The day we found out...

Friday, July 18th, 2014 was the day we knew we were going to be moving from Washington state to the middle of the big island of Japan. It was the day after my husband returned from a job interview in California, where he learned that they needed different skills than he could offer.

I won't bore you with too much back-story. The government went through its sequestration the summer before, and budgets for my husband's field of physics suddenly became a rare thing. He sent out at least 70 resumes and letters, and put the word out through his contacts. Out of all of that, we had 3 nibbles.

As I said in the "About" page, we're practical people. At first, while we still had the luxury of time and before my hubby's post-doc in Washington state was up, Japan was in the, "wouldn't it be cool to move there," category. It sounded so gutsy, so naturally we couldn't really be talking about ourselves. The farthest we ever went together as a family was to Florida when my husband had a conference there. Japan? Yeah, I saw that Simpson's episode! Chuckle to ourselves, and wonder....

Then, reality. We counted, one day. There are 39 days between the day we knew and the day we arrived in Japan. 39 days to sell 2 cars (one of which we were upside-down in), sell, donate or save a houseful of stuff (and boy, with two kids did we ever have a lot of stuff), clean our rental house, and move halfway across the world. So when people ask me if I learned much Japanese before we moved, I really do have to laugh a little.

You can imagine what an understatement it is when I say that my mother and stepfather saved our sanity. When we had about 20 days to go, they took our kids in. They. Took. Our Kids In. I absolutely cannot convey how much stress that took off of us. It's probably part of the reason that we still can't believe we're actually here.