"What? You Don't Speak Japanese?"
That's usually the first thing people who care about me say when they find out I got a Japanese work visa in 2019 without speaking a single word of Japanese.
Yes — I've never even sat the JLPT N5, I only recognize some hiragana, and the one Japanese sentence I can say is "I'm sorry, I don't understand Japanese."
And yet, here I am, working as a dive instructor in Okinawa, Japan. Being a dive instructor is nothing extraordinary, and neither is my life. I'm absolutely not the best or most elite in this industry, and my story isn't the most remarkable one out there. But the road to becoming a dive instructor — and the daily life spent facing the ocean ever since — has been the blue and fantastical journey of my lifetime. It gave me every legitimate reason to pursue the dream of traveling the world.
Boat dive at Zanpa Cape, Okinawa
The story I want to share isn't about how to work in Japan without speaking Japanese. Rather, it's meant as a reference — perhaps for someone in a situation like mine, or someone as utterly lost about the future as I once was — offering a glimpse of a life that doesn't follow the standard script.
I'm a Pretty Smart Person — Who Is Absolutely, Terribly Lazy.
I attended one of the top three public girls' high schools in Taipei, but because I despised studying and had zero vision for my future, I didn't choose my university major based on interest. I just went with whatever would let me attend the same department as my best friend, and casually applied to a hospitality program at a private university in Taipei. Naturally, I got in.
That's roughly when my life started to "go sideways."
The department required an internship in the food & beverage or hotel industry. Seizing that opportunity, I — having never been to Green Island — did a casual Google search for "Green Island work-exchange," sent my résumé to the very first guesthouse that came up (Xia Ka Er Guesthouse on Green Island), and was accepted without a hitch.
During those one and a half months on Green Island, my days were simple: work, zone out, laugh, swim at the harbor. I began to fall in love with waking up to the ocean every morning. My knowledge of water sports had barely extended beyond snorkeling — and it was precisely there that I learned scuba diving was even a thing.
Everyday life on Green Island
Using Diving to Travel the World!
After graduating, I stayed on at the youth hostel where I'd been working, living the same humdrum existence as everyone else. Eventually, worn down by the soul-crushing routine of dealing with difficult guests every single day, I applied for an Australian working holiday visa. During my first winter in Australia, I planned a trip to Cairns with a friend — but she unexpectedly couldn't make it over from New Zealand, leaving me alone in Cairns for seven days. With our plans suddenly cancelled and my mood dampened, I spent my time aimlessly wandering around the hostel. It was precisely because I had nothing to do that I crossed paths with someone equally at loose ends — the owner of 沖潛, the dive shop in Okinawa where I now work.
Before heading to Australia, I had gotten my first Open Water Diver certification on Green Island. After passing, I logged about a dozen dives there, but I still had only a fuzzy understanding of diving. It all felt so exhausting — I figured one Open Water cert was probably enough for a lifetime. Then, during my second year in Australia, my boyfriend at the time and I went on holiday to Bali. To prepare for a year-end shark dive trip to Fiji, I signed him up for an Open Water course. Since I was already there, I thought, why not go ahead and get my Advanced Open Water too?
The Advanced course only took me two days — and that was the moment everything changed. I finally understood that diving didn't have to be exhausting. Getting my Open Water on Green Island, logging those first dozen tanks, had left me with one lasting impression of scuba diving: heavy gear, aching heels, a sore back after every dive. And I'd always assumed that being a dive instructor was a man's job — you have to haul scuba tanks and lug equipment, and how could you look after students when you can barely manage yourself?
Then in Bali, I met so many female instructors. Their confidence and magnetic presence genuinely inspired me. Shore diving in Bali was also so effortless — I'd always assumed every dive involved trudging across the kind of rocky, uneven terrain we had on Green Island just to reach the water. And during my deep diving specialty at Nusa Penida, watching five or six manta rays circle and glide above my head is an image I'll never forget.
Manta rays at Manta Bay
The ocean moved me deeply that time, in a way it never had before. That casual "might as well" thought planted the seed for "dive instructor" as an actual career path. I'd been spending every day wondering what to do when I returned to Taiwan, but suddenly I wasn't quite so lost anymore — it was as if I'd been walking through a pitch-dark forest, and the clouds had parted, letting moonlight show me the way. Later, the utterly breathtaking shark dive in Fiji sealed my resolve to become an instructor.
The sharks came out very blue — I didn't know how to use a camera back then
I had originally planned to return to Blue Season Bali — the dive shop in Bali where I'd gotten my Advanced cert — to complete my Divemaster internship (the first professional level in diving). But I got back in touch with the owner of 沖潛 and decided to do my internship in Okinawa instead, then head back to Bali the same year to sit my instructor exam. After that, I worked in the Similan Islands in Thailand and on the American island of Saipan, before eventually finding my way back to where my professional diving career began — Okinawa.
Safety stop surrounded by fish in the Similan Islands
A bait ball in Saipan
A close encounter with an oceanic whitetip shark in the Red Sea
Looking back over these past few years, I've realized that some of the moments that seemed the most offhand — the ones where I was simply chasing something romantic — were the very moments that determined the direction of my life.
I'm now approaching my third dive season in Okinawa, and my second year as a working dive instructor. I never imagined that someone who can't speak Japanese would have the chance to work in Japan. When I think about all those decisions that quietly redirected my future, it still feels wonderfully strange.
If I had listened to my mother and chosen accounting, or applied to a national university in central or southern Taiwan, I might never have had the chance to intern on Green Island, never have reshaped my outlook on life and the ocean, and never have gotten my dive certification. If I hadn't gone on a working holiday to Australia, I wouldn't have gone to Bali to get certified, or dived in Fiji and had the idea of becoming a dive instructor (and I certainly wouldn't have had the money to pay for instructor training either). And if my friend hadn't been unable to make it to Cairns, I would never have spent all day holed up in that hostel — and never would have met the owner of my current dive shop in Okinawa.
So today, I trust my instincts deeply, and I've learned not to regret the decisions I make. I still remember doubting myself during those three months of my Divemaster internship — exhausted, feeling like I wasn't cut out for it — because my physical condition was a real disadvantage:
I'm under 160 cm tall, weigh under 50 kg, and my grip strength is less than 20 kg (the average for adult women is 25–27 kg). To overcome these limitations, I forced myself to always carry one scuba tank in each hand at the same time (an aluminum tank weighs around 15 kg; a steel tank around 18 kg). On almost every day of my internship, unless I was sick, if everyone else did three dives, I did four; if they did four, I did five.
I chose to take my instructor exam in Bali because I wanted to challenge myself and break free from the comfort of a Chinese-speaking environment. Throughout that period, the pressure of living and studying entirely in English — day and night — along with the financial pressure of passing the instructor exam on the first attempt, wore on me constantly. On top of that, my beloved dog passed away during that time, and the grief hit me hard.
But I never once thought about giving up — simply because I refused to regret the choices I had made. In this day and age, if you want to live happily, there's no time left to spend regretting your life.
Hard work won't betray you. Once you've set out — just keep moving forward! Even if fulfilling one dream isn't the end of your journey, it's okay not to have your next steps all figured out yet. Who knows what turning point life might have waiting around the corner?
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