can't get myself to look away from the road ahead of me. I don't want to find myself down the road, unable to put my future children through college, and forcing them to live a life outside of the norms established by Japanese society. If they make the choice to live that way, that's entirely fine and up to them.
But what's important is that they have that choice. It's downright terrifying for me to picture a scenario in which I'm raising kids who go grow up alongside friends they make, making it through elementary, middle, and high school, and then suddenly reaching a roadblock and being unable to continue their education with said friends - and all because I'm unable to provide. So that's out of the question.

 Where I stand now, I still have a choice, though. Being a Canadian national is a wildcard. I can return to Quebec province and start a family there. I can pursue my own education easily. Hell, with the current tuition fees, I could put a kid through school with the money I have saved up now. And I'll never work a single uncompensated hour. I can work a 9 to 5 job and come home to a family. I can take holidays and come back to smiling workmates.
 But I have to get started now.
 I love Tokyo. I profoundly, from the deepest part of my heart, think that this is the best city in the world. But I have to go, and it breaks my heart to say that these carefree times are coming to an end, and I must head forward into real adulthood.
 So on August 31st, it's good bye, Tokyo.