And so, the international living adventure we started with our move to Japan in 2016… and continued with three years in London… has ended. With the completion of my job contract, I have concluded a 47-year career, and have started the new adventure of retirement, back in the United States.
Saying my wife and I have mixed feelings would be a monumental understatement. We’ve enjoyed our international living experience. Tokyo still feels like home, even 6 years after leaving. It took us longer to get comfortable in London. But we learned to love the city and the European life, and leaving was much harder than we ever expected it would be.
All our international moves have been challenging and stressful. When we left for Tokyo, we were going to a culture new and unknown to us, and were leaving our house and all our possessions behind. But the excitement and anticipation of the move carried us through, and sustained us for an amazing 4-1/2 years.
Our move back from Japan to the US in 2020 was difficult. We were leaving a place we loved, at the height of the pandemic and the political upheaval leading to the 2020 US election. We easily moved back into our house, with all our familiar possessions, but found the world around us changed in a way that was difficult to accept.
Then we took an even bigger step in the decision to move to London. This time, we did things differently. We sold our house, our cars, and most of our possessions. It was a downsizing that we knew would happen someday… we just chose to do it in 2023. Selling, giving away and throwing out a lifetime of possessions was a next level of stress, even though we knew it was the right step to take.
London brought its own difficulties. Problems with getting our visas issued. Problems getting our bank account established. Figuring out a very different nationalized health care system. And oddly enough, sometimes struggling with communications in a city with one of the most diverse populations on Earth. Yes, English is the language… but with accents and colloquialisms that were unfamiliar and sometimes, embarrassingly, unintelligible to us.
As the end of my job assignment grew closer, we considered our options. Living in the UK wasn’t a viable one, as UK has no real retirement visa option. We considered moving to Portugal, and were almost ready to do so. But the complexities of the visa process proved too much of an obstacle. In the end, we came to the realization that we are US citizens, and the only viable option for us was to return to the US.
The question then became, where do we go, and what do we do? We no longer had a home in the US. Should we relocate back to Georgia… to another state? Buy a home? Rent? Considering the alternatives was mind numbing, particularly when doing so from 5,000 miles away.
Given the circumstances. we elected to arrange a 6-month lease on an apartment in Georgia, near two of our children. Not an ideal solution, but a more practical one.
With that settled in March, the race to get all the details arranged, sequenced, and executed began. Purging all the 220V appliances we had to buy for London, but won’t work in the 110V system in the US. Donating items to help the British Heart Foundation, and then scrambling when they failed to collect them as promised. Closing out the apartment in London. Finalizing the lease for the US. Buying a car for the US from London, so we would have transportation when we arrived (and running into another roadblock, with our old address on our driver’s licenses preventing us from making the purchase). Getting a relatively small number of possessions in London packed for shipment back to the US. And on and on – the list this time seemed – seems – endless.
Moving our cats back was perhaps the most complicated. Basically it was reversing the process we did three years ago. Because the UK won’t allow pets in the cabin, we engaged Happy Saluki Pet Transport to drive us to Paris, so we could fly our kitties back to the US. All in all, it went smoothly but was still a stressful and draining few days, a couple weeks prior to our final move back.
And now, we are back. Our new apartment is not yet our home. We are adapting. Slowly getting a few items to make the place livable, like a bed, something to sit on in the living room, some basic kitchen items. Adapting our own mindset to the US way of doing things, something we haven’t been used to for some time. And not least, adapting to retirement… a huge change that has been almost lost in the flurry of other details and arrangement.
So what is the next adventure? More time with the kids and grandkids. Travel… we don’t plan to just sit on the porch and watch the world go by. Over the next few months, making a decision on where to live next. Although we appreciate the opportunities that lie before us, it is often a struggle to view them with enthusiasm.
We have had an experience that few people will ever have. We’ve lived in two of the largest, most cosmopolitan cities in the world, and loved them both. What’s ahead is not clear, but perhaps one of the lessons we’ve learned from all of this is that we don’t always know what the future will hold.
The story is still being written… and the ending remains to be seen.
Four Years in Japan ... and now Three Years in London 