Our Apartment

Here's the tour:

Front of the building. Our building actually starts just past the street sign - it's the yellow and peach one. 

This is the back of our building. We are on the second floor, second from the left. 

The epic toilet. Nope, sorry folks, no bidet here. Just your average western toilet, with a 2-function flush (you know..#1 #2...), a hand washing sink on the tank (which dispenses the appropriate amount of water for hand washing, depending on... your flushing choice), and a deodorizing cat sticker. You know, normal. 

View from the entryway. 3 more futons just arrived via delivery truck! Benefit of being a foreigner? Free shipping, sometimes. 

To the left in entry: washing machine, shower room/tub, and sink. 

Kitchen: 2 burner gas top, oven/microwave combo, toaster oven. Also have a rice cooker and water boiler (like a electric kettle, but it can be programmed  to keep water warmed all day for repeated use - tea) under the sink. 

Fridge on top. Two middle drawers are freezers, and bottom is veggie drawer.  

This is the living room area, but we sre going to make it our bedroom because it's right under the A/C! We took off the sliding doors to the kids room to share the cool (and heat in winter). 

To the left is the kids room. The futons are folded up for airing out/cleaning right now. This room has the traditional tatami floors. 

Second "bedroom" that will actually be our living room. It's also the only room besides the kitchen with storage,  so it's our family dresser. 

Out on the balcony we hang dry our laundry. We have a washer, but no dryer. The temperature, even in the dead of winter, apparently doesn't often go below freezing. 

Parking lot for our building and a nearby one. Very quiet residential area. 

 

There are some more Japanese-style houses with slate roofs in the neighborhood which is nice. It's not all apartment buildings. 

That's all for now!

Bikes, Food & Arcades

Today we took the plunge and bought a minivan. 

Okay, not exactly... 

We've seen plenty of moms hauling 2 kids around the city on these. We decided to invest in one, especially given the amount of walking we've been doing. I've personally been pretty in shape, given the nature of my job at Staples. However, when you leave that car-fueled society, you easily recognize the depths of our dependence upon them. And my legs sure do recognize that pain!

Noah got to pick out a sweet ride also, complete with basket and pedal-powered headlight: 

Tomorrow should be my day, although I'm also hoping to find a second hand bike store. You can easily find a decent new bike here, but I'd like to see what's out there. They've got everything from "old people" bikes (here the elderly actually still are out and about pedaling and walking everywhere) to motor-assisted models under $800. But I'm going for basic. 

We also hit the Sega arcade at the mall, which had games for the whole family - Sydney's age to the older gambling crowd. 

Obviously, the kids loved it. 

We rounded out the day with some play time at the park, and spaghetti dinner. Yesterday we made tacos and had Coldstone at the mall. Believe it or not, you can find or improvise most ingredients for American meals. We're dying to try Indian and some REAL ramen, but when you've got little ones.. We'll get there. They're adjusting and trying new things each day. 

This was my coffee try today. 

Coffee Boss machines are everywhere. Actually, for those who don't know, Japan loves vending machines. There's one behind our building. There's one around the corner next to our park. There's a few in front of the grocery store next to the park, etc...

They've got bottled water, green tea (the actual good, unsweetened kind), coffee, maybe a Coke, and usually a few kids fruity drinks. I will try to remember to take a picture of them. And our apartment... We're almost settled in (Angela and Sydney are sleeping on inflatable mattresses, the boys on futons, and myself on a folded comforter). Tomorrow we get three more futons delivered, which was our most major purchase. We might get a bunk bed for the boys, but probably holding off until our paychecks start arriving. We start work next Monday, and are lucky to have this week to settle in and so much help from our neighbor/fellow teacher! 

Good night! (Or good morning I suppose)

Settling In

I never thought I'd depend on a mall again in my life. Especially after the mess/ghost town that we've got in Racine, WI. 

But then there's Mozo. It's a huge, four story, 220 store beast. Except it's in Japan, so it's spotless and everyone is nice. We broke down and got the kids McDonald's on our first day, especially so for Mr. Middle Child Seth, who hardly eats anything. 

McDonald's in Japan is so unlike our familiar U.S. version. When we visited Kyoto eight years ago, I remember being shocked by several things. First off, the food tastes good. Not exactly classy burger-joint good, but a few levels up. Probably something to do with higher food quality regulations. Also, they recycle everything (obviously this is a national thing, not just for fast food chains). My favorite is a little sink/drain where you pour the ice or whatever of your drink you didn't finish. The garbage is then lighter, easier to sort, and you don't get those nasty trails of leaking liquids that my barista friends would recognize. 

I digress. Yesterday, we returned, and 

with ALOT of help from our new teacher friend Jen, we were able to get cell phones. It took a little over 30 minutes, which seemed agonizingly slow to me (with three kids in tow around dinner time), until Jen told us the horror of her 4

hour cell phone purchase from the same company. Apparently the lengthy waits are the norm. Yikes...

Afterward, we split up so I could rush home and make tacos. We brought a few packets of seasoning from them U.S., and thankfully we have a small grocery store (probably "medium" by local standards), that carries flour tortillas. There's an international store at the mall that carries salsa, and also this gem:

Yes. If you'll direct your attention to the top right, this bag is packing GLOBAL FLAVOR. Whatever that is. I'll let you know. 

So all this lovely food waiting to be made, and rice to be made in our rice cooker. We had one back home that was used at least twice a week, so I felt excited to give the kids similar food. That confidence drained quickly when I tried to turn on the gas stove. And start the rice. 

We'll, I can always heat up leftover

Lasagna from our neighbor's welcome dinner, right? Nope. 

Our microwave doubles as a small oven. But like all our appliances, they're written in Japanese kanji. I don't speak or read the language. Our friend Jen had briefly explained then appliances yesterday, but I'm so tired I couldn't remember. 

Dinner fail. 

But today is a new day. It's Tuesday morning here, and I've been up since about 3:15am, just like yesterday. Yesterday it was Sydney who woke up then, and today it was Noah. Honestly, at this point, I don't know how I'm alive. It'll get better, I just have to believe. 

Later today our apartment should be mostly organized and clean, so I'll finally post pictures of that. Until then, here's Angela's latest purchase:

 

And from our first night, something we picked up from 7-11. Yes, they are much better here also: delicious noodles with tomatoes and pesto sauce: 

Nagoya

So here we are. We're starting to settle into our new apartment:

Lots more organizing to do! But today (Monday), we are getting there. I'll be posting more from my phone once we get setup, and able to post more photos too! I know photos are what people really want to see!

We're fortunate to have a small park with a playground right around the corner - really, around the corner. Yesterday the kids played a bunch, and were a little shy to play with the other kids. 

But today, I brought Noah and Sydney there while Angela and Seth went shopping at a nearby mall, Mozo. Noah and Sydney made friends with another five year old boy who had a one year old baby sister. The boy and his mother caught cicadas with a net from the trees surrounding the playground, and Noah carried the boy's bug box around after them, guarding the catch. 

I forgot how cicadas are the sound of Japan in summer. 

Departures & Arrivals

I had originally planned on some dramatic account of the journey here (and a "journey" it truly was), but after recounting most of it to my parents on Skype… I realized I tend to blab and needed to be more concise. 

Our flight left from O'Hare in Chicago at 3:20pm on Thursday, July 24th, and flew nonstop to Beijing. We had a twenty hour layover, so we booked a room at the Hilton very close to the airport. The first flight was the "killer that everyone dreads - 13+ hours. I didn't know what to expect with three kids!! Since we've done it before, I knew it would be one of those things you just get through. We'd done it twice before, so it would be fine. The kids actually did great, and our flight on Hainan airlines was wonderful. The staff was great, they served an abundance of food and drinks, and everything was very clean. We flew on one of the new Dreamliners, and other than a few brief bouts of turbulence, it was smooth. Seth and Sydney fell asleep during the second half of the flight for about 6+ hours. Noah held out pretty long, and even told me he'd stay awake until we got to the hotel (the equivalent time back home was something like 4am). He passed out for the last 3 hours. All in all, I am shocked at how well they all did. We were NOT "that family with the screaming kids."

We landed in Beijing around 6:30pm on Friday, July 25th because of the time difference forwards. The plane didn't pull up to a bridge, but instead one of those rolling staircases on the tarmac. We got down the massive staircase and boarded a bus that wound sharply around the terminal drive. After various escalators and halls, we came to a checkpoint. A uniformed guy pulled me aside and said "temperature?" questioningly, and directed me into a small room to sit in a chair. He pulled out a form (no English) and for the next 5+ minutes we struggled through it, without me really understanding what was going on. He then came around the desk and pointed a digital thermometer at my head.

Oh, that temperature. 

As soon as he got the reading, he motioned me out of the room. Angela pointed out to me that the sign above the door said "QUARANTINE," a small detail I missed in my sweaty daze of blindly following this guy.

After getting through immigration, a uniformed man with a cart greeted us, and proceeded to grab our bags that I pointed to off the carousel. He lead the way, and we gladly, tiredly followed. I got a bit nervous when he motioned for me to follow him alone down a side of the terminal that wasn't fully lighted or occupied, but it was where our stroller had ended up. Whew…

Hotel Shuttle > Hilton. The room was beautiful. Full air conditioning, people to help us with our massive pile of luggage, amazing soaking tubs, and an American-style breakfast the next day. 

Too bad the kids didn't sleep. Sydney and Seth let us sleep about 4 hours before waking. At least we were the first ones to show up for breakfast at 6:30am when it opened!

We spent the rest of Saturday relaxing indoors, and admiring the smog of Beijing. It's very real.

I could go through the gory details of our next flight, but I'll sum it up: no fun.

Our flight left Beijing for a short, one hour hop south to Qingdao. The itinerary said it was an hour layover, and we'd stay on the same plane. 

Well, the kids all fell asleep. And then they told us we'd have to deplane, with all our carry-ons, go through customs, and come back to the place. To our same seats. Even though they'd already torn through all our bags. So we dragged three sleepy, grumpy, barely conscious kids quickly through a maze of escalators and halls and security checkpoints, and then back into the plane, into the same seats. 

The next flight was just over 2 hours, and we were beyond thankful to be on Japanese soil. Another maze of customs forms and line, and we were out! Yua and her mom picked us up in a big van (thankfully) that accommodated us 5 and our 12 bags, and we arrived at our apartment about an hour later.

The Background

For those who don't know, we've been to Japan before. My brother has studied Japanese and visited several times before (he currently lives southwest of us, but it's a bit far), and we had the fortune to fly out to visit him in 2006. We loved it so much that we returned less than a year later to the Kansai region of Japan - pretty much in the center of the country. We stayed mainly in Kyoto, but visited Osaka, Hiroshima, and Tokyo also.

At the end of the summer of 2007, we had a friend whose mom was the local coordinator for a foreign exchange student program. They were getting desperate to find a few final hosts parents, with less than a month until the students were to arrive. Pretty much on a whim, we applied, even though we were only 24 and 25 at the time. I think Angela casually mentioned we'd love a Japanese student. She probably did..

We were fortunate to be chosen immediately, and that our student, Yua, would arrive in …..(drumroll please)……. TWO WEEKS. Quite a shock and rush to be prepared. But it all worked out, and Yua was soon a part of our family. She attended the local high school, and we tried our best to cook and care for her, and expose her to American culture. She was already fluent in English, and even her classmates didn't know she was an exchange student! The school year went quickly, and the girl who turned 16 shortly after arriving in our home was soon "graduating" and on her way back to Japan.

We kept in touch afterwards, and were fortunate to have the opportunity to return this year, with our three little ones in tow. Her family runs two international schools, with a third opening officially next month. We will both end up teachers in various capacities, and our kids will all attend. The school immerses the children in both English and Japanese, so they will likely pick up Japanese quicker than we could ever hope to!