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Published: August 20th 2006
I have never done this before, but here goes..... Hopefully I won't bore everyone!
This blog will be about my and my husband's relocation to Tokyo, Japan. For the time being, I plan to write about how this move came about, the logistics of the move and the move itself.
Eventually when we get to Japan, I will write about our finding a place to live, getting settled, finding our way around and then our living in Tokyo and our adjustment to the culture. Once all of that happens I will write about our travels in Japan and hopefully before too long I'll be writing about our travels all over Asia. We plan (and hope) to have many of our family and friends come to vist and we'll share those experienses as well.
First... a little background....
Marc and I are in our late fourties and have been married for almost 15 years. I am originally from Colorado, but as a "military brat" I lived in numerous places growing up including Kaiserslautern Germany. Marc grew up in Southern California and went to college in Chicago. He traveled extensively before we were married, including Israel, Europe, and a trip to the Indian Ocean courtesy of the Navy. We met and married in Colorado Springs, Colorado. We have lived in Winter Springs, FL for 7 years. After 9/11 we decided not to let life pass us by and decided to begin traveling as much as possible. We have been fortunate to travel to Europe, Aisa, and Africa among other places since then. We prefer traveling by cruising (Regent Seven Seas being our prefered line) however we would never pass on any opportunity given our limited vacation time and available finanaces. We have met a terrific group of "cruising / travel enthousiasts" and attempt to travel with them all as much as possible.
I am a "Senior Supervising Auditor" and (through an Intermediary) audit Hospitals for Medicare and Medicaid compliance. While I love my job, I am giving it up to move with my husband to Tokyo. Marc is a Systems Engineer with Mitre. Though we have lived in the outskirts of Orlando, Florida, Marc has been traveling to Washington DC almost weekly for the past 7 years. In June, we found out Mitre was looking for employees who might be interested in transferring to their Tokoy site. Marc and I decided to "look into it" and before we could say "wait a minute" found ourselves bound for a new home in Tokyo. We have commited to a minimum of two years there, but hope that we will be able to stay 3 - 5 years in order to travel and see as much as possible and also host as many family members and friends as possible.
So..... today, August 20, 2006 finds us in a time of great flux. W have put our house on the market, and have found the market has slowed considerably. We have had several showings however and are not in panic mode yet. I have given my notice at work, and my last full time day will be next friday, 8/25. After that I will be working part to full time until the end of September in order to complete my last audits and sill manage the logistics of our move. Marc is working at transfering his current responsibilities over to others and also attempting to get up to speed with the work in Tokyo. He is still traveling to DC or Huntsville, AL weekly (occasionaly both in the same week) and after a full day he sometimes begins (lengthy) conference calls with the members of the Tokoyo site after 5PM as it is 6 AM there.
In addition to selling the house we have to sell both of our cars. We have found that shipping one over from here won't work very well. It seems they drive on the other side of the road. While that wouldn't be an insurmountable problem, the fact that most of their roads are toll roads is. Think about it ..... the toll booths would be on the passenger side of the car!
Some of the other things we have to do are: seeing our physicians one last time and getting copies of our records and prescriptions and refills for a couple of months. Ditto the dentist, ditto the opthamologist, and some other specialists as well. Considering we are both working full time and Marc is only in town one weekday a week this is time consuming to coordinate! We also have to decide what furniture to ship with us, keeping in mind we will definitly have a MUCH SMALLER place over there than we have here. We have to store or sell the rest. We have to figure out what we absolutely need to take with us on the plane considering we will probably be living out of a suitcase for 4 - 6 weeks or longer and the luggage restirictions and the fact that we won't receive our shipped goods until possibly as late as mid December. In addition, we are trying to see as many friends and family as possible before we leave. Some are here in Florida, some in Texas, some in Colorado and some in LA. And that is just the family!!!! If that isn't enough, we planned a "last" vacation with all our travel friends beginning August 29th. We are joining about 100 friends for an Alaskan cruise. We will finish that up with a trip to see family in LA.
In addition we are beginning our Japanese language lessons in the next cople of weeks. We plan to take an "immersion course" before we leave so that will mean 4 - 6 hour classes every saturday.
Then we have to start figuring out the logistics of living in Japan! We need to find an appartment, and while there are some really great websites, we won't know until we get there just exactly where we will be living. I forgot to mention that neither Marc or I have even BEEN to Japan, save for an unplanned 2 hour layover in the airport last year! We are leaning towards an area of Tokyo called Roppongi. As far as we can tell, there is a large expat comminity there which might help when we are homesick. We don't know yet wheither Marc will be working more in Tokyo or at any of several other Japanese Air Force bases. We will have privleges at the American Air Force Base and many people have suggested we live closer to it, though we cannot live on the base itself.
So we don't know where we will be living yet, or even what sort of place we will be able to find. The cost of living is about 3x the cost of living in the states, and while we will be compensated for some of that, we will also be living on one income instead of two at least for a while. We are hoping to find a 2 bedroom appartment for somewhere between $5,000 to $7,000 A MONTH! Another staff member who relocated there recently told us he looked at about 100 places before he found one. Whether or not we buy a car when we get there depends greatly on where we live and how far the train and subway stations are from our appartment. (Not to mention if I can even figure out the subway system!)
We did get our ONE WAY tickets purchased though, so I think there is no going back at this point!
Well, enough for now. If you all are not bored by now, check in again in a few days for an update.....
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Betty K
non-member comment
Great job on your blog!
Arlene, I really enjoyed reading your first entry. I'm really looking forward to hearing about Marc's and your experiences.