My 5am wakeup call got me up and into the still-dribbling shower at Hotel June. Checked the TV–yep, they’re still playing Starcraft. Went down to the basement diner and refused breakfast, just had some tea. Packed into the hotel bus with some other guests, all Korean, to head to the airport, where I bought Junko a bottle of duty-free Chanel Allure for about $30 cheaper that it would’ve been in Japan.

I was a bit nervous in the Fukuoka airport: I had a suitcase filled with cheese and ziplock sandwich-sized baggies of sunflower seeds, like bags of gray-striped cocaine. But nobody even checked my bag. Japan may be an island nation and thus as endangered by foreign pests as Australia is, but they just don’t take it as seriously.

Finally, home. Junko and I embraced as Lili the Schnauzer danced around my ankles. 19-year-old Natsumi was sleeping on the sofa, and would not wake up until about 3 in the afternoon, saying, "Oh, you’re home."

And so, that’s it, the big adventure to Australia. Right now, I’m discussing with a couple of professors the possibility of doing a part-time PhD through Monash University, and if I go for it, I’ll be Down Under pretty often, at least once a year, for the next five or six years. I hope that does happen–I really liked it there.