About

I started this blog as a way of providing updates for family and friends, people who have heard countless times all about our trip to Japan and are probably thoroughly sick of hearing about our trip to Japan. (And to satisfy certain narcissistic  creative urges.) But of course it’s out there for all to see. So for those of you who need a bit of background information, here it is.

I’m a 40-something father of two who works from home. My job involves translating really interesting documents from Japanese into English, mainly for Japanese translation companies in Tokyo. My wife Eleni is a Japanese teacher, so we both have a professional interest in things Japanese. Our two children Ruby (12) and Felix (9) have been attending Japanese Saturday school in Melbourne (Australia) since kindergarten, so the whole family speaks Japanese to varying degrees.

With all that Japanese going on, it seemed the obvious thing to do was to spend a couple of years in-country. For Eleni and I it is a natural extension of the five years we spent as childless young things in Tokyo back in the 1990s, but for the kids, who have never lived here, it is an all-new experience.

OK that’s the brief version. If you want even more background, read on.

Eleni majored in Japanese at university, including a 10-month exchange scholarship in 1988, and wanted to live in Japan for an extended period. Meanwhile I had just completed a teaching degree but was so traumatised by the experience that I abandoned the idea of a teaching career there and then. (Yes I admit it; I wimped out. Which is why I have the greatest respect for those teachers who actually have the guts to see it through.) So at that point, having no real plans for the future, I was happy to try something different and interesting.

Thus it was that Eleni and I moved to Tokyo in early 1991.

I studied hard for a couple of years and taught myself the language, then managed to land a job as a translator. After a while I was able to go freelance. Eleni did a multitude of jobs including rewriting, proofreading, teaching English to schoolchildren, teaching English to adults, marking exam papers, you name it. We travelled the length and breadth of Japan and had a fantastic time but by 1995, it felt like time to come home and raise a family in the leafy green suburbs of Melbourne. Luckily the internet had just taken off and I was able to convince my clients that I could use this new-fangled email thingy to send them work from Australia.

We spent the next 12 years living a settled suburban life, producing offspring and contributing to the economy.

Then the travel bug set in. Given that I am blessed with the world’s most flexible job—in theory you can work anywhere if you’ve got a power point and a phone line—it was decided that the family should spend a year in Italy just for the fun of it. Our time in the land of the rising pizza started out as a complete disaster but ended up as one of the best experiences we’ve ever had (as lovingly recounted in my world-wide smash hit bestseller Italy? It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time).

We got back from Italy and spent another five years in Melbourne before succumbing once more to travel sickness… and here we are.

Who knows where we’ll go next? We probably should do the right thing and see the kids through school, but after that I dare say we’ll be off again, and I dare say I’ll be writing a blog about it. Or whatever the technology is by then.

So have a look through my site and if you enjoy it, feel free to leave a comment. Please. I love comments.