Today is a Holiday

Today Chris had the day off from work. It is Japan's "Coming of Age" day. We spent a bit of today doing laundry--much needed--and then took a train to the Motomachi district in Yokohama. Motomachi is a locally famous area where there are a couple of long streets of clothing and other stores. We bought some pastries in a local Pompadour (chain of bread shops all over Yokohama) and some hot cocoa, then headed out into the cold to window shop.

Motomachi shopping district

Train Station

One thing that is not lacking here is the amount of shopping available. There are TONS and tons of shopping malls, stores, etc.. I have never been anywhere in the U.S. where there was as much shopping as there is available here (including New York and San Francisco) and we have seen only a fraction of Yokohama. I am told there is even more shopping places in Tokyo. I am not a big shopper myself, but it is interesting to see how these stores differ from the U.S.. One thing that I have always wanted is to go into one clothing store and like almost everything in the store (I am very choosy when it comes to clothing)--I haven't found that place in the U.S.. But here, I have passed by numerous clothing stores where all the clothing looks really good. Granted I don't need anything right now, and I am not about to spend lots of money on clothes, but knowing it is there when I need it, and I don't have to go hunting through lots of stores to find something I like is a good feeling.

We have recently found the local 100 Yen store! (This store is equivalent to the U.S. $1 dollar store.) This store has been great for us to get some of the basics we need (e.g. trash bags, hangers, dish soap, etc). The 100 Yen stores are actually much better quality than those in the U.S. and they contain a much bigger variety of items (e.g. gardening, kitchen, art supplies, tools, etc). Thank you April and Yu-Ping for letting me know about these 100 Yen stores!

Well, Chris looks like he just about fell asleep on the chair next to me :)

Just pictures

Here are some pictures of our place (and Chris). It's a rainy
very cold day here so we're lounging around the house right now
staying warm :)

Hitting me: No short vacation

Yesterday I walked to a small grocery store right below our place...It's a small 'organic' food place I knew would most likely be expensive, but wanted to give it a try since neither Chris nor I have gone inside yet. I grabbed a basket, was greeted by the cashier in Japanese--I smiled and gave a slight nod (not being very sure at that moment what to say), and proceeded to look around the small store. Not being able to read anything in Japanese, I rely on sight...so I went for things that looked familiar to me (e.g. I picked up macaroni noodles and Italian spaghetti). I also picked up some eggs, some unknown crackers, frozen pot stickers, oatmeal, and a couple other items. I take my basket of things to the counter and am greeted with 'arigatou gozimasu' (thank you), which I respond with 'arigatou gozimasu' because I can't think of anything else to say in that moment. Then the cashier asks me something in Japanese, and all I can do is give him a blank stare and shrug my shoulders hopefully indicating I can't speak Japanese. He finally understands, thinks for a moment, and says "ice" which I then realize (from the previous grocery store experience) that the cashiers will give little ice packs with frozen items for items that need to stay cold. I quickly shake my head and say 'no, not necessary' which he soon understands. I pay, repeat 'arigatou gozimasu' and head out the door to home.

After getting into the door of our place, it just hits me...that we will be here for awhile and I will encounter many many of the same situations where I will give Japanese people blank stares because I have no idea what they are saying. That afternoon I spend a little time learning Japanese--I realize now that it is stressful not being able to speak to people you come into contact with every day. No wonder many people from other countries who don't speak English and come to the U.S. live in areas surrounded by people who speak their language. A part of me suddenly wished I was surrounded in an area of "gaijin" (i.e. foreigners who primarily speak English). Who wants to be "immersed" in stress anyway? Being surrounded by Japanese and quite a few frustrating encounters just may be my motivation to learn Japanese.

Bye bye hotel, hello new place

Some pics this morning in our hotel room right before heading to our new place.

Chris giving me a quick smile before getting lost in the sports section

Me taking pictures in the mirror

So we moved into our new place with all our suitcases. Stuck the suitcases in our new bedroom closet and then we're instructed on how to "use" our new home. This "home" is much more complicated than you would think. There are hi-tech buttons everywhere and all in Japanese. Lots of buttons for the stove, about 6 different remotes with lots of buttons, buttons for lights and buttons for the toilet, complicated buttons for the washer/dryer, and buttons that we're told "Don't press!". I figure we'll keep pressing different buttons until we figure out what they do...have to learn somehow. We just have to remember which buttons are the ones we can't press. Other than the huge number of buttons to control everything, our place is pretty amazing.


After finishing up the instruction session we headed to apply for our alien registration cards (what we will be carrying around instead of our passports) and then applied for a Japanese bank account. We finished up around 4 pm exhausted (explanation...we've been waking up at 4 am because we've been going to bed at 8 pm), but decided we needed food so we had our first official grocery buying experience. EXPENSIVE! Of course we went shopping at the place near where we are living which happens to be a very upscale grocery place below a mall of upscale stores--so I guess we should expect 'expensive'. I'll have to do some hunting for cheaper grocery places.

Chris' dinner

Chris happily cooking his dinner (explaination: I'm vegitarian--so I don't buy and cook meat that often)

We're both really exhausted right now, but we have to stick it out till at least 10 pm.

Urggg...Chris tells me it's only 7:30 pm.

Sleep sounds so good right now....

~Lori

Officially in Japan!

Chris and I just arrived in Yokohama, Japan yesterday afternoon! And no, it hasn't hit us that we will be living here. It'll most likely feel like a vacation for a couple weeks and then hit us that we won't be flying "home" any time soon. Our home is here for the next year.

After checking into our hotel starved, we wandered around a little last night looking for someplace to eat that is vegetarian friendly. One thing I have been so worried about with living here is that I am vegetarian. One would think that Japan would have lots of "healthy" vegetarian friendly food, but in actuality, most of their food contains some type of meat or seafood. After passing by multiple restaurants we finally came across a Hard Rock Cafe with veggie burgers on the menu :) And it ended up being the best veggie burger I've ever had. Almost all the food we've had here (including from the last trip we took in November) has been very good--much better quality than many of the restaurants in the U.S., and there is a very good variety of restaurants here. So far we've experienced Japanese, Thai, standard American, and Hawaiian. We've also noticed French, Italian, and many other types of restaurants to choose from. Sometimes it's just good to know we have lots of options to choose from if we're in the mood for something really specific.

Chris is off at work already today (our 1st full day in Yokohama). I'm in the hotel, emailing, typing away, realizing it's time to start really thinking about how I'm going to schedule my time while I'm here. Chris has a very full schedule ahead of him--working full time and a quarter left of classes before he can graduate (classes taken remotely online). The next few months for him are going to be crazy. My schedule on the other hand, is wide open. Some might be envious, but honestly, I've had the "wide open schedule" before, and it gets old very fast. If I don't have things to do that are scheduled everyday, I kind of get pulled into doing really random things--like surfing the web most of the day. Honestly, a few days of that can be great, but any longer and I start to get really frustrated with a lack of scheduled time and my time feels waisted. So, I need to have some sort of schedule for my time and figure out where a "job" will come from. I also want to get back into hobbies I really enjoyed that have been put on the back burner for awhile. And that's partially what I'm spending today doing: thinking about what I want for the next year, or hey, just the next month.

Here are a few pics we've taken since yesterday.

Me, (very tired by the way--approx 2 am PST) local shopping mall
off of the Yokohama Royal Park Hotel.

Sign for veggie burgers at the Hard Rock Cafe! (:

View from our hotel room at the Yokohama Royal Park Hotel. Lots of city!

Tomorrow we move into our new place! Check back for pics of our place with boxes and bags everywhere and our new place in disarray! (Or maybe I'll wait to post pics till everything is put away...)

~Lori

Pictures from Japan

Well, we just found out yesterday we got the place we wanted to rent! Here are just a few of the pictures we took on our trip to Japan including one picture of the condo we will be renting :)

A pre-flight picture:
This is one of the rooms in the condo we are renting during our year in Japan!
Great views! =)

The local Japanese garden:

Another picture of the Japanese garden:

A week in Japan

I just got back from a week in Japan (my first time!). Chris is still in Japan to work an extra week before coming home on Saturday.

It was an exciting, but strange trip for both of us. We spent our first three days in Japan being escorted to all sorts of apartments, condos, and houses in Yokohama, Kamakura and Enoshima by three different real estate agents. The next few days were spent wandering to nearby restaurants and shopping areas near our hotel and the occasional "tourist" destination when we felt enough energy to venture out further. We were constantly going from feeling excited, to nervous, to sad, to reflective, to...quite a few other emotions all within a 24 hour period. It was starting to hit us...we would actually be living here.

Don't get me wrong, this is a very good decision for us, but it is also a scary one. This is both of us taking a leap into the unknown of sorts--or our little divergence from the typical path of "marriage--house--kids." We're just sticking "living in another country" in between those three.
Even though the "living in another country" part sounds very exciting, I don't think it can all be exciting and fun without some scary parts.

A year isn't that long, but still, we are leaving everything behind (except each other) to go someplace we've never lived and know little about. We're leaving behind family and friends. We have to learn a whole unique set of customs (or at least learn enough customs in order to learn how to not knowingly offend people). Most Japanese people just speak Japanese, few know enough bits and pieces of English to get the gist of what you are saying, but even fewer are well spoken in English. We need to be able to do basic day-to-day things (shop, use transportation, etc) so at the very least we need to learn enough of the language in order to get by, and hopefully work towards learning more of the language so we could have the chance to actually connect with people around us using more than one or two word sentences.

Yet, we are leaving everything behind except each other--we can learn much more about each other and rely on one other in a whole new way through this experience. Though far in distance we have the chance to grow closer to family and friends through writing. We have the chance to learn a new way of living and interacting with people. We have the chance to learn a language in the country it is spoken, giving us a much greater chance of actually learning the language. We can gain a lot from this experience if we choose to...so I'd like to think it's as simple as that...just choosing.

~Lori