Great post Brian. I suspect that I will be facing the same tough decision in a few years. I would like my lady to live in the UK for a couple of years first though, although where we live after that who knows. I have a huge advantage in that I work for a University, so I can fast track her English skills up to a good standard. Hopefully I can do the same with my Mandarin.
I guess our future plans will depend on economic conditions, as both our careers are dependent on the state of the economy. Thankfully working in IT I can pretty much work anywhere that has Internet access.
The last time I went to Japan I did not get homesick at all. I really felt as if I belonged there. I think part of the secret was not keeping in touch with what was going on back home. It's tough, but I think it's what you have to do. My family aren't particularly close - they never come to visit me in Colchester, so moving to Asia won't make much difference lol.
I am really struggling with Mandarin and the Chinese characters. I think the biggest problem is that I haven't yet fallen in love with the language like I did with Japanese. Mandarin is just so alien - at least in Japanese the pronunciation is easy and a lot of the loan words are recognisable.
If you move to China you will learn the language pretty quickly though. I found that in Japan I began to learn the Kanjii characters for the station stops, so I didn't have to wait for the English signage to be displayed. In Hong Kong I began to be able to tell if someone was speaking Mandarin or Cantonese, although that's about as far as I got.
Good luck!
