Our Adventurers Abroad feature this month is a chapter from my new book, “Adventurers Abroad: The New American Expat Generation.”

“I felt like I had been looking for a lot of things in the States that I just could not find. Everyone seemed to be on a different wavelength. When I came to Japan, I felt different. I got more confident in myself and felt great about things. I opened up to Japan and got a lot in return.”

Twenty-seven-year-old Matthew Hatfield fell in love with Japanese animation when he was a kid living in Elk Grove, California, just a little south of Sacramento. He thought Japanese technology, video games and culture were very cool. So cool that he decided to study the Japanese language and culture in high school, somehow knowing that one day he would live there.

He spent most of his life in Elk Grove, primarily with his mother, an executive with California’s State Parks and Recreation Department. His parents divorced when he was very young and his father, an executive recruiter, moved away and eventually remarried.

Growing up in Elk Grove, Matthew and his younger sister spent much of their leisure time watching movies, which later would prove beneficial to both. His sister, Caitlin, would become a budding actress and Matthew would discover a latent talent all good teachers must have: acting. He would put it to good use Japan.

After high school graduation, Matthew enrolled at the University of California, Davis, just over thirty miles away from his hometown.

“I started out as a philosophy major but I soon discovered that Davis was a really tough school. To make it through with decent grades, I decided to change my major to something I was good at and liked. Math, drafting and architectural stuff were things I liked and could do well in, so I switched to a visual communications major and graduated in 2010 with a bachelor’s degree.”

Like so many other Millennials, Matthew graduated into a very difficult job market, especially in California where unemployment was at an all-time high. Not able to find a good full-time job, he settled for a series of low-level jobs that would pay his rent and buy him time until the job market recovered.