My entire life is getting packed into a suitcase...

October 2022

I spent the entire morning just packing two suitcases: one for my son and one for my daughter. It was mentally exhausting. We had spent the last three months giving away, selling or throwing out our worldly possessions. Minimise, minimise, minimise. And today was the day that we had to make final decisions on what would actually come with us to Japan. My kids were champions, but it was still emotionally and mentally exhausting.

We’d sold two cars, sold our caravan home, said final goodbyes to dear friends and drove out the driveway of our friends’ property that we had called home for the past ten months.

And now, as I sat on the bedroom floor at my parent’s place, it was my turn. I look down at my open suitcase. A large suitcase but a measly 120x90x25cm2 of space to fit my life into. It’s a little more than half filled. I looked around the floor for my other essential "must take" items. No items lying on the floor. No items sitting on the bed. No items lefts on the dresser. Nothing. That's it?! My entire life is getting packed into a suitcase and I have room to spare?!

Living in Japan had always been a possibility since my husband, Shujin, is Japanese and his family still live there. In more recent years the reality came closer with the deterioration of his aging parent’s health. We spent much time discussing and praying about the right time to go. But the words of my dear best friend came true, “I don’t think you need to worry about it, I think the decision will be made for you.” And so it was. With the unexpected death of Shujin’s father in July 2022, we suddenly were setting our eyes toward Japan.

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Immigration at the airport is a self check-out experience. You scan you passport and the gate opens. You step through, stand on the X and look at the camera. It verifies you and then opens the next gate and you're free. Well, our kids were so keen to do it on their own, and there happened to be no other people lining up, so we basically took up all the gates, one each, and go through. Except the kids got stuck....

Shujin’s mum, Okasan, and his younger brother, Hiroki, were traveling with us. We four adults all got through the gates and the kids were left behind! Great parents we are!! Haha!!!

The Immigration officers had to come over and help and Shujin was joking with the kids, "We'll have to leave you with Nana and Pa!" And then he's joking with the officers, "Want a couple of kids to sell on eBay?!"

We waited semi-anxiously for about 5-10 minutes as the kids got processed manually but in the end they joined us.

It's great to have these moments when we can laugh to ease the emotional intensity of the situation. Not 10 minutes before we were saying our final goodbyes to mum and dad. It brought back memories of some 20 years ago when I was flying out of Australia to Europe for 12 months. Never having been on an aeroplane before, let alone leaving Australia, I was young and excited, and mum and dad waved me off happily. But mum later confessed that she had burst into tears as soon as I had walked through that gate at the airport and out of sight. And here we were, once again, at the departure gate, saying goodbye. I forced myself not to think. Europe was a planned 12 months, but Japan might be forever.