It's the day before our flight to Tokyo and we are almost completely packed and ready to go.

We have spent the last few weeks gradually packing up all of our belongings into cardboard boxes. The move day was rather strenuous. A long day carrying numerous boxes down three flights of stairs and into storage containers. We started at 11:30am and were finished five hours later!

After the epic move out, we headed back to Russ and Davinia's house - our temporary home until Tuesday. Saturday night we enjoyed some beer and pizza with some old friends which a nice way to say goodbye. Phoenix asked for his Auntie Sarah and Uncle Stu to put him to bed, so we read him a few stories, which we really enjoyed, then kissed him goodnight.

On Sunday we headed over to Stu's mum's house for a lovely meal with all the family. It was a great day and another chance to say goodbye to some of our nearest and dearest.

On Monday we had the great pleasure of returning to our flat for the final time to give it a good clean and to bid farewell to our neighbours.

We were picked up on Tuesday by my parents to return back to Dartford, Kent. I didn't realise how much stuff we would be bringing, but we just about managed to cram it all in my Dad's VW Polo. It made for a very cozy journey back - it was just a shame that the M25 was jam packed and it took us about four and a half hours to get back home!

The last few days have been spent saying more goodbyes. We had a lovely meal at Mark and Lorraine's last night for my Dad's birthday and said goodbye to our niece, Lily.

The rest of today has been spent packing and ensuring we have all the stuff we need for our year long journey ahead - I hope we haven't forgotten anything!

Stu has promised to upgrade this blog to a fancy version with comments, Google maps, keyword search, photo rating and comments and lots of other bells and whistles. For now, we are using our old blog format - just remember to keep visiting the site!

(We last embarked on our travels 700 days ago!)