starting fresh

Hello! This first blog post is hopefully going to cover my journey from my home in the UK to my new home in the south of Kumamoto prefecture, Japan. I'll try not to make it too long.

August 20th, 2022, Heathrow airport. The drive to the airport was oddly... normal. My parents, partner, and I chatted like we would have on any other day. I think that my parents and I purposely 'forgot' the fact that I was moving away until we got to the drop-off point outside the terminal, so once we arrived, there were a few moments in which we sat slightly apprehensively. Though we wouldn't see each other for some time, none of us really wanted an overly emotional goodbye, so I appreciated them for helping me to get on with it as though it were nothing more than a weekend trip. It was then into the airport to meet the other people from the UK heading out on the program. Even though there were around 100 of us, I actually ended up eating alone in the airport which was not a very me thing to do. Perhaps the gravity of what I was about to do was hitting a little bit, but I think that I just needed a little bit of space. I sat in an Italian restaurant and ate a pizza as I'd heard that pizza was expensive in Japan.

Cue 24 hours of airports and flights - ouch. We flew 11.5 hours to Doha, Qatar, and then, after a few hours layover, another 10 on to Tokyo. It was a lot of flying and I didn't sleep at all (my first day on my own and I was already making poor life decisions, whoops), but other than that, the flights were fairly easy and had very little turbulence.

August 21st, 2022, Tokyo. We landed in Tokyo on the evening of the 21st, and took an hour-and-a-half bus ride to the hotel in Shinjuku. Whilst the flights were tiring, and although I only had 2 days in Tokyo, I still did my best to make the most of the time there. The first full day there, after a full day of conferences and lectures, I fancied a run so I headed out to explore a little. I ran around 代々木公園 (Yoyogi park) and grabbed some breakfast for the next few days from a 7/11 before heading back. It was only about 7km, but in my defence, it was over 30°C and 100000% humidity. Feeling slightly like I wasn't taking enough advantage of being Tokyo, I decided to get up early the next morning in order to head to Shibuya. I walked through the park again and then had a coffee in the Starbucks that overlooks Shibuya crossing before doing a little bit of exploring in the surrounding area. After some more lectures, I went out and sang Karaoke with a few of the other people on the program and then headed back to the hotel to get some rest; we were leaving to fly out of Tokyo at just after 6 the next morning. These are the only pictures that I took in Tokyo but I thought I'd share them here (my inability to take photos is one of the things that I plan to work on in my time here).

August 24th , 2022, Kumamoto. I arrived at my new home around midday on a Wednesday after flying down from Tokyo and then driving for around an hour and a half into the countryside. I have to thank my coworkers for the lovely welcome and help that they provided when I arrived because without them, it would have been a tricky day. We went out and bought some furniture, food and other essentials before they dropped me back at my appartment. With that, my journey was complete, I had travelled 6000 miles from home and was now sat on a single sofa in an empty apartment. I might have been fairly overwhelmed if it hadn't been for the fact that I was absolutely shattered (Maybe not sleeping on those planes was a good thing after all???). I called my partner and my parents to let them know that I had arrived safely and then headed to bed. First step of my 'fresh start' complete.

It's now the middle of October, almost 2 months from when I arrived, but I thought that considering what this blog is going to be about, the journey to get here was a good first post. There are a few things that I plan to write about on this blog, goals, thoughts on different aspects of life here, plans, etc, though I have no idea when I'll get around to writing them. For the moment, here are some rather lovely photos of the area I now live in:

I think that's probably enough for now so thanks for reading; I'll hopefully see you soon with another blog post.

W.