Hellooo fellow canine enthusiasts, friends and to those who join us in passing! Welcome to our post!

These past few weeks I have been getting to grips with driving school and tests. Holy crap on a corn cracker were they challenging. Mostly down to the translations used. However with the first stage done and out of the way I’m now onto stage two – driving on the main roads. Oh what fun!

Sasuke as ever has been my rock throughout all of this and has kept me focused on the task at hand. The walks we go on – long or short – consist of discussions about where we can move to thats cheaper than where we are now and where we can have cheaper or non payment for car parking. We also talk about the type of car we are going to get.

And yes! We have been going on walks!! I too can not believe that this has been happening. I love our walks together and watching him sniff his way around the river as well as sending pee mail for other dogs. Although to be fair I doubt it will last long, we have the dreaded rabies vaccination on Tuesday. Battle armor at the ready. Treats. Check. Arm guards. Check. Everything else?! Well we’ll wait and see.Sigh. Wish us and more importantly our wonderful vet luck!

One thing that has come to light quite starkly is that in getting everything ready for a move to NZ we have repeatedly come across the same challenges for when we move over there – and that is their repeated lockdowns of towns with cases of covid. To be clear I am neither for nor against the Kiwi approach, I am looking at it from the perspective of traveling around the country and earning money to continue to do so.

With the rather large cost of moving – its important that Sas and I find a job quite quickly – either temping on a farm or (god forbid) back into retail. I could probably do online teaching and transcription for some extra money as well – internet depending. Either way what it ultimately means is that now the boarders are officially opening – the job options are severely restricted and if we are caught in a lock down, financially detrimental. Kiwi lock downs of towns have been known to last months. In terms of finances out on the road this can be crippling even with remote work.

So what to do?! Well as always a back up plan is in place for both Sas and I and that is to do van/ kei car life in Japan. It s is substantially cheaper – although still ridiculously expensive – to do here in comparison to NZ. At the time of first posting about van life in NZ it looked like restrictions were going to be eased by the time Sas and I were looking to move there. However that has not been the case. So kei car/ van life it is in Japan!

A good point about this is that I can still have somewhat consistent work either PTP; PT or PPL (sorry – work terms for contracts) with the company and don’t really have to put up with constant negativity and snide remarks from coworkers. The ability to work from home makes it more palatable. I also have the option of taking leave of absences for up to a month at a time which would be great for traveling around Japan and exploring with Sas – which is what this is all about and who it is for.

Well. Thats it for now. A somewhat shortish post about what we have been upto/doing.. until our next post..!

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