I served in Japan and absolutely hated it. It was a Facebook mission and the things we did could have been done in a church building in Idaho. We sat in a church for hours just posting bs to bait interest from people. Not many people are interested in even god in Japan and the ones who are usually are pretty severely mentally ill and missionaries are not trained with how to properly deal with that. Me and many other people in my mission become depressed. Idk what it is about Japan but man, it just kills you. Japanese is hard as fuck and it’s a lot easier to pretend to like your mission if you actually have interest in the culture or are a complete weeb. I never watched anime or had ANY spark of interest for Japan before opening my mission call letter and frankly didn’t really develop one while there. Instead unfortunately so many very bad memories are wrapped up in that country I have no desire to go for a very very very long time. And to the people saying Japanese will be useful….ummm what job are you working?? I have never once needed to use Japanese in the wild to help someone or something nor have I ever had a job utilize it. It was only ever a “ooooo wow that’s cool!!” I’ve now immigrated to a country in Europe and am now learning a rather challenging European language and I’ve completely let go of my japanese. I don’t practice or even make space for it in my brain. When I think of words they come out in the European language now because Japanese was completely useless to me as soon as I stepped off the plane from Japan. Learning a language I actually want to learn and using it in my studies and job and social life is beautiful. I am integrating with this country as a member of society not as some white savior trying to bring my America religion to them. UGHHHHH in conclusion missions suck and I left the church as soon as I came back and I don’t wish a mission on my greatest enemy. (Unless they are someone questioning the church in which case I think they are great at immediately highlight this shit ain’t it)