Plans

Our plan is to stay in Nakatsu for 5 days and live in Tsukahara for 2 days. The commute is approximately 1 hour. The scenery is beautiful and a narrow road winds you through the mountains and gently descends into the Japan countryside. Currently, the farmlands are golden with wheat glistening in the sunlight. Traffic is almost nonexistent. The actual driving distance is short, but the speed limit is only 50km (35mph). If we are successful in business, we would like to purchase a second home in the Nakatsu area. We are also going to try to teach at various kindergartens along the commute. The problem is where we can keep Kiley and Lucky while we teach a one hour class.

As soon as we move in October, our main focus will be to decorate the business, so that we can open as soon as possible. Unfortunately, decorating is not something that we possess much talent. I hope to come up with something soon so that we can purchase materials here. Finding materials in English can be a challenge in Japan. My biggest obstacle is to create an environment that appeals to the young and old alike.  I’m restricted as to what I can attach to the walls.

Fusuma (paper doors) separate the  classrooms. It’s really hard to attach anything to a paper door. The classrooms are not very large so every square meter needs to be carefully utilized to obtain maximum results. Speaking of furniture and appliances…instead of buying new stuff and suffering from sticker shock, we found a great place that sells used stuff. It’s officially my favorite place to shop in Japan. I hate shopping, but I don’t mind going there. One of the benefits of Japan is that the Japanese love to buy new things. They discard perfectly good stuff so that people like me can buy it at bargain prices. Most of our purchases will be for Nakatsu since Tsukahara will have all of our stuff from the U.S. This brings up a sore subject. Since we can’t afford to build a garage in Tsukahara, we will have to store all of our stuff in the house. This means a 40 foot X 8 foot X 8 foot container worth of stuff. I hope we have enough room. We want to keep Nakatsu as empty and professional looking as possible. I’m getting a headache just thinking about it. I’m slowly learning that even the best laid plans tend to fail if you try too hard to stick to them.

George