Nothing But Words

Flying from Philly to Rhode Island for Christmas View at Picasa Flying from Philly to Rhode Island for Christmas22-Dec-2006 13:58, Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 2.8, 5.40625mm, 0.017 sec

Greetings from Newport, RI. We are having a wonderful but exhausting time running the loving gauntlet of my myriad relatives. You name it, I’ve got it – siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, step-siblings, half-siblings (who are not related to each other…), even ex-steps. What it all boils down to is this: lots of love and presents for Kai and Eidan. We’ve been here for 5 days so far, and we’ll spend the day tomorrow in Boston with even more relatives. Then we’re off to San Francisco, where we have a packed 48-hour schedule before we fly to Tokyo.

The two weeks leading up to our departure from Philly was a marathon. It turns out that preparing to leave the country for six months isn’t all that different from plain old moving, with the added complications of having to pack very judiciously, and dealing with bureaucratic overhead (for visas, international drivers’ licenses, etc). Maria and I kept a running to-do list, but every time we went to check something off, we ended up thinking of new things to add, so the list never seemed to get any shorter. To make the final week even more lively, we decided to sell our car. We were planning to get a new one when we returned from Japan, and we finally realized it made more sense to sell it before leaving than to let it sit and depreciate for six months in the driveway. We did the title transfer last Thursday night and left town on Friday.

I’ve set up a Skype account with a local Philly number (calling that number is a domestic US call, but I’ll receive it on my computer in Tokyo). Send me an email if you’d like the number or my Skype username (which you can use to call me from your own Skype account – no phone necessary!).

My Japanese teacher and I have invited my fellow students in the introductory Japanese class to read my blog, so they can follow my adventures in Japan next year. I will try to write regularly about my language experiences in particular. I’ll use this post to introduce my family and recap what this trip is all about.

We will be staying in Tokyo for six months – arriving on New Year’s Eve, and staying until the end of June. My wife Maria won an International Affairs Fellowship in Japan from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Maria teaches political science at Villanova. Her research is primarily in the area of Asian political economy – you can see more about her research on her home page. She will be working at the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC). Although she is not a native speaker of Japanese, she is close to fluent.

We have two boys: Kai, 5, and Eidan, 1. Kai will attend 1st grade in a Japanese public school, and I will take care of Eidan during the day. My plan is to explore a different part of the city each day with him.

I work at Penn’s School of Medicine Information Services as a project manager. I’m very fortunate to have a boss who is willing to let me switch to part-time status while we’re away, and work remotely from Tokyo.

We will be living in Minato-ku, which is a district in the heart of Tokyo. Pictures of our apartment were posted by the landlord in the summer to advertise its availability, and they’re still up. It’s tiny – about 500 sq ft – but we decided that, for the money, we’d rather have a small place in the city than a big place in the suburbs, as Maria will have a shorter commute, and it’ll encourage us to go out more. We are near the Shinagawa station, which is near the bottom-center of this map.

We already have two vacations planned: we’ll go to the Sapporo Snow Festival in February and we’ll visit a few of the northern islands of Okinawa during Golden Week in late April/early May.

I’ve been to Japan twice before – for a one week visit and for a two week visit. I extensively blogged the latter trip, with lots of photos and cultural observations. (Note there’s a technical glitch with my slideshow viewer – if you use the navigational arrows when in a slide show, you won’t get the right pictures. You need to jump back to the blog entry and click on the next photo).