How did this happen?

Here's a bit of background as to the how and why of our extended stay in Japan. It basically comes down to the well worn maxim, "Be careful what you ask for."


You could say it all began when I met Anna. Or when we got married. Or when we moved to Washington for a new job at EI. Or when I volunteered for the support position. Or when we started packing. Or when the car left the driveway. Beginnings are fuzzy in real life.

I work for Electroimpact. At EI, the engineers are responsible for each project they are on, "cradle to grave" style. However, if you do your job right, most of the work ends when the machinery is installed. We try to do the job right the first time. Nevertheless, some of our customers prefer having someone from EI on-site, just in case something goes wrong.

One such customer is located in Nagoya, Japan. They have purchased a support contract from EI, which means (among other things) that we'll have someone at their factory all day, all year long. Instead of sending one guy over for the whole year (which causes problems with taxes, immigration, etc) EI prefers to send individuals in three month shifts. Sometimes (read "quite often") these shifts are doubled up into a six month assignment, punctuated in the middle by a trip out of the country (again, for legal reasons).

So, every so often the call goes out for volunteers to take support assignments. It so happened that the beginning of one such assignment aligned rather well with the (projected) end of the project I was (until very recently) working on. I put in my name, along with (I am told) four or five others. Somehow, I was selected as the best candidate. It's probably because I'm low on the totem pole, and no one else wants to be in Nagoya all summer, when it's regularly 90 in both Fahrenheit and percent relative humidity.

Oh, and around the time that I applied for the foreign post, Anna somehow became pregnant again. The upswing is that you'll likely get an interesting report of the healthcare system in Urban Japan, compared and contrasted to that of both California and Washington states in the US.

We were pretty excited, but there was a lot to do, and a lot up in the air. EI regularly makes plans, only to have them fall apart at the last moment, so we were pacing our expectations as the day came closer and closer. When do you start packing? When do you apply for passports? When do you buy tickets? All the major hurdles are passed, and at this point our things are packed, our house is up for rent, my current project is mostly wrapped up, and we're putting the finishing touches on our haphazard "plans" for our extended stay overseas.

We'll share how it goes right here as the experience itself plays out.