"Nick Rees" <nick_rees@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:4135be1d$0$22754$db0fefd9@news.zen.co.uk...
>
>
> Well  as they say there are two things certain in life, death and taxes.
> Marriage  doesnt figure just yet but we have been together for 2 years
> already and must admit we have talked about the M word. You are spot on
> though, it would solve a lot of the problems I am bound to encounter.
> Enjoying a DINKI lifestyle in Tokyo would be great too for a while.
>
> If I may be so bold.How did you get out there to Japan yourself?
>

No, it's not particularly bold.  I think my tale is probably echoed by
several other members of the newsgroup.  Was offered employment in Japan,
enjoyed the lifestyle and the fat back pocket, met a Japanese girl, married
the Japanese girl, decided that life here is way more fun than back home in
the UK so stayed.

Bear in mind, your significant other might have a similar view to life in
the UK.  I wonder how her parents would feel if the two of you were 'living
in sin' here in Japan - what happens in the UK is like the
stag/bucks/bachelor party expression: "what happens on tour, stays on tour".
Back here it's under their noses - if they're like most Japanese parents
I've met they don't mind so much if their daughter marries a foreigner - but
living together unmarried? No thank you.

The job WAS an English teaching position - but I had finished a second
post-grad, this time in TEFL, in the UK six months before coming out and so
was embarking on a new career - sounds like something so grand but fact is:
if  I hadn't suffered a serious sports-related injury when teaching English
summer school in Bristol that year I would have taken up a position in
either Finland, Saudi Arabia or South Korea!  Plus, the guy who should have
filled the job I got had a family emergency - his father suffered a massive
stroke.  My old man had a massive heart attack at about the same time (being
a man of the cloth of course he chose to suffer the coronary whilst standing
in front of his GP who had called round to the rectory having thought my
father looked a little off color during the preceding service of worship -
oh yeah and the doctor just happened to be in his 'company car' with all the
resuscitation paraphernalia in the trunk)...but I digress...heart attack
recovery time is generally a lot shorter than recovery from a stroke, so I
felt no guilt about trekking out to the other side of the world.

--
jonathan