At frequent intervals since ‘Er Indoors and Hughesy “became an item” late in 2000, various friends and acquaintances have asked when “the big overseas trip” was going to happen.
More specifically, when was Hughesy going to Japan?
Madam had been back home a number of times, but, for a variety of reasons, I’d declined to join her until April 2008.
On most of her earlier visits there were more important issues on the agenda than guiding a large hairy foreigner through the Land of the Rising Sun, but when she returned from a short sojourn in October 2007 with the news there was this little bar she knew I would love it was time to bite the bullet and venture off on my first trip overseas.
For most of the twenty-something years between the time I arrived in Bowen and the completion of the Little House of Concrete, overseas travel was not a viable prospect, partly for financial reasons and partly because travel associated with cricket teams didn’t leave a whole lot of free time in vacation periods (assuming that I had the money, which I mostly didn’t). And, once the Little House of Concrete was completed, there was the small matter of paying off the mortgage and completing the landscaping, both of which needed to be done before I could retire.
But, finally, I’ve gone. And I loved it. And, unsurprisingly, I’d started thinking about “next time” before we’d even left the country.
Japan 2008 The Travelogue The Photo Albums
Japan 2012 The Travelogue The Photo Albums
Japan 2013 The Travelogue The Photo Albums
Japan 2015
Japan 2017