Giggling, Ms Nagarani Boppani shared that her Japanese is now better than her English.
"My Japanese friends tell me my Japanese is 'pera pera' (fluent)," she said.
The 31-year-old, who is from India's southern state of Telangana with Telugu as her native language, then switches to a lilting stream of Japanese, with barely a trace of an Indian accent.
In the past five years, she has worked in Osaka and then Tokyo.
Her current responsibilities include assisting the elderly with walking, medication and bathing in a care home facility.
"I had work experience, but I didn't have experience with Japanese people and culture. In the process of learning Japanese, I learnt that they care about the patient's emotions."
She noted that in India, the sheer number of patients made individual care in hospitals more difficult, and nurses were often overwhelmed.
Migrating to Japan, a country her parents had never even heard of, from the village of Thopucherla was transformative for her.
Where she used to earn 15,000 rupees (S$235) a month as a nurse in India, she now makes 3,000 rupees in four hours.
"I had not seen this much money before coming to Japan," she said.
This story is from the October 26, 2024 edition of The Straits Times.
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This story is from the October 26, 2024 edition of The Straits Times.
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