The best aspect about being in an international relationship is living in two countries!

J.J. and Ruriko VICKER, an American & Japanese couple living in Tokyo, met in 1989 in a way not uncommon in Japan when J.J. was teaching English and Ruriko was a student of his. "That part is pretty stereotypical," he says. "Except I?m a musician and she was a 16-year-old rock?n roller. We hit it off in a way that diverges from the stereotypical at this point. We lost contact, I went back to the States, and years later she looked me up and came to visit me." The couple had been close friends before, but when Ruriko came to visit Cincinnati, "something clicked" and the couple was eventually married in 1999 in Kentucky.

But the couple?s real adventure began while they were living in Cincinnati. "I was playing the bass in my Dad?s swing band and working part-time as a cook," J.J. recalls. "The swing trend crashed and a lot of musicians were out of work. I wasn?t really interested in it anyhow and neither her nor I wanted to stay in Cincinnati, so we packed up and loaded the van with all of our worldly possessions - including our cats - and left for Austin, Texas. We settled there and I cut my first solo album."

However, when the dot-com bubble burst, the local economy also crashed, so Ruriko and J.J. decided to move to Phoenix, where he worked for a while before they moved up to Las Vegas. "I had an after-hours gig at a Blues lounge as well as other clubs while she was working in a Japanese izakaya," J.J. says. "However, her mom became very sick and Ruriko wanted to come to Japan, so we did."

"Ruriko was talking to her mom and her grandma on a regular basis, especially her mom, but didn't talk to her dad much," J.J. says. He's not exactly what you would call the most sociable character. So, we had decided to come back to Japan, and she told her mom who was supposed to tell her dad and her grandma. Well, her mom had a brain tumor at the time and her judgement was more than questionable."

"Her father came home from work one evening, sits down to dinner, asks where his beer is and is told simply that he can't drink tonight because he has to pick up his daughter and son-in-law at the station and drive them back home. Needless to say his jaw hit the floor; he doesn't even know we're coming and at that same moment we're in Narita disembarking. And grandma thought we were coming to visit for a few days, she had no idea we were coming to live. So that was how I met the parents. It was a little rough at first, but nowadays, everything is cool; it's like we've been here all our lives."

"The best aspect about being in an international relationship is living in two countries!" J.J. says emphatically. Interestingly, the couple has strong personality difference. "We're both headstrong; we set out to do something and that's the end of the discussion," says. J.J. "The biggest most fundamental difference is our personal philosophies. She sees herself as a victim of circumstances, you take whatever life hands you and that's that. I sharply disagree; your life is what you make it. Your thoughts, actions and habits form your experience. I believe there are no victims in this world."