1st post

It begins...

This is my first foray into the world of blogs, so please excuse the mandatory first "look, I'm typing" post.

Recently, my family and I decided to make the big move back to Japan after living in Brisbane, Australia for the past 6 years. Before that, I had been living and working in Japan for almost 8 years in both Gunma and Shizuoka prefectures (about 4 years each).

I plan to use this blog to document our journey back to Japan and convey some of the challenges and highlights to you the reader. Hopefully, this will help those who might follow a similar path in the future, or simply appease the curiosity of those who have an interest in Japan. Or, you are family - look Mum and Dad, I'm typing a blog.

This adventure begins well before we actually set sail for Japan (still another 4-5 months), but some notable experiences have already occured. Two days ago, Brisbane was slammed by a super cell weather event. The damage in the CBD and surrounding suburbs was enormous, including to the the historic school at which I work. I can't help but reflect on the where I was and what I was doing when it struck. I finished my necessary paperwork and preparations at school by around 4pm, then walked down to my favourite Korean supermarket in the city (my kimchi supplies needed urgent restocking). I came out of the shop around 4:30pm and thought I should put my 2kg tub of kimchi in my bag, as there was enough room to fit it. As I knelt down under the cover of the shop, I heard a few loud thuds on the road in front of me. I looked up and saw these tennis ball-sized ice clumps hitting the road. At first I didn't know what they were - surely too big to be hail! I then realised it was hail and immediately knew this was going to get crazy. What ensued was definitely the most dangerous storm I have witnessed - massive hail stones, 140km/h wind gusts, pounding rain and flash flooding. I managed to get a bus home that crawled out of the city with debris from trees and buildings scattered everywhere. Alarms were sounding from many of the shops and of course the sirens from the emergency services were blaring as well. The traffic was chaotic, for lack of a better description, but the amount of hail damage to cars everywhere was shocking - smashed windscreens and dings all over. What if I had not stopped to put the kimchi in my bag? Wow.