Hallelujah

Tomorrow is the last day. We’re shoving everything back into suitcases after five weeks in a tiny one-bedroom suite and moving into our lovely 4 bedroom house (complete with 2 car garage and deck) on Friday.

I don’t know when we’ll get internet (we’re getting furnishings and appliances on Monday - woohoo air matresses!) but you know what? I don’t care. I’m just so glad to be getting into our house. Plus, the delivery on Monday is supposed to include a small selection of my yarn…

PS: Happy Anniversary. You know who you are.

Journey to Japan: the aftermath

Hi, everybody! Sorry for the long gaps between installments, but we don’t have internet access in our building. I end up going to a computer lab across the way about once a week…which is really limiting.

When we finally made it here there were two huge things that we had to adjust to almost immediately. One was the time change: you can’t go from Texas to Japan in one fell swoop without getting your times all mixed up. We pushed hard for a quick adjustment (we had an easy start because we didn’t get to our hotel in Tokyo until about 6pm and crashed almost immediately) but it’s really hard to convince a one year old and a three year old that they need to try and sleep a little longer because while it may feel like late morning, it’s ‘really’ 2 am. It’s also a bit of a drag when none of the restaurants open until 5:30 and you really want some breakfast - or something…they had spaghetti and corn soup on the breakfast bar - at 4. We were mostly over the jetlag after the first week, through rigid scheduling and merciless nap regulation. No biggie.

The second was the weather. The moment we stepped off the plane we could smell the snow on the air and felt the real, winter cold that we haven’t had for years. We weren’t quite as prepared as we thought we had been (gloves would have been nice while we were waiting on the taxi at the curb), but we did all right. The boys, of course, were distressed by the cold winds and interested by the white stuff all over. At first, Max insisted it was ice cream. Now he’s just afraid of it.

Yes, you read that correctly: my three year old is afraid of snow. He likes to look at it out the window, and he says he wants to play in it, and he speaks excitedly about ’snowmans,’ but get him up close to it and he’s petrified. I don’t think he was at first, but after a few times walking in it (getting it stuck to his shoes, and on his pants) and feeling how cold it really is outside, he started crying when we made him walk on it. Trying to get him out of the car into a snowy parking lot is like trying to get a cat into a bathtub. It’s even more fun when we have to walk outside while it’s snowing. He fusses, and stalls, and tries to keep the snowflakes off of him, all while crying because he’s getting cold. He prefers ice, actually: it doesn’t get stuck to him. His rehabilitation is a gradual process, but he’s making small steps and I feel confident that by next winter he’ll be playing in the snow with everybody else.

You may be surprised that I didn’t mention culture shock as one of the immediate adjustments we had to make. Certainly it was in evidence; the minute we stepped onto the plane for our transcontinental flight we were immersed in a sea of Japanese and Japanese people - they even gave us sushi with our dinner - but to be honest, it didn’t affect us that much. That was the one aspect of our trip that we had prepared most for! We expected and welcomed the experiences, even going so far as to try to get something out of JapanTV (which was also playing) when we got sick of Bee Movie.

It took a little longer for the cultural disorientation to set in; it didn’t really start until we began establishing normal daily routines (as normal as they can be in this transition…we are in temporary lodging, after all). So far, we’re enjoying Japan and its people very much: it’s only every once in a while that we really feel how displaced we are.

Journey to Japan (pt 2)

Thanks for the nice comments, everyone! We are having a huge adventure.

After a short hop to a larger airport we dragged ourselves to a considerably larger plane and got settled in for the longest leg of our journey - a non-stop flight to Tokyo. We flew coach, of course, but we had seats right behind the bulkhead, so it wasn’t so bad. The boys had a rough time sitting still for so long, even though we let them out to stand up or get down or fidget whenever we could. We passed the time watching ‘Bee Movie’ multiple times (NOT because it was that good) and a little airplane moving across a little map of the world, marking our progress. It’s easy to forget, at times, that the rectangular worldmap we see so often is not actually representative of the earth we live on: while it might seem that the fastest way to get from the Midwest to Tokyo would be to fly straight west until you get there, we actually flew north. We went up, north over the US, over Canada (does that mean I can say that I’ve been there now?) and across Alaska. The worst turbulence we experienced the entire trip was when we flew over Juneau, by the way. Then we crossed the Bering Sea - we actually saw glaciers, out the windows - and flew south over a bit of Russia and over Japan.

Our seats were also right by one of the bathrooms which, though at times proved smelly, allowed us to meet several of the other passengers who were travelling to the same destination as we were. Everyone was so helpful to us! We met one man, in particular, who helped us drag our suitcases through two different airports, on and off of shuttle buses and to our hotel. Greg took him out to dinner while the kids and I collapsed in bed. We spent the night in Tokyo and took a short hop in the morning to our new home!

Woohoo! Welcome to Japan!