This blog has been on a long hiatus for almost four years. I am coming back to it after reading the blogs of French expats in Japan (mostly, Béné and Amélie Marie) and listening to a wonderful postcast series called mensetsu. I find these stories of travel and life abroad so interesting. Also, the vision of the people recounting them is a reminder of the need to keep an open mind about differences. To fight the urge of hastily categorizing, to seek deeper understanding and to reserve judgement. Living abroad is a unique opportunity to realize how different everything can be and to embrace diversity, because that's just how the world is.

This blog has been on a long hiatus for almost four years, because I have been slowly sliding into a hole (not quite the same as this one, but you get the drift) and fun on-the-side things were the first things to go. Now that I am fully aware of the situation and working on it, fun things are back on schedule as well as support in the form of blog reading, including some pretty fantastic colleagues (I have already mentioned the collective Tenure, She Wrote but I also have boundless admiration for Becca at Academomia who has twice the number of kids I have and xykademiqz has been an inspiring role model for years).

So, to get to the point of this post, if there is in fact an articulate point to it, I recently went on a trip to Japan. Many stars aligned to make it happen: the hard work of students and colleagues came to fruition to create this work travel opportunity while funding was also available. Most of all I am grateful to my husband who offered to take care of the kids so I could go, and even told me to take an extra week of vacation on top of the work related part of the trip. And that was a breath of fresh air. As a tourist, Japan was awesome on so many levels: beautiful places, lovely people, relaxing onsens, delightful cuisine, fun shopping, the list goes on... It reached out to me and helped me open my mind to things like self-care and journeys.

I've looked over the blog archives and found it mildly interesting, as a time-capsule if nothing else. I don't know where it is going to go from here, but it might get updated a little with recipes, thoughts about living abroad and coming back, Japanese stuff, who knows?