Blogging is no different from any other activity: once the momentum is lost, it's hard to get going again. So pushing, grinding, out these first few lines is even more difficult than I had anticipated. Yet looking back on the posts from last year, I can see some value in the enterprise, as a family document, and from the fact that some readers come back regularly to browse...
So let's begin with the headlines, in brief. After months of torpid indecision, Ayumi and I decided not to return to our professional lives in England—though we spent a very pleasant two months there in February and March—but to give Japan a go for a bit longer. In December last year, I was offered a permanent job at Konan University in Okamoto—Kobe's Hampstead, if Kitano is Chelsea), where I have now started teaching English and Linguistics courses to a delightful bunch of students, in the company of friendly and extremely welcoming colleagues.
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| First day at Konan (Okamoto) |
The professor I'm replacing (after a transitional dove-tail year) points out that this is the honeymoon period, and things may not always be so wonderful, but I'm optimistic that it will have been a good decision. On verra. At least, it's a decision made, which is a thousand times better than the "should we or shouldn't we-shuffle" that I've been boring friends and family with for months now. Plus the commute is infinitely more pleasant than chancing my luck and choking in the rush hour traffic around the Western Bank roundabout in Sheffield (either as pedestrian or driver). So we're staying for a while, and will now make the very best of it.
For our boys too, it's a new start: Justin in a new nursery, Julian and Sean in a new school year. (After more than half a lifetime of beginning the year in September, I now need to adjust my calendar to that of the taxman, and nature, to think of April as the start of everything. Sean, though, will still keep to the Western pattern—at least from August, when he begins at an International School here in Kobe (Canadian Academy): for his sake, after 6 years of English schooling, we decided to forgo luxuries like pension savings and food to pay annual tuition fees that exceed the mean household incomes in many developed countries (that's gross, I mean...).
The other price of committing to a permanent-for-now life in Japan is the financial, emotional and physical cost of coming down the mountain: with much regret we shall be moving to a house near the station down the hill. No outstanding views, no garden to speak of, poorer air and no birdsong in the morning—and a commute like everyone else's, rather than the sweet ride in the morning calm. (Listen to the background sound-track to the cable video). Literally and figuratively, we're coming down in the world. The compensation, of course, is time: we lose the outlook, but buy back an average of four commuting/school run hours per week-day. Plus Sean, and soon Julian, will be able to take themselves to things by themselves, on bus and train.
So that's it for now. More posts will follow soon, I hope—now we're back on track.
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