Thanks for reminding people to test the waters first. I'd go farther and say to start with something like a three month rental, then try a year. An amazingly high percentage of expats seem to last less than two years, and that's true for almost every country.

Things that you think are great become annoying, things that you hated at first turn out to be totally unimportant in the long haul, you just can't tell until you are there.