Life in Japan has proven harder than expected for Mariia Gudzii, who evacuated to Japan nearly a year ago from her war-torn home country of Ukraine.

Daily tasks once easy affairs are now difficult and stress-inducing for the 69-year-old evacuee, who has found it challenging to adapt to a new language and culture.

Her daughter Kateryna, a 36-year-old Ukrainian national living in Mitaka, western Tokyo, who helped bring her here, now finds herself at a loss for how to help her despaired mother.

Mariia wishes for nothing more than to return to her homeland, which is still very much under siege a full year into the war.

“I wish I hadn’t come to Japan” is a phrase she now says more and more often.

Even the popular cultural attractions that draw flocks of tourists to Japan do not offer consoling creature comforts.

For starters, Mariia has discovered that she hates Japanese food.

Kateryna cooks a Japanese breakfast every morning for the family, which includes her 53-year-old Japanese husband and 13-year-old son.

It typically consists of staples such as grilled shishamo smelt, rice and miso soup.

But her mother does not come out of her room since she finds the dishes unpalatable and cannot stand the odor.

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year, Kateryna became restless, worrying about her mother living alone in Kyiv and the Russian military firing rockets at her neighborhood.

But the Japanese government, infamously unkind to foreigners seeking refugee status, had started to take unprecedented steps to welcome Ukrainians, allowing them to stay, study and work in Japan.

The rate of Japan’s refugee status recognition is a mere 1 percent, abysmally low when compared to Western countries, whereas it opened its doors to hundreds of Ukrainians in a short period by categorizing them as “evacuees” instead.

And it has extended various types of aid to Ukrainians, such as financial aid packages, temporary hotel rooms and services to match them with companies and municipal governments, which can offer more support.

So, in March, Kateryna helped Mariia evacuate from Kyiv to Tokyo, and she became one of the roughly 2,300 Ukrainians who have fled to Japan as of Feb. 15.

Mariia tried to stay positive and adjust to her new life in Japan, and Kateryna tried to keep her mother's spirits up.

Kateryna is a musician who plays a traditional Ukrainian instrument and tours around Japan.

Encouraged by Kateryna, Mariia would sometimes sing Ukrainian folk songs and design charity T-shirts to help Ukraine.

But she plunged in despair after half a year passed.

When Kateryna would leave home to go on tour, Mariia, who cannot speak Japanese, struggled to even communicate with her son-in-law and grandchild.

Kateryna suggested she learn Japanese, but her mother replied, “I’m too old.”

Small things, such as going to the bank, make Mariia feel out of her element and even more stressed than she already feels.

Kateryna offered to cook Ukrainian dishes for her. But Mariia protested, “You don’t have to do it for me.”

As the war drags on, Japan is rolling out more support. The government is expected to revise the law to let Ukrainian evacuees obtain a new long-term resident visa that will allow them to live here for up to five years so they can have a more stable life.

As the war drags on, Japan is rolling out more support. The government is expected to submit again a bill to revise the immigration law, which would make it easier for many Ukrainian evacuees to obtain a new long-term resident visa that will allow them to live in Japan for up to five years so they can have a more stable life.

But even just a year away from home can feel like an eternity.

Since Mariia had visited Japan many times before, Kateryna thought her mother had gotten used to staying here.

Yet Mariia, tired of being isolated in a strange land, now wishes to join the roughly 100 Ukrainian evacuees who have left Japan.

“It’s still wartime, but I don’t care,” Mariia would say. “I want to go back to (Ukraine).”

But Kateryna cannot let her depressed mother return to a war zone.

“I don’t know what to do,” Kateryna said.

(This article was written by Ari Hirayama and Kosuke Tauchi.)