Tokyo Weekend

(The pictures above are various ones from January through May.  Pictures referenced in this post are near the end.)

Kerri here.  With precious few vacation days, it is crucial that we never waste a three day weekend by sitting around at home. For the Memorial Day holiday we decided to really spend time exploring Tokyo. We had been to a few areas and done a few things but didn't feel that we had "done" Tokyo. Unfortunately, we hit upon this plan a little on the late side and could not find a hotel room in the "reasonable" price category of under $200. Since our house is really only an hour by car, we could stay at home and drive in each day. A more affordable, if less vacationish, option.

We drove in Saturday morning, parked, and took the subway. We went first to Akihabara, the famous electronics district. Jesse had been once before during the iPhone debacle, but didn't really look around as he was focused on his task. I really wanted to see human-like robots, but we didn't find any. We did, however, find the best shawarma I've had since leaving Kuwait. It was worth the entire trip.

Next we headed over to Asakusa where the spirit of old Edo still lives. We did visit the oldest shrine in Tokyo, the Sensoji Temple. The main attraction here, for us anyway, was Kappabashi-dori or Kitchen street. Everything for your restaurant, including fake food for advertising, can be found on this street. We didn't buy anything, but it was really fun looking at all the shops.

At this point we headed back to our car and drove home. We sat out on the patio with the cool breeze sipping a beer and decided that home wasn't so bad.

The military runs a hotel in central Tokyo which we have access to. With it's excellent rates and being that it is quite a nice hotel, it is booked solid every weekend for the rest of the year. We had been told, however, that if you keep calling there might be a cancellation. I did keep at it with no luck for Friday or Saturday, but lucked out on Sunday and scored us a room.

So we headed there Sunday morning, parked the car and walked to the subway station from there. Sunday we went first to the Imperial Palace. You can't actually go in the palace itself, seeing as how the Emperor still lives there, but they do have a large portion of the gardens open to the public, for free. It is a beautiful area right in the middle of all the bustle. The few buildings that could be seen were quite impressive.

After that we headed over to Shibuya, a famous shopping district. Its most famous landmark is the huge pedestrian crossing of Lost in Translation and just about every image you see of Tokyo. There was a store that I really wanted to check out called Tokyu Hands. I didn't know much about it, just that it had fun stuff of all sorts. Well it turned out to be seven stories of fun stuff! The top floor was all science stuff, another was all sewing, another paper crafts, another office/school supplies. There was even a full bike shop. It was so much fun, but we were all so tired. I need to go back with girlfriends and really spend some time.

We were about to crash so we headed to the hotel. We went swimming in the very nice pool and soaked in the hot tub. We ate at one of the five restaurants in the hotel. I'm telling you, it's a nice place.

Monday morning we were up bright and early to get a jump on our final day. Today was Disneyland day. We figured it's a Monday, not a Japanese holiday and the weather is nice, not super hot. What a better time could you do the whole Disney thing? Boy were we wrong. No one knows why, but that particular Monday, all of Japan decided it was a good day for Disney. We managed to get on five rides the entire day. Some lines were three hours. One of the things that Tokyo Disney is famous for is the crazy varieties of popcorn. There are little carts all over selling different flavors. Some of the lines for popcorn were an hour. Needless to say, we sampled none. Rowan and I still managed to have fun, but Jesse said, "never again". There is another Disney park called Disney Seas that we will try next time. I think it's kind of like Californian Adventure, but it has some unique rides only found in Japan. The cool thing is that we live only an hour away so I know we will have plenty of opportunities to go back.

All in all we had a great weekend. We decided that we love Tokyo, but are very happy with where we are living for now. It feels good having a better idea of where things are and how the neighborhoods are organized. I think I could pretty much find my way anywhere now, and feel perfectly comfortable doing so. That's a nice feeling.

A Song for Everything

In our house we can come up with a song for just about anything a person might say, do, or touch. We often use this ability to torture Rowan for our own amusement. In Japan, there really is a song for everything, and I mean everything.

A few years ago Jesse bought his dream rice cooker which, of course, is Japanese. We were totally surprised when it played a song when we hit cook, and a totally different song when the rice was done. We have entertained guests with it and even do a little dance when the music plays. Well now we know that, since it is a Japanese appliance, it must play a song. Our washing machine plays a short song when I press start, and a longer song when it is finished. When the bathtub (which is electronically controlled) is finished filling there is a song. When the garbage trucks go down the road collecting, they play a song along with a message that I assume means, "sorry to inconvenience you". When your train is pulling up to the platform there will be a song, and often a different song while it leaves. If the train is just passing through but not stopping, there is yet a another song. Each train station seems to have their own songs, so if you were really good you could know where you were by the tune. One that baffled us for a while was the song played on loudspeakers in our neighborhood at exactly 4:00pm every day. We were finally informed that it is a signal for the kids that they should head home because it will be dark soon. Now that it is light a bit later, the song has moved to 5:00pm and is an entirely different tune.

As with many things in Japan, it is an amusing yet efficient system. I like it when systems can be both amusing and efficient.

As an aside, Jesse finally remembered to add me to this blog (ya, our FAMILY blog which I could not contribute to), so I hope to do more posting. There may even be pictures next time.

Random Stuff

Well we are still here, just busy with life and not finding it easy to sit down and make a blog post.

I'll keep the words short and get some pictures up.

These are some pictures of Yokohama Chinatown, our house and the nearby Perry Park:

End of week 1 in our new house

Week one in our house that is.

Well in many ways it was an uneventful week.  With me working most of the day, there isn't much time left for anything else in the evening.  However, we did manage to get the rest of the car paperwork done, so now I can drive it anywhere.  Kerri, on the other hand, ran into a kink getting her license.  They let her take the test (written and practical) but won't issue her a license until she has a base ID.  Technically, all she needs is her passport + orders, but showing that to a Japanese police officer would probably not go down very well.  So instead we are waiting for the new orders that have us being here farther out than March 31st, which will allow me to get a card with privileges (right now, only base access), and Kerri and Rowan to get a card at all.  It will also allow us to finish getting our 90 day tourist visas upgraded to real SOFA status with multiple entry/exit stamps.  Hopefully that's coming soon.

Meanwhile, I'm the only one who can drive the car, which is a bummer for Kerri during the week as she can't go about looking for things we need like a dining table and chairs for example.  We did manage to find a used fridge which is doing nicely.  Also across the street from us is a recycle shop (used stuff) and we found 2 LP gas heaters that hook up to our gas outlets that exist in all the rooms.  One is now Rowan's heater, and one is heating our "entertainment" room (mac mini hooked up to a computer monitor).  Also a small electric heater for the bathroom which is cooooooold!

Yesterday (Saturday), we went to the base to do laundry (no washer/dryer yet), then on the way home stopped at every big box store we could find to assess our options for furniture.  There are some critical items we need to start feeling more comfortable in the house.  Oddly, we did not find very many good options.  The best so far is a store called Nitori, where we got our futons originally.  We ended up buying a lot of little things there, but even their furniture options were not agreeable to us style/price-wise.  We're thinking we'll need to make the trek to Ikea after all...at least to see what they might have specific to Japanese homes.  There is an Ikea in Yokohama, but it's over an hour away by the toll roads which we have not had the pleasure of figuring out yet.  Today we've decided to just go to a candidate church and then come home to work on the many boxes of things scattered about the house.  Kerri will take the train in to Ikea to do an exploratory run tomorrow and see if it's even worth it.  I need to ask around at work for better furniture options.

Our internet is now on, and I have managed to make a perch out of a plastic box and cushion that is somewhat comfortable.  I'll try to get back into the habit of blogging again.  It's amazing how quickly the little things come and go in a single week, and all the cool stuff disappears from my brain.

I've tried numerous ways to get to work now:

1)  Bike to train, bike to work:  Verdict - not worth it.  I have to walk my bike most of the way to/from the station near base, and the pain of wrapping the bike up in the cover plus hauling it up and down stairs negates any positives to the process.  For a long train ride it might be worth it, but mine is only 15 minutes.

2)  Walk to train, walk to work:  Verdict - doable, but unpleasant feeling of being trapped on base.  I want me bike with me so I can get stuff done during the day and get off base easily for lunch.

3)  Drive to work:  Verdict - very easy, but unpleasant dealing with driving on base.  Plus - ick.

4)  Bike to work:  Verdict - I think this is the one for me.  I did a test run yesterday morning (saturday).  It took me about 50 minutes going there, but I was taking a weird route that sent me through back roads and tunnels.  This is not so good on Japanese roads as this means sidewalks frequently disappear.  On they way home I took main roads and did it in about half an hour.  This gives me the best of all the options and includes an hours worth of daily exercise.  It is unbelievably cold at the moment (and it isn't even raining yet!), but I can always layer up.

There's a liquor store nearby us and I've had the opportunity to try a couple of sakes.  I was worried a bit about Japanese sakes as I've found the ones I've had in the US tend to be a bit heavy on the "off-rice" smell (I think that's the koji), so I've always preferred Momokowa (Sake-One) Sake made in Forest Grove, Oregon.  But I'm happy to report the local stuff here is excellent!  One misstep though...the first bottle I picked out on my own turned out to be Shochu, a distilled 25% liquor that tasted awful.  It got poured down the drain and I went back and asked specifically to be shown the "o-sake" bottles.

We got to try out our o-furo (hot water bath) this week!  Very nice (and I'm not really a bath person)...first  your shower off, then get into the tub of hot water and soak.  You push a button to fill the tub.  If you've kept the water clean and free of soaps, you can push another button and it recirculates and reheats the water.  That way multiple people in the family can reuse the water and not waste it.  I also like the smaller, deeper bath tub.  You basically sit upright in it and the water comes up to your neck.  You can let the water spill over the sides as there is a drain in the shower floor right next to you.

There are plenty of other little annoying things that we're having to get used to in the house.  For example we finally got some nightlights to help navigating around at night.  It gets *dark*!  The heater in the bathroom is helping with the freezing cold showers in the morning.  And we are definitely looking forward to some basic furniture.

Well, that's it for now, I'll try and make updates more frequent now that we have internet again.

Moving in day

It's Sunday and we are finally moving into our house today!

I was able to get my driver license on Friday.  Usually, only people who ace the written exam get to take the practical on the day of the test and get their driver license.  I did *not* ace it, but no one in the entire class of over 100 people did either, so I took a chance and begged the instructor to let me take the practical that day as we needed to rent a car so we could move in over the weekend.  It worked!  He took me over right away and I got my driver license at about 4:30pm.  I went immediately to the rental office and got a van booked for Sunday at noon.  Then went to the insurance office to buy insurance for our new car.  Next step there is back to the Vehicle Registration Office for something magic, then to a police station to register our parking spot.  3 days after that, we go back to VRO, then to LTO (which is in Yokohama somewhere).  Anyway, our car won't be ours until another week or so.

Yesterday (Saturday), I was at the house with Rowan (Kerri felt sick and stayed home) in the morning.  We met our landlord, the gas guy came and turned on the gas, the Internet guy came and we signed up for Internet (160MBs for $80 a month!!!), and our agent dropped buy to sign some final paperwork and show us how to operate our heaters and bathtub.  We had lunch at a local ramen shop and rode the train back to base.

So today is moving in day.  We'll meet a guy from work who is kindly coming in to let us into the company office so we can extract our boxes from it.  We'll get everything in our house, then go hunting for futons, pillows and hopefully at least a refrigerator (used).  We still need washer/dryer before our appliances will be complete.

Tomorrow is my first day of work (though I still have some other things to take care of during the week).

Here's a picture of some Japanese Navy boats taken from a walkway near one of the train stations (not on base).

Area Orientation Brief

Death by powerpoint.

And we've got 4 more days to go.

Paperwork signing for our house is set for Thursday.

Tokyo By Bike: What Makes Japan a Great Cycling Nation?

One of the blogs I follow posted this interesting article:

What Makes Japan a Great Cycling Nation?