Japan? Cricket? What? Really?

I suppose I should probably clarify, for those who do not yet know, why I packed up my life and moved to Japan.

Back in September I was having a pretty average time at work, and while I was on my Thames Walk I gave some serious thought about what to do next. Back in 2003 I knew that my two great passions in life were Travel & Sport. Since I was a fat slob back then, the chances of me breaking into the world of elite sportsmen seemed pretty slim, so I went down the travel road instead.

Ten years on and I felt I’d got the most out of what the industry had to offer. I’d had some amazing experiences, been to places I would never have visited and met some brilliant people. I’ve no doubt that I could have kept ticking over, having more great experiences, but it just seemed that I’d reached a plateau and needed to challenge myself again. As such I put word out to a few people I know who work in the sports industry that I was looking to change careers, spoke to a few others and began applying for everything I saw.

The very first place I looked was the website for the International Cricket Council (ICC) and they were advertising a job as ‘Project Manager – Junior Participation’, to be based an hour or so outside of Tokyo. Without giving much thought to the whole thing I fired off my CV and cover letter and two interviews and four weeks later I’d accepted the job. More on the specifics of that next time.

So here I am and it certainly is a change. Those who know me well enough will recall that I tried living abroad once before and didn’t last all that long, but I feel infinitely more prepared this time and it doesn’t half make a difference moving to a country with a job, place to live and good mate already over here! It’s definitely scary and I’m definitely sad about leaving people behind, but it’s also exciting as hell and I really do feel like I’m putting myself “out there”.

I don’t want these posts get too long and boring, so I’ll do another later this week about how the first couple of weeks over here have gone. Those of you on Facebook may have seen the album I posted yesterday with a few pictures that may amuse you. More of those to come I’m sure.

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Laters.