Big move

Many of you know (from previous posts, or talking to me) that I will be moving to French Polynesia at the end of this summer and living there for a year of fieldwork before coming back to Berkeley. I was originally intending to move at the end of August or even a bit later, but a big Berkeley expedition to the Marquesas Islands (which has the distinction of being the most isolated archipelago from any continent in the world) is planned starting on July 29, and so I will be leaving in late July. This blog will get considerably more interesting at that point, as I will be navigating life in a foreign country, rather than just sitting around in Berkeley. The plan is to spend a year living on the island of Mo'orea, and during that time, both do ecological work on Mo'orea and its sister island Tahiti, but also to travel throughout Eastern Polynesia (the Society, Tuamotu, Gambier, Marquesas, and Austral archipelagos, and the southern Cook Islands as well) to do collecting. It's all a bit hard to believe I am about to do this, because it's less than 3 months from now, and I have 2 trips planned before then, and a semester to finish.

In the meantime, I am going to Japan at the end of this month for my friend Nakamura-san's wedding in Sapporo. This will be my first visit back to Japan since I lived there, and I am really looking forward to it. I will be flying into Kansai Airport, taking the train up to Hokkaidō (which is, admittedly, kind of insane and will take a full day), staying in Sapporo for a few days, taking the train back down to Nagoya to see my friend Aaron, his girlfriend Nami, and their baby Noah, and then spending the remaining six days or so in the Kansai area (Kyōto and Shiga prefectures) before I fly back here. I'm buying a Japan Rail Pass before I go, and I want to make train reservations before I arrive in Japan, but I called the three Japanese travel agencies in San Francisco today, and they were unanimous: no, you cannot make reservations before you arrive in Japan. This sucks because I have to take the train the day following my arrival, and I will be taking a succession of bullet and express trains, so I have to make reservations upon my arrival in the airport. I kind of feared it was going to be like this. Japan is a wonderful, very efficient country, but when it comes to interfacing efficiently with the outside world, sometimes it fails to deliver.