I thought that if I chased my dream, I could have everything.
I'm not in the university football team's first photograph.
And I'm not in its last photograph either.
I'm missing from the first one because I joined the team later than everyone else.
I didn't become a member as soon as I started university. I had to go through the university's open trials before joining.
That's why I wasn't in the group photograph taken when we first enrolled.
But then came four years.
We trained on the same pitch, ran together, shared the same frustrations, and laughed together.
Without question, these were the people I spent most of my university life with.
So, somewhere along the way, not being in that first photograph stopped mattering to me.
At the end, we'd all finish together.
Somehow, that was what I assumed.
But on graduation day, I wasn't in Japan.
I was in Brazil.
I was chasing my dream of becoming a professional footballer.
So I'm not in the graduation photographs either.
When I saw everyone's photos afterward, I felt a little strange.
Even friends who had quit the football team along the way were in them.
But I wasn't, despite having played alongside them for all four years.
Missing at the beginning, and missing at the end.
Looking only at those photographs,
I could almost find myself wondering,
“Was I really there?”
Of course, not being in a photograph doesn't erase those four years.
The running, the struggles, the laughter with my teammates—all of it is still there.
Even so, I felt lonely.
And looking back now, I feel that one photograph captures my challenge in Brazil remarkably well.
Choosing something
also creates something you haven't chosen.
Moving toward a dream
isn't simply moving forward.
It also means moving away from things you've always taken for granted.
Before I came to Brazil, I didn't really understand that.
I'd always thought
people who chased their dreams were admirable.
Going overseas to play football.
Trying to become a pro.
Throwing yourself into an unfamiliar world.
Put like that, it sounds impressive.
And when I was in Japan, I did imagine myself playing football in Brazil.
But in that imagined future,
there were no hours alone in my room.
No nights when I couldn't see my family.
No time spent watching my friends begin working life through social media.
No version of me lying sick alone in an unfamiliar country with a fever of nearly 39 degrees.
No version of me unable to understand the language or even fully follow the training session.
No version of me training every day while knowing I couldn't play in matches.
I could picture myself chasing my dream,
but I couldn't picture what I might lose in order to chase it.
After university, the friends around me began their working lives.
They started jobs, earned salaries, and built lives of their own.
They spent time with girlfriends and went out with friends.
Little by little, life as working adults began.
Meanwhile, I was in Brazil.
My income wasn't stable.
There was no guarantee I would become a pro.
I didn't even know where I'd be in six months.
I left university and came straight to Brazil.
I didn't choose the conventional route of finding a job as a new graduate.
Of course, it was my choice.
Nobody told me to go to Brazil.
And precisely because of that, I sometimes found it hard to admit I was struggling.
You chose this yourself.
You came because you wanted to play football.
The more I told myself that,
the more often I swallowed the words,
“This is hard.”
But choosing a path yourself doesn't mean it won't hurt.
Chasing a dream doesn't mean every day is full of hope.
One of the things I felt most strongly after coming to Brazil
was loneliness.
I couldn't see my family.
I couldn't see my friends.
The people I could have talked to straight away in Japan weren't nearby.
Because of the time difference, I couldn't always contact them when I wanted to either.
There were people around me.
I had teammates.
But
having people around and not being lonely weren't the same thing.
When you go abroad, you can meet new people.
You can see new places.
You can have new experiences.
All of that was true.
But at the same time,
I was made to realize just how much the things that had supported me had meant.
Having family.
Having friends.
Being understood in my own language.
Being able to go to a hospital when something was wrong.
Being able to eat familiar food.
I had never thought of any of that as special when I lived in Japan.
Only when it was gone
did I realize,
“So many things were holding me up.”
Then something else happened that taught me, in a different way, the weight of being overseas.
About three or four months after I came to Brazil,
for some reason, I dreamed about my dog, Lilo, back in Japan.
In the dream, Lilo was just the same as always.
When I went home, Lilo would be there to greet me as usual.
That's what I thought.
Even after I woke up, I couldn't get Lilo out of my mind.
Something was bothering me, so I turned to my mother.
“Is Lilo doing okay?”
I asked.
Then,
“Why are you suddenly asking?”
she replied.
The moment I heard those words,
a horrible tightness gripped my chest.
Then my mother told me.
Lilo had already died.
I think it had been about a week.
I myself had asked my family:
“If anything happens,
please don't tell me while I'm in Brazil.”
I wanted to focus on football.
My family had kept that promise.
But I had never imagined that moment actually arriving.
We had spent nearly 17 years together.
Whenever I came home, Lilo was there.
Lilo had always been part of those ordinary days I hardly thought about.
And now Lilo was gone.
I would never see Lilo again.
Never touch Lilo again.
Never call that name and have Lilo come over like always.
As soon as that sank in,
I couldn't keep my voice steady.
After I hung up, I cried alone.
No matter how much I cried, the tears wouldn't stop.
I tried to stay quiet, but I couldn't.
Sobs kept rising from deep in my throat.
“I wanted to see you one last time.”
“I wanted to touch you one last time.”
“I wanted to say thank you one last time.”
Those were the only thoughts that kept spilling out, again and again.
If I hadn't come to Brazil, maybe I could have seen Lilo at the end.
If I'd stayed in Japan, maybe I could have been there.
Every time I thought that, my chest hurt.
For a while, whatever I was doing, I thought about Lilo.
During training, back in my room, in unexpected moments, the memories returned.
I looked at photos and cried.
I watched videos and cried.
I wanted to hear Lilo's voice, so I watched them over and over.
But Lilo on the screen didn't move.
No matter how many times I called that name, there was no answer.
I simply couldn't accept that reality.
I had to play football.
I had to look ahead.
But however much I told myself that, my heart couldn't follow.
For a while, I really couldn't find any energy.
I felt low all the time.
Nothing I did was enjoyable.
I had come to Brazil to chase a dream,
but the pain was so great that, for a moment, even that dream stopped mattering.
That was the first time
I understood, with painful clarity, that going far away to pursue a dream
means the lives of those you love keep moving forward in a place where you aren't there.
And
while I'm chasing my dream,
time with my family and loved ones in Japan is passing just the same.
I can't spend all of it with them.
No matter how much they mean to me,
as long as we're apart, there will be moments I can't be there for.
Not seeing Lilo at the end
remains a very deep regret for me, even now.
But at the same time,
it doesn't erase the nearly 17 years we had together.
The days we shared.
The greetings when I came home.
The way Lilo was always there in everyday life.
All of that is still inside me.
The grief of losing Lilo isn't something that simply disappears.
Even now, remembering hurts.
Still, it was because I had that time with Lilo
that I learned the time we have together is not forever.
The time in which you think,
“I'll see them when I go home again,”
can suddenly end.
So now,
I try not to take for granted
the time I can spend with the people I care about.
There are so many things to gain by going overseas.
But there are also things that happen while you're away.
You can't be there for all of them.
This was one of the things I wish I'd thought about more before leaving.
Chasing a dream doesn't mean giving something up.
But
choosing one thing can mean missing the chance to be present for another.
I learned that reality through saying goodbye to Lilo.
About a week after arriving in Brazil,
I also developed a high fever of 40 degrees.
I threw up again and again in the bathroom.
Was it the time difference?
The food?
The water?
Exhaustion from training?
I didn't know what was causing it.
I'd only been in Brazil a week.
Naturally, I barely had any close friends.
I didn't really know where the hospital was.
I had medicine I'd brought from Japan.
But
even the question,
“Is it okay to take this for these symptoms?”
made me anxious.
In Japan,
it might have been enough to say,
“I've got a fever.”
But overseas, I had to make every one of those judgments myself.
In the end, I spent the whole weekend in bed alone.
That was when
I realized that being good at football alone couldn't get you through life abroad.
The ability to live in an unfamiliar environment.
The ability to think for yourself when something happens.
The ability to ask for help.
And the ability to keep from panicking when you're anxious.
An overseas challenge required more than football skills.
In fact, I was tested off the pitch far more often than I'd imagined.
Of course, there were plenty of differences on the pitch too.
First, the language.
Little by little, you learn to handle simple conversations.
But in football, that's not enough.
“I wanted you to play the ball here a little earlier.”
“This is what I was trying to do with that run.”
“This was the decision behind that last play.”
Things I could explain easily in Japanese wouldn't come across properly.
Sometimes I thought I'd communicated something, but it was understood in a different way.
I couldn't fully understand the coach's explanations.
I didn't understand the drills.
I watched everyone else,
thought, “This is probably what we're doing,”
and acted on that guess.
In Japan, understanding the language didn't take any energy.
But in Brazil,
before I could even play football, understanding was a battle of its own.
The pitches were different too.
Even natural grass could be very uneven in places.
The ball wouldn't roll the way I expected.
It would bounce suddenly.
Even the feel of the ball seemed different from Japan.
Sometimes I couldn't simply rely on the instincts I'd built up until then.
That was a major lesson for me.
Going overseas
also means learning what works there, rather than bringing your own idea of what is right.
This is how it was in Japan.
This is how it was at university.
This is how I've always done it.
Of course, your previous experience matters.
But if you cling to it, you can't adapt.
When the environment changes, you have to change too.
I think that applies beyond football, in working life as well.
And I had another big problem.
I couldn't play in matches.
At that time, I had come to Brazil with tourist status.
Although I could play in practice matches, playing as a registered player in official professional matches involved the necessary procedures and questions of residency and work authorization.
So even though I trained every day,
I couldn't play in the official matches that training was meant to lead to.
It was harder than I'd imagined.
For a footballer,
playing in matches is one of the main goals.
You train so you can play.
You build your body so you can play.
You compete so you can play.
But I
trained while knowing,
“As things stand, I can't play.”
Even so, I couldn't slack off.
Someone was watching that day's training.
They might rate me.
A chance might come.
So I worked hard.
But I didn't know whether that chance would actually arrive.
That was harder than failing to get results.
Continuing to work when I couldn't even reach the place where results could be produced.
Hard work doesn't bring immediate results.
I thought I'd understood that back in Japan.
But in Brazil, for the first time,
I learned what it meant to work hard
without even a guarantee that an opportunity to show results would come.
Would I keep going anyway?
Would I do it even if nobody was watching?
Could I choose this path even without a guaranteed outcome?
I asked myself again and again.
About five months after I came to Brazil, the possibility of a professional contract came up.
It was something I'd wanted for so long.
“A professional contract.”
For someone who had played football since childhood, those words carried something special.
But when that possibility was actually in front of me,
I couldn't immediately say yes.
The salary certainly wasn't high.
There were living costs.
The necessary paperwork cost money too.
The club wasn't in a position to cover everything.
Even if I became a pro,
after living expenses, there might be almost nothing left.
Only then
did I learn that becoming a professional
and making a living as a professional
weren't the same thing.
As a child,
I thought signing a professional contract was the finish line.
But in reality,
life continues the day after you sign.
There's rent.
There's food.
There are visas and procedures.
There's the length of the contract.
There's your career beyond it.
Could I decide based only on the dream?
Could I give up based only on practical reality?
I struggled enormously with that decision.
Around that time, through another connection,
an opportunity also came up to try something new in Rio.
Someone I'd barely met
said to me,
“Why don't you come here and try to become a pro?”
That was frightening too.
Should I stay where I was?
Or trust someone I didn't know and move somewhere new?
Nobody could tell me which choice was right.
Around then,
I gradually stopped trying to find the correct choice.
Perhaps in life,
very few paths are obviously right before you choose them.
After you've chosen,
all you can do is work to bring that choice closer to being the right one.
I've felt that again and again since coming abroad.
And just as I thought I was beginning to settle in,
I started saying goodbye more often to teammates I'd grown close to.
Players who had been kind to me when I first arrived in Brazil.
They'd spoken to me when I couldn't understand the language.
They'd helped me.
They'd laughed with me.
A place that had begun full of strangers
was gradually becoming somewhere I belonged.
But as two months and then three months passed,
those friends began disappearing, one by one.
Some transferred. Some were released.
And new players arrived.
Just when we finally became close, we had to part.
Then I had to build relationships from scratch again.
That repeated over and over.
Maybe it's normal in the football world.
But for me, it wasn't easy.
Especially overseas,
the people around you mean more than you might imagine.
Your family isn't nearby.
Your old friends aren't there.
The friendships you make in that situation
become more than simple relationships between teammates.
That's why the goodbyes hit so hard.
But I think this, too,
is a reality you can't avoid as you get closer to professional football.
The team you had yesterday
won't necessarily be the team you have tomorrow.
So,
instead of thinking,
“We'll have another chance someday,”
I try to value the time we have together now.
That was another lesson Brazil taught me.
Reading this far,
some people might be thinking,
“Is trying to make it overseas really that hard?”
Especially for young players who want to play abroad, and for their parents,
I imagine much of this may have been worrying.
But
I'm not saying you shouldn't try going overseas.
Quite the opposite.
If you want to try, I hope you do.
It's just that
I don't want to send you off with nothing more than,
“Going abroad will help you grow.”
Simply going overseas won't automatically make you stronger.
You won't suddenly speak English or Portuguese.
You won't suddenly become better at football.
You won't become mentally stronger the moment you arrive.
I think being overseas
is less a place that makes you grow
and more a place that repeatedly puts you in situations where you have to grow to get through them.
If you don't understand the language, you have to ask questions yourself.
If you get sick, you have to work out what to do.
If your friends leave, you have to build new relationships.
If you can't play in matches, you have to find your own reason to keep training.
If you don't know what the future holds, you have to make your own decisions.
It isn't an environment where someone gives you the answer every time.
That's why it was hard.
But
that's also why I started thinking about myself more than I had in Japan.
To young people who are about to take on a challenge overseas, I want to say this.
Before you leave,
you don't have to put too much pressure on yourself
by saying, “I absolutely have to succeed.”
Now that I'm going abroad, I have to get results.
My parents are paying, so I have to succeed.
Everyone is supporting me, so I can't show any weakness.
I don't think you need to think that way.
When you take on a challenge, you'll have doubts.
You'll feel lonely.
You'll want to run away.
You'll lose confidence.
There may even be days
when you want to go back to Japan.
That doesn't prove you aren't suited to taking on a challenge.
I've had doubts many times too.
I think what matters
isn't never struggling.
It's being able, when you do struggle,
to ask yourself,
“What am I going to do now?”
Will you keep going?
Change your environment?
Talk to someone?
Take a break?
Go home?
Any of those answers is okay.
Just
think it through and choose for yourself,
rather than accepting an answer decided by everyone else.
Perhaps what I wanted to develop by going overseas,
even more than football skills,
was that ability.
And there's something I want to tell parents whose children are considering going overseas too.
When you send them abroad,
please think together about daily life,
not only the standard of football or how strong the team is.
What happens if they get sick?
Is there someone they can rely on when they're in trouble?
What will they do when they can't understand the language?
What are the contractual arrangements?
What is their immigration status?
How much money will they need?
Who can they speak to if they're struggling emotionally?
Talking about these things
might sound as though you aren't supporting their dream.
But I think it's the opposite.
Precisely because you want to give them a real chance,
you need to talk about reality.
Rather than saying,
“Determination will get you through,”
prepare for what to do when things go wrong.
I think that's part of an overseas challenge too.
Finally
Before I came to Brazil,
I thought chasing a dream would give me something big.
Maybe I could become a pro.
Maybe I'd become better at football.
Maybe my life would change.
Of course, I still believe that.
That's why I came this far.
But now I know something else too.
Choosing a dream
doesn't mean getting only what you want without losing anything.
Time with friends.
Time with family.
Time with those you love.
A stable path.
A familiar environment.
A language that makes you feel safe.
Sometimes you have to step away from those things.
That's why taking on a challenge is frightening.
But
being frightened doesn't make it worthless.
Being lonely doesn't mean you've failed.
Having doubts doesn't mean you lack commitment.
I used to think
a committed person
was someone who never wavered after deciding.
I think differently now.
Someone who can choose again for themselves every time they waver.
Perhaps that's what a committed person is.
If there's anyone right now
wondering whether to take on a challenge,
I won't casually tell them, “You absolutely should.”
Taking a chance can mean losing something.
There is loneliness you wouldn't have felt if you hadn't gone,
and pain you could have avoided knowing.
And chasing a dream
doesn't guarantee that it will come true.
Precisely because of that,
I don't think you have to decide only by asking,
“Which path will keep me from failing?”
“Which of these lives do I want to try living?”
That's what I'd like you to consider.
I chose the life that brought me to Brazil.
Was that choice a success or a failure?
I don't have an answer yet.
It's still possible that things won't turn out the way I'd imagined.
Even so,
there are things I wouldn't have learned if I hadn't come.
The value of other people, which I only understood after becoming lonely.
The difficulty of communicating, which I only learned when my language stopped being understood.
The question I first asked when I couldn't play in matches:
“Can I keep working when I can't see the results ahead?”
The fear of deciding my own life,
which I only understood when I was forced to make choices.
And,
only after losing someone precious,
the realization that time together is never something to take for granted.
Only after leaving behind what I'd thought was ordinary
did I discover what really mattered to me.
What I've gained in Brazil
can't yet be expressed
only in simple phrases
like “I became a pro” or “I succeeded.”
Instead,
I think there are things I can write precisely because the answer isn't here yet.
A challenge
isn't something you begin once you stop being afraid.
It isn't something you begin once you stop having doubts.
You don't have to resolve to throw everything away
and become a strong person before you start.
Even when you're scared.
Even when you're unsure.
Even when you're lonely.
Even when you've lost something precious and find yourself unable to move.
You think as best you can with who you are at that moment,
and choose another step.
Then, even after choosing, you allow yourself to think it through again and again.
For me,
chasing a dream
has meant walking that path without answers,
on my own two feet.
Even if, in the future,
I don't reach the place I hoped to reach,
I won't think this challenge was meaningless.
Because
it's not only whether my dream came true.
It's also what I saw, what I felt, what I lost, and what I chose along the way.
I believe
those things will remain part of my life too.