"Dad, can you move your company to Japan?" That was not on the bingo card as we wrapped Week 7 of our Family Gap Year™️. Everyone is really digging it here. We've found our groove (subways, workouts, almond butter and Whispering Angel). The entire family can even navigate Shinjuku Station without Google Maps. And in 3 weeks we're hitting control-alt-delete and heading over to Seoul. It is a nice fantasy to consider living here (tl;dr, way too hard for a solopreneur) and we've got a lot of the world left to see. I suspect the question will come up again. We also got hit with a gut punch of nostalgia this week. Our old house (rental) of 8 years came onto the market. Someone sent us the listing. It was empty, the tacky fixtures had been upgraded and the floors restored. "I miss our house," said our 9 year old. I didn't clarify that it was no longer "our house." Plus, they re-listed it at a 25% rent increase, which is a painful reminder of the re-entry tax that awaits us next summer. But it also validated the reason we're able to do this trip. We've been renters for 14 years (6 in Dumbo, 8 in Manhattan Beach). It's given us a ton of flexibility and financial liquidity to make bold life decisions. There are many peers who have said they would try this but a massive mortgage just breaks the math. Another side benefit of being renters for that long is that we accumulated way less stuff. Heck, we only had one car in LA. And we never fell into the trap of "you can own your stuff, or your stuff can own you." With kids aged 9 and 12 we were at that next phase of life where you dump all the baby shit. The milk-stained couches, the Ikea desks and that one dresser from when you were single. We were at the phase when we could've done an upgrade - heck we were overdue for one - but kept putting it off because of the possibility of this trip. There were moments where we were embarrassed to have certain people over, but had we done a 6-figure upgrade of all our stuff, we'd probably still be in LA. Today, our stuff sits in 4 storage cubes and we'll do the upgrade when we get back. But as of today, the thought of buying more stuff just doesn't even register. After all, the adventure bug does hit you pretty hard.