All Posts from the Getting there Category
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Fear of landing
In addition to the Three Fears of Flying, in my case we may add:
4. Will the Japanese government permit me to stay for two years?
It turns out that, as a self-employed translator rather than a regular company employee, I must apply for a visa after I get to Japan, instead of before leaving Australia like most normal company employees. Which makes the whole entry procedure is somewhat duplicitous; I have to front up at customs pretending to be a tourist on a short stay of a couple of months, hoping that they don’t notice the massive suitcase packed to the brim with winter and summer clothes, much less the letters of recommendation hidden in the side pocket.
Seeing as I’m on a tourist visa, I may not rent a house, get the phone connected or set up a mobile phone. Much less engaged in paid work such as, say, translation.
However these are but minor setbacks. For instance, I can continue working and simply ask my translation companies to suspend payment so that it doesn’t look obvious. (Luckily I have saved up a bit of money for just this purpose.) Meanwhile, my friend Yusuke can set up house and phone things in his name initially, and I will change them over to my name when I’m all nice and legal.
But as a fine upstanding citizen, I feel uneasy about having to live a lie like this.
Such are the things that one has to put up with in the name of adventure.
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Fear of flying
These are my three primary fears of flying:
1. Will they charge me for excess baggage?
2. Will they let me out of the airport?
3. Will they let me in at the other end?
With regards to 2. above… a funny thing happened on the way to Japan: I nearly didn’t get there. It turns out that in order to go into Japan you need proof that you’re going to go out again, i.e. a return ticket. I guess it was a bit naive of me to think that a one-way ticket would suffice. [But then again, why sell one-way tickets if you can’t use them?]
So there you have it. Two years in the making only to be stopped at the airport like a common criminal. All that meticulous planning, the internet research, the questions, the worrying, the sleepless nights, the checking, the double-checking… nearly came to nothing. I could feel the blood rushing to my head as I contemplated the consequences. The extra expense. The rescheduling. The headaches. And the embarrassment at having to explain to everyone that we’re not going to Japan after all because Daddy forgot to check the visa requirements.
Maybe I should have triple-checked.
PS: Happy ending: the four of us will purchase the most expensive type of return tickets, which are fully refundable at a later date. Mr. Mastercard will be pleased, and as an added bonus I’ll score some handy frequent flyer points.
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Departure
The still of the early morning.
The glow of the taxi in the inky darkness.
The vague thrill that comes with being awake while the rest of the world is still asleep.
The unexplained sense of impending doom (possibly associated with airport procedures).
Pulling the front door gently closed in the pitch dark of four in the morning.
Saying goodbye to my life for the last 13 years. I’ve left the keys inside because I won’t be needing them for a long, long while.
Padding silently to the waiting chariot.
Realising with a start that I’ve forgotten something and it’s pitch black and it’s four in the morning and the taxi’s waiting and I don’t have a key to my own house.
Scrabbling about in the garden in the pitch black at four in the morning with the taxi still waiting, searching for the spare key hidden in the garden and trying not to wake the chooks.
A final, unscheduled, silent good-bye to the inside of the house, and then, well, departure.
Ah, the adventure of travel.
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The kids
It’s probably fair to say that the kids are not particularly enthused about this Japan thing. We’ve been talking about it for at least a couple of years now so they’ve had plenty of time to get used to the idea but it’s still too hard to comprehend.
And it’s fair to say that the kids are thoroughly fed up with hearing some or all of the following from our friends and family:
• You’re so lucky!
• You’re going to have so much fun
• It’ll be such a good experience/It’ll be so good for your education
• You’ll be so fluent at Japanese
• You’ll thank your parents when you’re older
To which they are no doubt thinking:
• What about all my friends/my toys/my things?
• I don’t like Japanese food
• Do we have to?
and quite possibly:
• Are we there yet?
And I can see their point. Ruby in particular has built up a close circle of friends during her last year at primary school and she’s not too happy to be leaving them all. And it will be pretty tough at first, getting up to speed with the language. And it is a wrench, that’s for sure. Even I’m scared, and I’ve lived there for five years.
But think of all the positives: endless supplies of sushi; cute mobile phones with Kitty dolls hanging off them; vastly superior stationery materials (better even than Smiggle); new friends; guarantees of extra MSN and Facebook time to make up for the loss of old friends; and last but not least, more time together as a family (!!).
For that they’ll surely thank us when they’re older.
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Two weeks
Two weeks to go now, and things are starting to hot up (not least because today’s forecast is 36 degrees). T minus two weeks is when you realise that you’re seeing your friends for the last time before going away, so you have to say “well, see you in two years then” and make light of it while your insides are churning and you’re thinking: I’m going to miss all this. Maybe we should just stay after all. Why are we leaving again?
And the weird thing is that quite a few people are going away soon after Christmas and won’t be back before I leave in early January. So I end up doing the big goodbye even though I’m still around for two weeks. It has all the finality of going through the sliding doors into customs and yet… I’m still very much here. We could still chat on the phone. It seems somehow duplicitous to be hanging around like this.
To top it all off, that “why are we leaving” feeling is eerily familiar because that’s how I felt when we were preparing to drag ourselves reluctantly away from Italy back in 2004. I’ve been through all this before. It was sad then. Why are we doing it again?
Just remember: adventures and challenges are good for personal development. (Try telling that to the kids.)
On the other hand, I’ve been looking forward to Two Weeks for a while now, because the phrase “two weeks” always reminds me of that bit in Total Recall where the portly lady keeps saying “Two weeks!” at the spaceport terminal and then her head peels off and she turns into the Governor of California and her head’s a bomb and…. no I am not making this up.
At least it focuses the mind with respect to packing. Now I can finally throw out all those grotty clothes I kept for gardening purposes. I seem to recall from our time in Tokyo that the Japanese are fairly conservative in the dressing department so there is no place for Australian grotty-casual T-shirts and stubbies. In any case Japan has great clothes shops and I intend to spend a good deal of time over the next two years assembling a funky new wardrobe as befits a 45-year-old greying father of two.
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Scary
This moving to Japan business is supposed to be a whole lot easier than our previous adventure in Italy. We speak the language, we’ve lived there before, we’ll be close to friends, it’ll be a doddle. And yet I find the prospect of moving there just as scary if not more so. Perhaps it’s just because I’m that little bit older. And there is the same fear of failure: what if it doesn’t work out? What if the visa doesn’t come through? What if they turn me back at the airport? [Embarrassment is a powerful driver of middle-class society I've decided.]
When we went to Italy, we just lumped onto the plane and headed over. With a 5-year-old and a one-year-old in tow! Looking back I can’t believe we were so naive. All in the spirit of adventure I guess.
So compared to that: Japan for two years, so what? And yet, it still feels like a Big Thing. Ruby in particular isn’t too enamoured with the prospect of leaving all her friends behind. At least we’ve got Skype, not to mention msn, Facebook and Twitter so she won’t feel too isolated. She’ll just have to be nice to me if she wants me to let her use the computer, ha ha.
T minus four weeks and I’m feeling a bit tense.
Are we doing the right thing? Will it be worth the expense and effort? Will the children be scarred irreversibly by the experience?
Yes, yes and quite possibly; but who cares, it’s going to be the best fun.
Just so long as my visa comes through.
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Packing
How do you pack up your house for two years? And when do you start?
These are the questions plaguing us as the date of departure draws near. We’ve started packing our life away already, with the first boxes of books and stuff installed in the garage as of yesterday. As well as books there’ll be boxes of clothes, records (yes, we’re keeping them after all), nostalgia, photos, tax records, you name it. Our whole life will essentially be in that garage. What if it burns down while we’re away?
Departure is only a month and a bit away now. In addition to de-cluttering, we have to get the house looking nice so we can take the photos that will be used for advertising to find the tenants who will pay the rent which will pay back all the money we’ve spent getting the house looking nice so we can…. you see how circuitous life can be. So there’s heaps of little jobs — painting, fixing up holes and cracks, finally getting a new door lock… all those little things you put up with because even though they’re a little bit annoying they’ve never been annoying enough to warrant real action. Until now.
I feel kind of lucky, because you often hear of people who only finally get their houses in order when it’s time to sell up and move on and thus never get to enjoy the fruits of their efforts. Whereas in our case we’ll be back in two years to check out our handiwork.
So Eleni is in charge of filling and painting, and I’ve been doing stuff such as repairing some ridiculous gaping holes I found down the side brick wall – it’s a wonder the place hasn’t fallen down or developed some serious cracks. The first “repair” I did was the world’s most embarrassing mortar job, with bricks leaning in and out at all angles; the second was a bit better; and the third wasn’t half bad if I do say so myself. This gets rid of the hole problem; now there’s the slight matter of the complete absence of mortar in the bottom ten or so rows of bricks around most of the outside of the house. Tragically, and although I was just starting to get the hang of this mortaring caper, I think I’ll have to leave the rest until 2012, because soon Christmas will be upon us and there’ll be no time left for anything because we’ll be too busy buying presents and cooking food and eating it.
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Why Japan?
Scientists have been asking this question for centuries.
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Welcome
Hi all
A big Welcome to my new blog, Sushi on a Stick.
As many of you will know I’m taking my family (wife Eleni, daughter Ruby (12) and son Felix (9)) to Japan for two years from January 2010.
In this blog, I intend to chronicle our journey in exhausting and overly pedantic detail, for my benefit as much as yours, with photos, videos and plenty of self-indulgent and occasionally witty observations on food, festivals and culture and the usual “trials and tribulations” guff. Hopefully not too many tribulations though; we had enough of those in Italy.
Hope you enjoy the offerings and I look forward to your input, comments and feedback.
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This blog is about the adventures of a family of Australian barbarians spending two years in the islands of southern Japan. Stay tuned for regular updates on the food, the culture, the earthquakes, the wacky festivals, the school system and more. 
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