Another week has past and what's happened? We're feeling more and more settled. Our apartment is feeling more homey and we really like it. On Saturday we opened up most of the boxes with books in them and put them on shelves. That's always a turning point for me in a new place. Things were starting to take shape and we were getting a better idea of what we still needed to find to make this place work smoothly.
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| The sunny side of the apartment (south side). This side faces the river/stream/waterway that we regularly walk along. It's a block of four apartments and ours is the top right of this photo. If you look carefully you can see our laundry drying on our small balcony. |
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| This is the north side. Our apartment is the top left here. The window on the left is my office. |
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| Bookshelves populated. So fun to see old favourites there. |
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| David leaving the apartment to go for a walk with me one evening. |
Reality checks
On Sunday we went back to our old church and found that they had had to scramble to find a place to worship that morning. The electricity was off in the main sanctuary, so they moved to the room where the Sunday School normally meets. A Japanese worship service was a good reality check. In Australia we're frequently considered the experts on Japan, and especially people assume we're fluent in the language. Yet I come back here and it doesn't take long to show that, though we get by, my language, in particular, isn't superb. I understood very little of the sermon on Sunday (noting that that understanding a long monologue is one of the hardest language skills). Two days earlier, I also understood very little of the official language involved in buying a car or getting us registered at the city office (David managed better than me). But somehow we get by! It's so hard to explain to people who have never lived in a country with a difficult language like Japanese how we can feel at home here, but also not be completely fluent!
Monday
This day we rode again to a nearby shopping hub and went to a homeware store, electronics store, and a 100 yen shop. We bought a number of smaller things to help in the shower and kitchen. Best purchase was a new rice cooker (we threw our 23-year-old 10-cup one out last year). When we rode home at midday, the temperature was well above 35C and we were glad it was just a short ride home and that we could have a quiet afternoon.
Wednesday was a big day
We borrowed a car on Wednesday and did a number of jobs, this took all day and involved several hours of city driving. We drove back to the place that we're buying our new car and finished off some paperwork that we hadn't been able to do last week because we forgot to take our inkan (Japanese seal, which replaces signatures on official documents). We also found out we can't pick up our car until the end of August.
Then we drove another hour to an area we rarely visit in a car: Shinjuku. It's much more inner city than where we live. There we bought a second-hand desk off a guy I think is from Egypt. I found this in the same way I bought a few things in Australia: through Facebook Marketplace. It was a bit dodgy for a little bit, though, because he gave us a location that was over the road from his tiny apartment and said to "ring the bell" when we arrived. Alas the location was another block of apartments, none of which had his name on their mailboxes. Finally he answered my messages (I think he works late hours and was asleep) and came out to meet us.
After that we drove back closer to home to a big second hand store. There we found an IKEA armchair for half the price we would have bought it new, but didn't find the printer we wanted.
Our second last stop was at Nitori, our favourite Japanese furniture store. It has an open plan, so much better than IKEA. And the furniture is designed for small Japanese homes, so you're much more likely to find stuff that's the right size. There we bought a carpet and curtains for our washitsu (Japanese style room with delicate woven flooring called tatami), this room is our lounge room and it's easier to take care of the flooring if it's covered. We also bought three pieces of furniture for the kitchen. I'm planning to write about that next week after the furniture has been delivered, so I can show you. Japanese kitchens initially appear impossible to Australians, who are used to lots of bench (counter) space, and quite a lot of cupboards, but these problems can often be solved with problem solving and the purchase of a few small and larger items.
Our last stop was to drop the car back to its owners and ride home. It had been a long, hot, exhausting day and my physical condition slipped back a little, but with rest in the cool and some food, I recovered and slept really well and long that night.
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| Lounge room is taking shape. TV is out of sight on the right and still needs something solid to sit on. |
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| My new desk. We'll add a small bookshelf where those boxes are next week. |
Recovery days
Both Tuesday and Thursday I spent mostly at home. Some of that was just resting in the cool, but also writing a prayer letter and doing more home-set up. Yesterday we also pulled the furniture out of the lounge and put the carpet in (more like a door-to-door rug) as well as David's new chair. We also rearranged the office and installed my new desk (which I really like). I keep reminding myself that we've had a big month and that slow days and recovery time is important, especially with the energy sapping heat and humidity this time of the year in Tokyo. Although, having good air conditioning at home has meant that we've been able to achieve more in a shorter space of time than we otherwise would have.
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| Snickerdoodles and my microwave- convection oven (on a temporary table) |
Complexity
Settling after a big move like this takes time, even though we've moved back to our old neighbourhood. We're thankful that we've had time to make the adjustment. Jumping between countries is weird. It's like jumping between two different parts of our lives.
Here we have a lot of history, a lot more of our lives have been lived here as adults than in Australia. This morning we rode to the police station to change the address on our drivers licences (wish it was like Australia where you do it online!). The station is across the road from where our youngest son was treated for concussion a couple of years ago. Part of the route we rode is a route I've often ridden on my way to and from my big park adventures. Our visit to Nitori brought up memories of the first time we visited this store when we were in our first month in the country in 2000/1. Our apartment has many more bits and pieces of our last 23 years than our lives in Australia do.
But it's okay. I'm reading a biography of Naomi Osaka at present. I'm surprised by how parts of her story resonate with me. She's grown up and lives "between" cultures, as do many high level athletes. She's black, and Haitian, and Japanese, and American. I'm clearly a white Australian, but I'm also someone who's lived a long time in Japan and had a lot of interaction with the expat community here, and have been changed forever by these things. I'm gradually learning to embrace all of this complexity.
We run our monthly news/prayer letter past our adult sons before we send it out, because it includes news about their lives. This week one of them called me out on some of what I'd written. Apparently "home" was a notion that was confusing things. It's a concept that is more complex for some people than others and certainly even more so in the midst of transition.
But to conclude this blog post, I want to reassure you that we are feeling quite at home here: in Japan and in our new abode. Each day is feeling more normal as micro and macro routines weave their way into our days. Work will add another layer to that in this coming week, but we're looking forward to being settled enough at home that we can turn our focus more outward.
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