Actually I probably won’t. I can see myself playing ignorance to the fact that I have to return to Canada up until the very end. But there are reminders. Like just now when I called JAL to change my flight. It had been booked for September 4th but for a while I’ve known that I will stay for a couple more weeks. I enabled me to be vague when asked about my return date. “Oh…sometime in the middle of September…” Now it is set and it’s written in my agenda book and I added a note to my workgroup’s calendar. I will be leaving on Tuesday, September 18th - arriving in Vancouver that morning.

I don’t have a countdown but I have a total count. If I am correct after leaving in September I will have been in Japan for a total of 509 days.