Bye Bye Japan (2019-12-25)
July 1999 KL and I arrived in this big unfamiliar city bumbling through life in a highly chaotic but exciting fashion. We spoke no Japanese and comprehended little of the idiosyncrasies and rigidities of the Japanese people and their culture.
Renting and setting up a home proved to be quite challenging,
fortunately KL's English-speaking colleagues helped us through
and made our transition from living in a house with a beautiful
garden in Sydney to an apartment one tenth of its size with a dingy
balcony that much
bearable.
Many things happened throughout the past twenty years. KL became a salaryman, we moved to a slightly larger apartment, Daifoo our cat from Sydney moved to Tokyo, we traveled extensively, Daifoo died, and we adopted his successor Efoo, a rescue. We survived the devastating 2011 earthquake and its aftermath, witnessed a new emperor crowned, and celebrated the birth of the Reiwa era.
Japan is a wonderful country and has the best people as a
whole. The high work ethics and professionalism displayed by
service industry employees and civil servants are exceptional.
Nowhere will you find more courteous and reliable workers in the
world. It is the people that I will miss the most when we leave.
I am forever grateful for all the good this country has given us,
its language for one.
It's been an incredible long run done splendidly. We will leave
Japan much
enriched and enlightened.
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