Sitting in the ANA lounge with half an hour to boarding, everything of value is either packed into hand luggage or perched on the seat beside me – K’s logged onto the Google intranet typing furiously, no doubt on some launch deadline or other.

An hour’s solid ride from here is the Port of Tokyo – and a 20ft container with all our worldly physical possessions that, tsunami’s and custom’s officials permitting, will make a slow crawl across the Pacific to our new home in Los Angeles. After the mad, mad rush to pack up here and relocate there this here is an enjoyable pocket of calm.

Whilst it’s a world away from the wonderfully pedestrian Tokyo, moving to LA is a home coming of sorts. My first ever car was a ’68 Chrysler Newport bought for a humbling $290 from a Santa Fe car lot and sold for half that sum 30 days and a few states later. Beat up from a lifetime of service, its engine overheated under the merest glimmer of sunshine – unfortunate really given that we were exploring southern states during the summer months. Driving mostly at night, steered clear of the freeways and put a heap of faith in aging, they-shouldn’t-smell-like-that-should-they brakes descending out of the Rockies. A trunk full of water and a love seat worn out from someone else’s exertions. Never had much money, never needed any – you’d be surprised how far a long summer’s worth of a teen’s tanned torso and a quaint British accent goes for goodwill in the flyover states. Never got around to buying car insurance, had a few offers to stay.

It used to be that ‘goodbye’ was a failure of imagination. Today in a world of intended, imagined and unrecognized digital threads spanning the globe, it’s simply not an option.

See you on the other side.