{"id":76318,"date":"2012-04-30T09:00:19","date_gmt":"2012-04-30T00:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fukuoka-now.com\/?p=20961"},"modified":"2016-04-01T01:40:56","modified_gmt":"2016-03-31T16:40:56","slug":"poster-boy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/en\/poster-boy\/","title":{"rendered":"Snapshot! – Classifieds’ Poster Boy"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Shiomi, long-time Yame, Fukuoka resident from LA, found a job, over 30 friends and a wife all on the Fukuoka Now Classifieds<\/a>! We had a chat with John before he moved back to the USA with his new bride Misako. Read how one man found it all online!<\/p>\n

Tell us abit about yourself. How did you end up in Fukuoka? How long have you been here?
\n<\/strong>I\u2019ve been in Japan almost 15 years- around 14 years 8 months. I originally came over on the JET program as an ALT. I was originally placed in Yame-city, about an hour south of Fukuoka. I was teaching at Junior High Schools for 3 years and I had a great time there. The Japanese people were wonderful, the countryside was great. After that I started my own English school in Yame, which I ran for over 10 years. And I got married last November- I found my wife through the Fukuoka Now Classifieds.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes! This is what we\u2019re interested in! You posted recently on the FN classifieds, thanking the service for helping you to find a job, friends and a wife! So why don\u2019t you tell us your story…<\/strong>
\nI do have a story to tell… it\u2019s personal but I don\u2019t mind…
\nSo, I guess you can look at it in terms of personal growth. I studied psych at UCLA. I came to Japan and it was hard for me in the beginning. I knew some Japanese but I wasn\u2019t that confident at speaking, so I was kinda lonely. I was the only ALT in my town. I made some Japanese friends, I played basketball and did other activities, but I was pretty unhappy. Although I enjoyed the ALT job, it was hard in the beginning<\/p>\n

After a year and a half or so I met a Japanese woman and I got married to her. Honestly, I didn\u2019t have much experience with relationships up until then- I was pretty shy and quiet for most of my life. It was my first real long-term relationship. About a year later my daughter was born- she\u2019s 11 now. It was a really happy time for me: I was married, I had a successful English school, I had a baby girl. But things just didn’t work out after a while. I guess there was a cultural clash, a personality clash, whatever. The relationship didn’t work out, and eventually we got divorced. So that was obviously a very hard time for me. It was probably the hardest time of my life- especially not being able to see my daughter regularly.<\/p>\n

I had a few relationships after the divorce- one of which lasted four years. It was good, it was nice, but something was missing. After that I got together with another woman. We were together for two years, and there was a deeper connection. But she was religious, and I\u2019m not religious, so there was a bit of a conflict there. That ended up breaking up too.<\/p>\n

So I found myself divorced, and after a few failed relationships I was starting over again. I was 38 (now I\u2019m 40) and I felt like \u201cNot this again. What am I going to do?\u201d. Especially living in Yame- a small town of only 40,000 people- there weren\u2019t many choices for me there. So I shifted my focus to meeting people in the city.<\/p>\n

At that point I\u2019m not sure exactly how I found the Fukuoka Now website. I knew about the magazine, but hadn\u2019t seen the website before. I found the Classifieds section and placed a few ads, maybe three or four. In the beginning I was just looking for friends, looking for people interested in the things I\u2019m interested in. I came out to the city to meet people who replied to the ads, which was very interesting. I met women, but I also met men, Japanese people, foreigners living in the city and so on. It was interesting. I grew to enjoy meeting new people and coming to the city. It was rather expensive coming up so often but I was at the point where I just decided– \u201cI\u2019m gonna meet the right person. I\u2019m gonna meet her, get married and have a family.\u201d That was the most important thing to me. And I found my personality changed for a bit, I became more sociable, more open. I would go to every single social event, every party, every BBQ and Fukuoka Now events- I must have been coming to the city five times a week for a good five to six months at least. I also noticed that a lot of women are looking for friends or boyfriends on the Fukuoka Now Classifieds, so I started replying to those ads too. I must have met 10-15 different women, but they weren\u2019t my type at all. I was about to give up. But I told myself \u201cIt\u2019s something. Its better than doing nothing.\u201d So I kept answering the ads and meeting people.<\/p>\n

I was about to give up when I met up with Misako- who is now my wife. We began mailing each other and I got a really good feeling from her because she was very prompt in her reply, very considerate and answered all my questions. Just from the mail correspondence I thought \u201cThis is a really good person\u201d. She was someone I wanted to meet.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After a week of mailing we met at Starbucks in Tenjin. She was a fun person to be with! After that we had a few more dates. Then it was my 39th birthday, so I invited her to come with me to Costco. Later that night was my birthday party and I invited all the people I had met over the 6-7 month period of using Fukuoka Now Classifieds. All the connections, all the parties, all the BBQs I had been to. About 30 people came out, which really shocked me! I was surprised that I had met that many people in such a short amount of time. It was a great birthday party and really memorable. That night Misako and I decided to get together.<\/p>\n

So it happened rather quickly, after only 3 dates. We just had a great connection that I\u2019d never felt before. If there\u2019s such a thing as soul-mates, she\u2019s that for me. We knew we wanted to get married in 2 months. It was really natural. So we decided to write out a one year plan, month by month from that time until now. And we have managed to do every single one of the steps.<\/p>\n

At that time I was still running my English school but it had shrunk considerably, so we started to talk about moving to America. We needed some money, and I decided I needed to find a job… so of course, I turned to the Fukuoka Now Classifieds again! I went to some interviews and at one of them I heard about another private teaching company. So I went to Kitakyushu for the interview, and got the job. Only last month I finished my one year contract with the company. Over the past year I\u2019ve managed to save most of the money we need to go to America.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s amazing how much my life changed in such a short period of time. And when I think about it, I don\u2019t think anything would have been possible without the Fukuoka Now Classifieds! Through the Classifieds I met Misako, found a job (indirectly), sold a lot of things and made many friends. I really felt compelled to write a message to Fukuoka Now thanking the Classifieds section for all it has allowed me to do.<\/p>\n

Why do you think the Classifieds system worked for you?<\/strong>
\nBecause it\u2019s limited to people in Fukuoka- that\u2019s why it\u2019s really important and powerful. Facebook is great, but it\u2019s so wide and open. To be able to use a system that\u2019s exclusively for people in Fukuoka means you are able to find friends nearby, relationships nearby, buy and sell things nearby..and so on…<\/p>\n

Do you have any advice to Classifieds users looking for relationships?<\/strong>
\nFrom a personal growth standpoint, it\u2019s about using the process to improve yourself. It\u2019s not just about getting a girlfriend or boyfriend- thats a stressful frame of mind to put yourself in. You should just enjoy meeting people and being social. Don\u2019t even limit it to women if you\u2019re a guy, or men if you\u2019re a girl- that way you\u2019ll increase your social network and naturally meet people, and then it happens. You can\u2019t force it- but you have to take consistent action. So the Fukuoka Now Classifieds is one way to make consistent action. Have a look at all sorts of advertisements- for parties and social events- so that you can open up more and not stick to your own social group. Meeting all kinds of people is important.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Shiomi, long-time Yame, Fukuoka resident from LA, found a job, over 30 friends and a wife all on the Fukuoka Now Classifieds! We had a chat with John before he moved back to the USA with his new bride Misako. Read how one man found it all online! Tell us abit about yourself. How […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6391,"featured_media":20965,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_locale":"en_US","_original_post":"20961","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4914],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-others","location-fukuoka-city","en-US"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/johnmisako-e1335431206570.jpg?fit=640%2C480&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6391"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76318"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85353,"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76318\/revisions\/85353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}