Travel Arrangements are Set

Today was the day that we received our flight information and passports from the travel office. We had to wait this long to make sure that we could get our personal property shipped over in time. Looks like our movers are going to come by on Oct 3rd and 4th and we'll be out of our apartment on Oct 5th. On Oct 6th, we'll drive up to Sacramento to visit with Nicki's side of the family and to go to her cousin's wedding. Then, on Oct 16th, we'll fly out of Sacramento for Japan.

Looks like we're flying into Narita International, which will be about a 2-3 hour bus ride to Yokosuka. Our last flight from the States will be out of LAX around 12:40pm local time on Oct 16th. We'll arrive at about 3:55pm in Tokyo, but it'll be Oct 17th... in other words, we'll lose a day on the way over by crossing the international date line. And it'll feel like midnight for us when we land, based on the US Pacific timezone. Should be fun to see what kind of effect this travelling will have on all of us, especially Josh. I also found out that I'm due to start my in-processing for work on Oct 18th at 8:00am local time, which will be very fun for my jetlagged mind.

I got a call from my sponsor over in Japan today. He gave me some tips about what to do when we land in Tokyo, how to get to Yokosuka, and what will happen once we finally get settled in. He's doing a lot to help smooth the process for us, booking us a room for a while, and whatnot. Seems like we're in good hands...

Passports Are Here

I got the message this afternoon from our travel office. Passports have arrived, which means we're able to start moving things along now. Next step is to set up for the shipment or storage of all of our personal possessions. Oh yeah, and to get our travel arrangements completed.

Nicki and I are getting more and more excited, but we're also starting to feel more and more nervous and overwhelmed. Work has really been picking up for me here in the office, too. My replacement has arrived and I'll be trying to focus on transferring a lot of my project files to her over the next couple of weeks. Hopefully, that will be a smooth transition. But I also just ran into a few additional emerging issues here at work that will probably require my immediate attention. Turns out that one of our construction contractors uncovered quite a few underground storage tanks that date back to the 1940s in the middle of one of our high-profile job sites. Since construction is underway, we need to get the tanks out ASAP to minimize construction delays, but we need approval from the San Diego County Dept. of Environmental Health to do the tank pulls, and that may take some time regardless. Fun, fun, fun!

Nicki and I will probably need to get all of our stuff ready for shipping/storage by the end of the month, so that we can head up to Sacramento for Nicki's cousin's wedding early next month and fly out by mid month. With any luck, we may be able to fly to Japan from Sacramento, which would save us from having to come back to our empty apartment in San Diego after the wedding. More later...

Meeting with HRO

I had a meeting with my work's human resources office (HRO) today to go over the paperwork that I've been filling out for the past few weeks. Turns out that most of it needs to be rubber stamped by the HRO office in Yokosuka, so I'll have to remember to pack all of it for the trip and hand-carry it over. We also discussed a tentative moving date, based on when we think our passports will arrive. For now, we are expecting to move on Sunday, October 16. If the passports aren't here by then, we'll push the date back accordingly. Apparently, it happens all the time so it should be a smooth process regardless.

In other news, we added a few more pictures of Josh from the past few months under Toddler Joshua I, Toddler Joshua II, and Joshua's 2nd Birthday.

We're moving to Japan!

It all began on July 21, 2005, with an email in my work inbox. I was out of the office at the time, so I didn't actually receive the email until the following Tuesday, July 26. The message indicated that I was offered a position in Yokosuka, Japan. The first thing I had to do was figure out that Yokosuka is pronounced (by my coworkers at least) as "Yo-koos-ka", for reasons beyond my understanding.

After gathering as much info as I could about the offer, I brought the idea home to Nicki. We talked about it and decided to go for it. Since then, we've applied for passports, talked to family and friends, and begun tripping through the unusually long paper trail and red tape to get the process going. We also gave away my beloved pet boa constrictor, Lucy (photo), to a good home and sold Nicki's prized Honda Civic.

But we're still a little ways from heading over, with an expected moving date of October 15th'ish.