Someone asked me today, So do you want to go back to Japan? in relation to my future plans. Today I do, I said, but that's just today.
Today, I really wanted to be in Japan. I wanted to go to the hot springs with the wife and daughters, sit in the hot water in the middle of woods, naked and content. And then I wanted to eat hot soba, sitting on tatami while Naomi ran around.
That was what I wanted today, but I know that I wouldn't be happy working there and I would quickly revert back into my dreams of Europe.
We are facing a tough choice in a little under three years. Two and a half, really. We are going to have to decide where we are going to call home next. This choice would be less complicated if we had no children: we could go anywhere and if we didn't like it, we could move after two or three years. But when I graduate, Naomi will be five and Mei will be three and they will be getting ready to go to school full-time and, for as much as I would like to think we are going to be a permanently mobile family, I know that they probably need to go to school in the same language from about fourth grade on, and the language they attend jr. high and high school in will likely be the language they attend university in. Although I can see myself spending five years in Denmark, five years in France, and five years back in England, this is probably not the best thing for the girls.
I don't know what we do. Probably whatever feels right for the majority of us.