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Published: December 22nd 2006
I am so sorry I have not written sooner, we have just had so much going on. My back is now back to 100% and I am feeling great. Usually my back acts up like that about every 3 - 4 years so the way I look at it, I am good for a while now!
We have moved into our apartment, and we really like it. We are also starting to find our way around the Roppongi / Azabu Juban areas as well. Marc is settling into a routine at work, though things are slow now with various people on vacation and the holidays, etc. I think I’ll try to write this entry in chronological order so hopefully I won’t miss anything.
Marc spent countless hours in the several days leading up to the December 5th, (the day we were to take possession of the apartment) trying to make the necessary arrangements for the various wire transfers. We needed a wire from our bank in the states for the first month rent and a wire from MITRE in the states for the deposit, real estate commissions, etc. This is so complicated to do from one individual and one company to two others (the landlord and the real estate company) to another country and in different currencies. I know it seems like it should be simple but it wasn’t. I tried to stay out of it as much as possible and just let Marc work it all out, so I don’t have all the details, and you probably don’t want to hear them all anyway! Suffice it to say it was a mess! We were finally guaranteed that all the wires had been made and everyone was happy. We went to the real estate office to sign the documents on the 30th and were assured everything was fine to move in on the 5th. So the late in the evening on the 4th, we were surprised to get an urgent message telling us that they never got the wire from MITRE. Evidently the wire they thought was for us wasn’t or some such. So, Marc stayed up again late (for the 4th or 5thnight in a row) so he could call the banks and MITRE during US working hours. Turns out some one hadn’t done their job and the MITRE wire to the landlord never got made. To make matters worse, it was going to take a couple days to get it done, accepted by the bank here, converted into yen, etc. The end result being that they were not going to let us move in the next day.
Now, just to make things more fun, let’s add to the mix, the arrangement of the delivery of our household shipments. We had finally gotten the delivery scheduled. They were to deliver the air shipment the morning of the 5th and then the rest of it, the sea shipment on the 6th. Just reschedule you say? Sure, but try doing that when you don’t yet speak much Japanese and they don’t speak much English. And while we are on the subject, let’s just make it a little more fun: We had gotten an email several weeks earlier telling us to mail all the customs forms for our shipments to a certain address which we did. Then we got an email telling us to ignore that email, and that the address they had given us was no longer used by them. We waited numerous days and made numerous phone calls (language problems again) and couldn’t locate the papers and couldn’t get our shipments without them. Finally after days of this mess we got the moving company to arrange alternate means to rescue our shipments from customs. (We never did see the customs papers again… they must be lost in Japan never - never land.) The shipments cleared customs, only for us to have to call and say, “Now we don’t have a place to deliver them to.” We were beginning to wonder if we would be seeing a 20 foot shipping container sitting by the side of the road in central Tokyo! In addition we had packed all our things up in the hotel room and had only 1 more day of clean clothes, as we had been paying those astronomical hotel charges to do laundry. We had planned to take a “cab load” of luggage with us that day and the remaining luggage on the second day. The next morning we still had not resolved the issue of the wire transfers. The real estate people called and said the landlord would not let us move in without having received the wire, even if everyone involved, including their wives and children attested to the fact that the wire had been made. Or so it seemed. We finally convinced them to let us go to the apartment and go through all the paper work, and the walk - through even though they said we could NOT have a key, leave any belongings there or have anything delivered. Given how adamant they were, we decided not to take a load of bags over, but to go ahead with the moving in - inspection. Halfway there, we got a call saying that the landlord approved our getting keys that day even without the deposit. Despite everything we were thrilled
A note about signing the lease… This is definitely still a male driven society. They were pleasant to me and all, but did not want my name on the leases or any paperwork. Here, everyone has what is called a “hanko” which is a stamp everyone uses on legal documents. This is a small round red stamp, about the size of a nickel and registered with some legal authority. (I will know more when we get ours one of these days.) Each one is deferent and one of a kind. When executing legal documents, people do not sign them as we normally do, they are instead stamped with the person’s hanko. Needless to say the area for a hanko stamp is very small so it was interesting seeing Marc fit his signature into that small space over and over. The lease was probably 10 - 20 pages and stapled together in “booklet” form. They had Marc sign the back by the staples so that it could not be taken apart and pages inserted or deleted. I had never seen that before.
We got to the apartment, and we were pleasantly surprised. The remodeling had been almost been finished when we had seen it, but it had no drapes, and some of the fixtures weren’t in yet. It was nice when we saw it all finished. I guess I had seen so many apartments that I got them confused because I thought ours had a big shelf in the living room that I had planned to use for plants. No shelf. I just had to laugh; I guess all the apartments we had looked at had started to run together in my mind.
I had planned to have them write out all the words on the appliances so I would know which was hot, cold, and warm on the washer, and on and on. I was pleasantly surprised to see they were all in English. Even better, the oven was in Fahrenheit rather than Celsius. Everyone had warned me I would need a conversion table so I was really surprised at this. Then I pushed the limit…. I asked “Is it a self cleaning oven” and they all looked at me funny and said “What is that?” I had to explain it to them, they had never heard of such a thing! They were wonderful and the inspection went great. They had so many people here for us to meet: The building manager, the maintenance man, the security alarm people and a couple more I don’t remember. It took all morning just to go through the inspection and show us how everything worked and where everything was. I had asked for an additional towel bar in each bathroom and was amazed when they charged us for them. They gave us, at no charge, specially made drapes for all the rooms that I got to pick out, and yet they asked me to pay for two towel bars! Go figure! They did allow us to go ahead with the delivery of our shipments and later that day we went back to the hotel and made another trip in a cab with half of our stuff from the hotel. Then we just crashed as we were exhausted from all the ups and downs of the last few days.
The next day, the 6th… the big day! We finally got all of our belongings. The movers here were great, though I don’t know how in the world they got our furniture up to the 5th floor in that tiny little elevator! It was funny to seen them come in with boxes or furniture in their arms and take off their shoes. Then put them on to go get the next load. On and off all morning long! I told them they didn’t have to, but they insisted. They were fast! They had brought everything up and Marc and I were in one room telling them where to place furniture, only to turn around and see them unpacking everything. They literally unpacked everything until I asked them to stop and told them I would do the kitchen myself, though they had already started it. I have never had them unpack for me before! It was funny to see their reactions to some of our things. We brought Marc’s globe on a stand that had been in his library back home. They couldn’t get over it. We have a “Select Comfort” Bed, the kind with the air, and they were amazed by it and how it was put together. One fellow thought it was a water bed as he kept asking me where does the water go?
Another pleasant surprise… I mentioned in an earlier blog that I thought the lobby of the building was really tired and dated looking. To my surprise the day we moved in they began to remodel it as well. It still isn’t marble tile and chandeliers, but it does look much nicer. I did take some pictures of the apartment before we moved everything in, and in the next week or so I will get figure out how to post them here for all of you (Karen!).
We are finally getting pictures hung and the rest of the boxes unpacked and finding a place for everything. We didn’t bring a lot of furniture and we didn’t bring our “good” stuff either as we thought we would have such a little apartment. Instead of our glass dining room table we brought our small table that we used in the kitchen nook area. The apartment is so large that now the table looks odd and way too small there. I look at it as an opportunity to get some nice things while we are here. We don’t have really nice dinning room furniture so now I can get some! The moving truck will definitely be full when we return to the states!
We were able to get our computers and the Japanese cable TV set up ok, but are still working to get the American Military “AFN” TV satellite connected. We had to go out to Yakota AFB to buy the satellite but they wouldn’t come into Tokyo to set it up so we needed to find people here to do it. We have had a Tokyo company out twice but they can’t figure it out and are not familiar with it, so we have another company coming on Tuesday. Marc is getting impatient as he was hoping to see the holiday bowl games so we’ll see what happens then.
The Saturday after we moved in, we rented a van to go out to Yakota AFB to stock up. We literally just went up and down the isles in the PX and Commissary getting everything we needed. We even got a Christmas tree! You can find real ones here, but they are expensive, about $300 - $400, so we bought a nice artificial “pencil” tree. We also bought a small microwave as the apartment doesn’t have one. When we went to the commissary, we really stocked up as we will only be going out there once every 3 - 4 months. When we finished we had two carts crammed full! We have NEVER had a $620 bill at a grocery store before! It took three people to bring it out to the van and between all that, the Christmas tree and the microwave, the van was crammed full! Marc did an excellent job driving out there both ways and through Tokyo. Even he, who had so much fun driving in South Africa in April, was not looking forward to the trip and driving in Tokyo, but we made it without any problems at all. We have done some grocery shopping on the economy too and have been able to find everything we need. I am sure glad we are able to buy the majority of things at Yakota, because the prices here are astronomical for some things. On the other hand, it is fun to walk down the street and buy vegetables and fruit at the little green grocer and bagels and bread at the little bakeries. In addition I am really enjoying having the time to cook. We ate out so much when we were both working full time, so now having the time to cook dinner is a real luxury. We have even had a colleague of Marc’s over for dinner already.
I will say that I am having some “sad” days just adjusting to everything. It is all so foreign here. It is hard to be so far away from everyone at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I had been afraid to go out much since we moved as I didn’t know much about the area but I am slowly learning my way around. I am also adjusting to not working. I have not NOT worked since I was in college. Not earning my own money is really strange. I thought I would like being a housewife, but I sort of feel useless some days, especially with no kids to raise. I have so much to do I shouldn't feel that way, but it is an adjustment not working and earning my own money.
I did venture out the other day to go to the Army Post “Hardy Barracks” to pick up our mail. Marc gave me all these instructions on how to go, which subways, etc. So, I take the subway and somehow came out the wrong exit, and was totally lost. I couldn’t just go back in as I would have had to go back through the ticketing and would have been charged a huge fair for a "round trip" so, I started to call Marc to see if he could help. But no...My cell phone was dead. So I try to figure it out on the map. No luck… I was lost! So I hail a cab and tell him "American Army base with helicopters." He thinks I mean the American Embassy clear across town. When I figure that out and where he is headed, I finally get him to pull over and finally get through to him where I really want to go. So he doubles back (wasted fare money) and drops me off at the base. I finally get the mail and find my way back home. Later that night Marc asks me where my cell phone is so he can recharge it and I CAN’T FIND IT!!!.... Must have left it in the taxi. Did I get a receipt for the taxi so I know which one (of thousands) I was in? Nope! ....So I lost my brand new $70 cell phone! Those of you who read the blog entry dated November 7th, know how hard it was to get the *&$#()@ phone in the first place!! UGH... It is funny now but wasn’t then!
So that about brings you up to date on things here. We are planning to go to church on Christmas Eve and the American Military Hotel here for Christmas dinner. Both Marc and I will try to complete another blog entry in the next few days to update you more on our activities and impressions of Japan. We miss you all so much and wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Hanukah.
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Merrie
non-member comment
Merry Christmas
Glad your back is better and you have moved into your apartment. What a huge adjustment. You'll get used to the not working, try to enjoy the time and do some things you've always wanted to do. I hope you have a nice Christmas.