Hump Day Update

As I created the title of this post, I started to wonder if the phrase "Hump Day" is an American expression or if it's something that is used throughout the English-speaking world to describe Wednesday. In case you've never heard of it, Wednesday is sometimes called Hump Day. The reason for this, at least the reason that was taught to me, was because by Wednesday you had reached the Hump in the week and you started to head back down towards the weekend. As it turns out, it's almost Thursday for me now in Japanese time, but many of you around the world are just starting your day... which means I'm closer to the weekend!

Anyway, I finally got around to adding photos from our trip to Kamakura to visit the Great Buddha, and our trip to Yokohama's Chinatown and MM21 areas. Scroll down several posts to see our wonderful shots.

Also, if you have a keen eye, you've noticed that I removed some of the links to old pictures and websites from the left side of the blog. I've put those links back on their rightful webpage - if you've known us for a while, you'll recognize it. Under our new "Links" section, click on Mike and Nicki's Storybook, which was our original webpage before we moved to Japan. It looks a little bit different because I put it into the Blogger system, but for the most part it's very similar and all of our old pictures and links are there for your viewing pleasure.

I also thought I'd show you what I've been learning, because I think it's pretty neat. My new camera came with software for PhotoStudio 5.5, which is supposed to mimic some of the cool things that can be done with Photoshop. Here's an example of what it can do. I took a shot from the Great Buddha trip (pic #1) and added blue skies and removed some tourists (pic #2). How cool is that!??!!

No News, Just Pictures

Quick update to add some past-due pictures to the blog. Some of you have already noticed that I added a few pictures to the "Trip to Tokyo" post in our archives... check them out. I still have to edit, crop, and add pictures from our most recent trip to Kamakura to see the Daibutsu (Great Buddha) and from our trip last weekend to Yokohama, but it'll have to be later this weekend. I did want to share one now though, from the play room at the Navy Lodge back when we were staying there. The little girl is the daughter of other guests at the lodge and was born within a week of Josh. Sorry it's a bit blurry, but I'm still trying to figure out the new camera... and when that shot was taken I had owned the camera for less than 24 hours.



I've also add a few pictures of our home, in case you are curious. These shots were taken within our first couple of days of moving here, so all of the furniture you see in the pictures is the loaner stuff that we got from the government, which was moved out when our actual furniture arrived. But at least you can get a feel for what the rooms look like. Also, I shot these using a wide-angle lens, so there's a false sense of "space enlargement"... but you'll get the idea anyway. By the way, the Japanese characters on one of the pictures is the sign on the door of our Japanese toilet room. Don't forget, you can click any image and it'll enlarge for you. Enjoy!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Most of our readers are probably either about to go to sleep right now or already a couple of hours into their slumbering. Regardless of which timezone you're in, Happy Thanksgiving. Ours has been quite eventful, but not from a holiday perspective.

This morning, the good people at J:Com (our telecommunications provider here) came over to install all the wiring required to enable us to watch cable television, talk on the telephone, and surf the internet from our very own home. This is my very first post on our home computer since leaving San Diego over a month ago. The J:Com reps arrived here around 8:30am today and spent a good portion of the morning running a cable line from the back of our house all the way around to the front, upstairs, and into our computer room for internet use. They also spent a good little while getting the other cable line from the same general area out back into our living room for cable television use. Then they asked us where our telephone was and Nicki and I stared at each other blankly. We have a bunch of unopened boxes in our house still, so we started digging until I finally found an older cordless phone to use until we find the phone we actually want to use. The bad news is that the old cordless phone's rechargable battery is dead as a doornail. So we can't use our land line for now.

During all the J:Com action, Nicki started cooking our Thanksgiving meal. The J:Com reps were still here around 2:00pm when the meal was ready, so we thought it would be nice to share our feast with them. We did our best to explain that it was an American holiday meal, but I don't really know if they understood a word we said. The good news is that they must have enjoyed the meal because their plates were clean in record time. They finally finished up around 3:00pm and went along their merry way. Nicki and I couldn't help but think how cool it was that we got to share our American holiday with others, even if they didn't understand the tradition that surrounds it.

Top 10 Things That I'm Thankful For This Year
10. Watching Josh grow, change, and learn during his 2nd year of life.
9. Another year of marriage with my wonderful and beautiful wife.
8. Surviving the year's challenges and growing through what I've learned.
7. The good health of family and friends.
6. The addition of new friends, especially those through the birth of our friends' new babies.
5. Having the opportunity to move to Japan.
4. Accepting the opportunity to move to Japan.
3. Nicki's acceptance of the opportunity to move to Japan.
2. Our family and friends' encouragement and understanding about our decision to move to Japan.
1. Being (once again) attached to the rest of the world from home, through the internet, television, and telephone.

Express Trains and Why They Are Great

For the most part, our weekend was fairly uneventful. We are still getting settled into our house, so we did a bit of driving around this weekend to check out the neighborhood, to get some much needed groceries, and to listen to our car radio - the only radio available to us for the time being. We also met with a representative of JCOM, our future cable TV, internet, and telephone provider, so that we could sign a contract and indicate which rooms in the house will have TV, internet, and telephone. JCOM is scheduled to be back on Thursday (Thanksgiving morning) to install everything, so we will finally be able to communicate with the outside world from our home.

On Sunday, we got adventurous and decided to head up north to Yokohama, which is only about 20 miles away, but it's as far away from Yokosuka as we've been without tour guides. We took a local train (aka- the slow train that stops at all stops along the way) from Mabori Kaigan all the way up to Yokohama, which took nearly an hour. From there, we took a transfer train over to Yokohama's Chinatown area, which is filled with all kinds of shops and restaurants. We grabbed lunch from a street vendor who provided us with some wonderful pork on a stick, sweet rolls, and something that Nicki and I later dubbed "the pork burger". I wish at times like these that I knew the Japanese names for the food so I could look it up on Google to find out more info, but for now a visual description is all I can provide. After lunch, we walked through the streets of Chinatown to encounter all of the beautiful sights and smells.



From Chinatown, we hopped back on the train and went closer to the port area, to a part of town nicknamed "MM21", which is short for Minato Mirai 21. The 21 stands for 21st Century, as this part of town was considered futuristic. MM21 is the home of the tallest building in Japan, Landmark Tower. We hear that the view from the top is spectacular, but our energy levels were on empty by the time we got there, so we decided to save the elevator ride to the top for a later date. We did stop for a few minutes in Queen's Square to watch a street performer juggle an apple, a knife, and another object while on stilts to the delight of a few hundred spectators. We also walked around the Square to check out the views around the harbor, including one of the largest ferris wheels I've ever seen. Unfortunately, we were all a bit too tired to scratch the surface of MM21, but we'll definitely head back over there later to get a better feel of what's there.



On the way home from Yokohama Station, we were able to fit onto a crowded express train. The express trains skip most stations and only stop along the main city routes. I believe we stopped at about 4 or 5 stops between Yokohama and Yokosuka, which took no more than 30 minutes - much better than our local train ride earlier in the day. I've tried to avoid express trains locally, because they are usually much more crowded than the local trains, but for longer rides, I think the express train is the only way to go.

The Long and Winding Road

Before entering the weekend, I thought it would be a good idea to sign in and give our small audience here something more to read, since we're still living in 19th century style at the house... no telephones, TV, or internet, at least for the time being. It also struck me this morning that I hadn't yet reported in again about the family vehicle situation (from two posts ago).

As it turns out, the Honda Odyssey that we intended to buy was indeed about 15 centimeters (less than 6 inches) too long for our parking spot. We were very fortunate to have a Japanese friend from work help me explain the situation to the car dealership owner, who in turn was very kind to let us simply pick a different vehicle on the lot that fit the parking requirements. We were even able to transfer the down payment from the Honda to our future car, so we did not lose any of our investment in the process.

Turns out that the "next best" alternative to the Odyssey on the car lot was a 1998 Suzuki Cultus Wagon, which appears to be similar to the Suzuki Forenza Wagon in the USA. Nicki (who wasn't with me at the dealership) let me know in advance that she had her heart set on one of the Big 3 - Honda, Toyota, or Nissan - but she would be okay with a Subaru, too. She didn't mention Suzuki at all and the only real experience that I could recall about Suzuki's brand name was hearing about the old Suzuki Samurai, which from what I recall looked like a Jeep Wrangler but had a tendance to flip over on turns due to its high center of gravity. After looking at several other makes and models, I kept going back to the Suzuki wagon. It was pretty sharp looking, it was a wagon (which Nicki wanted if we couldn't get a minivan), it looked clean and dent free, it seemed in good mechanical condition for its age, and most importantly, it fit into our parking spot at home. And it was about 4 years younger than all the other cars we were looking at buying.

Long story short, last night I went back up to the dealership to pick up our new 1998 Suzuki Cultus station wagon. It has a bit over 50,000 kilometers (approx. 31,000 miles) on it, only one previous owner who kept very detailed records, and we paid a grand total of about 260,000 yen ($2300 US). Not bad for a car with so few miles on it.

The next fun step in the process was to actually get in the car, turn the key, and roll off the car lot and back home. I had a map written in English on my passenger-side seat, good written directions to the nearest main street from my Japanese coworker, and about 1/8th of a tank of gas, which I was told was plenty to get me back to Yokosuka. By then, it was past 6pm and the sun had set, so I had to rely on my night vision to help me get back to base, which as I get older is significantly less useful than my daytime vision. Getting back to the main road following the directions my coworker gave me was pretty easy. From there, my only real other concern was getting from that main road to a future main road, Route 27. As I got closer, I realized that I was in the wrong lane at one intersection where I was supposed to go straight, but instead I turned right. At that point, I decided to wing it and just use my common sense and the English-based map on my passenger seat. I figured out roughly where I was and found an alternate path to Route 27. From there, it was a breeze. My gas tank was on fumes by the time I got back to Yokosuka, but I was able to fill up on base and then I went on home.

The good news is that when I got home, Nicki was actually impressed with the looks of the car - good for me because both of us were skeptical at first about the purchase. I just hope it stays mechanically sound during our duration here in Japan - then I'll feel like we got our money's worth.

Settling In

We moved into our new place on Thursday (Nov 10) and all went smoothly. Our furniture shipment from the States still hasn't arrived, so we are using some loaner government issued furniture in the meantime, or as it's called here, Fred Flinstone furniture. It's actually not all that bad, but all we really have is a bed, a dresser, a dining room table with 2 chairs and a highchair, and a sofa. Josh is still sleeping in his pack-and-play crib and our only source for entertainment is our portable DVD player, which is mostly used as a CD player for us or a Baby Einstein player for Josh.

The good news is that our express shipment from the States is set to arrive at our house tomorrow. The bad news is that it only includes a few blankets, a coffee maker (which Nicki is really excited about), a broom, and a few other small things. I checked with the household goods office and it looks like our main shipment of goods (furniture and other large items) have reached Japan, but they are currently going through customs. I've been told that it could be another week or two before it'll be dropped off at our place.

In the meantime, we're living without a home telephone, cell phones, or a home computer. So if it takes us a while to update the blog, you know why.

Kamakura Again

Over this past weekend, we went back to Kamakura... this time to see the Daibutsu, or "Great Buddha". It really lives up to it's name, too. That thing is huge. What was especially neat about the trip for me anyway was that we had to transfer train lines to get there. It was the first time that we had to buy a transfer ticket without help and we succeeded.



This coming weekend, we're planning a trip to Yokohama to see Chinatown and hopefully the Landmark Tower, which apparently is the tallest building in Japan. If it's a clear day, we'll try to head to the top and see what we can see.

"I Feel Violated"

Nicki wrote a pretty good diary entry the other day about moving into the new place, so I'll let her fill you in about that. But there is one interesting item in the house that I wanted to discuss... our Japanese toilet. We actually have two toilets in the house. The upstairs one is American style, but the downstairs one is Japanese style. There are several different buttons and handles to choose from while performing one's duties. What we've figured out so far is that one knob controls the heat level of the toilet seat - that's a nice feature in our relatively un-insulated house. Every time you sit down, your cheeks meet up with a nice and toasty seat. Not sure yet what a couple of other knobs do yet, but I'm sure we'll figure it out sooner or later. Then, there's the magic handle.

The magic handle controls a hose feature in the toilet bowl that sends a spray of water towards someone's rear end or other nearby anatomy. I was hesitant to try the magic handle, but finally came around and used it. And let me just tell you... it was probably the strangest feeling ever. I was also surprised to learn, as the water sprayed against my unprotected bum with a more-than-moderate pressure, that it's heated water. And if you're not ready for heated, high pressured water against your vulnerable parts, it's a bit of a shock. I nearly jumped off the seat and did a header into the bathroom door. Nicki tried it too, and when it was over she summed it up with a simple, "I feel violated". I couldn't have said it any better myself.

Our First Hurdle

Every good journey has a few roadblocks along the way and today we experienced our first one since arriving here in Japan. There are quite a few differences between the USA and Japan - one important one is the privilege related to car ownership and operation. In the States, any bonehead can get a license and drive, assuming that he or she has access to the DMV and a car. (note: I say that lightly because I didn't have much trouble passing the Virginia driving test as a teen, but when I moved to California in 1998, I failed the test twice before passing).

In Japan, it's a lot different and as an American, I actually have it a bit easier than the locals. When one has earned a Japanese driver's license, one is considered a Japanese Professional Driver. The test is challenging and taken seriously by the Japanese. So is driving. In an accident over here, both drivers are considered "at fault" because they should both be Professional Drivers capable of avoiding each other on the road. I got my Japanese driver's license last week, but still do not feel like a professional on the left side of the road yet. But I did start looking for a car...

Nicki and I found what we thought was the perfect car for our family last week through a Japanese coworker of mine. The car was a Honda Odyssey, a bit smaller than the American version, but still large enough to carry about 8 passengers. In Japan, there are rules about car ownership, though. In able to get a license plate and to get the car registered, you have to certify that you have a parking spot large enough to fit the vehicle that you plan to own. We signed the lease on our house today (more on that below), and I finally got the dimensions for the parking space at our new place. As it turns out, the length of the space is 4.6 meters, but the length of the Honda we wanted to buy is 4.75 meters. So we're out of luck. I've already put a down payment on the car, but I'm in the process of trying to renegotiate the deal so that we can get a car that fits, since it's a bit out of my hands at this point. The real bummer is that I was hoping to pick up the Honda tomorrow, and now we'll probably have to wait another week or so to get our first car here.

In More Optimistic News...

We now have the keys to our brand new home that we're renting for at least our first year here. I signed the lease this morning, so the deal is final. That actually made me feel really safe, because all the deals are done in cash here, and I needed the equivalent of 4 months rent to get the process rolling. So for the past couple of days, I've been carrying around about a million yen, which is roughly $9000 or so... much, much, much more than I'm used to having at all, especially in cash. There goes a big portion of the salary advance that I got to come over here, but much of it will be reimbursed shortly, so we'll be able to eat real meals again soon.

During the walkthrough of the new place, it dawned on me (yet again) how lucky we are to have found the place. It's only about 5 kilometers from base, there are great grocery stores, malls, and other shops nearby, the train station is a 5 minute walk away, and there are 2 children's parks within toddler walking distance. Last, but definitely not least, is the terrific view out of the Western-style bedrooms... the entire view of Tokyo Bay and a palm tree lined boardwalk along the shore. Everybody we have talked to here says that we got really lucky finding the place on such short notice, and I'm starting to agree.

Pictures, Pictures, and More Pictures

For those of you that haven't noticed, I've started adding pictures to the blog. I can't go much further for now, because I recently bought a new camera and all of the more recent pictures from Tokyo and whatnot are on that one. It took me a while to figure out how to sneak the photos I do have through the administrative restrictions on this hotel computer, so it'd probably take me even longer to figure out how to install the new camera software. But the good news is that our future pictures should be pretty awesome. My new camera is a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT that I got used (only 3 months old) from my coworker, Jeff... aka Sushi Jeff from www.sushicam.com. The camera is an 8 Megapixel SLR and it came with a super-wide angle lens, which was useful for taking shots of tall buildings in Tokyo and will definitely help when I take pictures of Mt. Fuji for the first time. By the way, if you haven't ever been to Sushi Jeff's site, take a look because he's been here for 5 years already and has a great collection of stories and pictures to share.

Trip to Tokyo

Today was an eventful day, which will go down in our family history as the first day that we took a trip to Tokyo - if you don't count the bus ride through Tokyo when we landed in Japan on Oct 17th, and we don't since we stayed on the highway the entire time and we were jet lagged out of our minds. We were planning to go just to Yokohama this weekend, since it's fairly close to Yokosuka but further than anywhere else we've tried to go on our own. Then, towards the end of the week, we got an offer from one of my coworkers to go with him and his girlfriend (a native) up to Tokyo for the day. Without much hesitation, we accepted.

We got started a bit after 9am today and took the Keikui Line train from Yokosuka-Chuo station up to Shinagawa, which is one of the busiest train stations in Japan. Shinagawa has more train platforms than I could try to count in the limited time that we were there, but having a Japanese tour guide made getting through the station fairly easy. From Shinagawa, we hopped onto the Yamanote Line, which circles the city, to the Harajuku exit.

At the Harajuku stop, we got off the train and ate lunch at an incredible (and relatively inexpensive) sushi place directly across from the train station. The sushi bar actually had a conveyor belt that went around the bar. Chefs inside the bar area continuously cut up fresh sushi plates, amongst other fun treats, and put them onto the conveyor belt. Bar dwellers simply grabbed whatever plates we wanted food from and ate as much as we wanted. When we were done, the server simply counted the plates and gave us a tab based on the number of plates we ate. When the dust settled, we counted 10 sushi plates, a bowl of miso soup with crab meat, and a dessert plate - not bad for two twenty-somethings and their toddler.

After lunch, we headed over to the Meiji Shrine, which was only a stone's throw away from the restaurant and train station. We were very fortunate to be at the shrine today. On November 15th, the Japanese have a holiday/festival called Shichi-go-san, which celebrates children that turn either 3, 5, or 7 years old during the year. For girls, the 3rd and 7th birthdays are celebrated and for boys, it's the 5th birthday. On Nov 15th each year, children within those ages are dressed in traditional kimono outfits and are blessed at the shrines. Anyway, good fortune must have been with us today, because it appeared that many young children were at the Meiji Shrine today doing a "dress rehearsal" for the upcoming festival. We saw quite a few youngsters dressed in their best kimono outfits - very cute. We also had the good fortune of witnessing the procession of not one, but two, weddings. Up above is a picture of Josh at Meiji Shrine near some flowers, compliments of a coworker of mine. Click to enlarge the image.

After visiting Meiji Shrine, we hopped back on the train for the Shibuya station - but first stopped to get a picture of the Japanese youth in their non-conformist outfits. There's a spot right near the Harajuku station where these kids hang out for hours on end, dressed to express their own unique styles, as you can see from the photo I've included. This stop on the Yamanote Line reminded me much of Times Square in New York. In fact, right outside of the station, there's an intersection that is considered one of the busiest intersections in the entire world. At one point, all the vehicle traffic gets a red light so that pedestrians can have a chance to walk from any direction to any direction across the crosswalk. And just about every time, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people trying to cross the street.

That area of town is also home to the Chu-ken Hachiko statue (aka - the faithful dog Hachiko statue), where we stopped for a family picture. The story of Hachiko is a sad, but beautiful traditional Japanese tale. As legend goes, Hachiko was a young dog who was very loyal to his master. The master took the train to work every day, and every day when he got off the train, Hachiko was waiting for him at the station. One day, the master died at his work and hence never got on the train back home. However, for the next ten years, Hachiko continued to go to the train station to wait for his master and sometimes would sit in the same spot for days at a time. After ten years, Hachiko finally passed away in the exact spot where he last saw his master alive. The statue was erected in the dog's honor in 1934. If you want to know more about Hachiko, do a google search - he's got quite a few fan sites out there in many different languages.

Our trip back to Yokosuka was faster than I figured it would be, thanks to the help of the express train on the Keikui Line from Shinagawa back to Yokosuka-Chuo. All in all, we walked about 4+ miles today and we're tired. But Josh was a trooper even though he missed his nap and about five minutes after his head hit the pillow tonight, he was out like a light.

Mid-week Update

And Happy Halloween!!!



This week has been a new experience for one main reason... now that our indoc class has ended, I have actually started going into work in the morning and staying all day and Nicki has gotten back into the groove of stay-at-home mommying that she was accustomed to back in the States, as best as she can anyway, with the limited supplies that we have available at the lodge here.

I don't have too many notable things to say about work yet, mostly because I haven't been able to do too much yet. My supervisor tried hard to get me an "up and running" computer at the office while I was in my indoc training, but apparently the people in our IT department had a different idea. Apparently, the paperwork that the IT group provides online is not the correct paperwork, so anyone who downloads it, completes it, and submits it for processing doesn't get help because it's the wrong forms. Worse than that, the IT group doesn't let you know that it's the wrong paperwork, so when you finally follow up with a friendly "where in the heck are you guys?", they tell you that you need to resubmit everything using the correct form, at which time they tell you (I'm not kidding) that they DO NOT have a copy of the correct form.

On another note, my coworkers took me to an authentic Japanese restaurant for lunch yesterday. By authentic, I mean that everything was written in Japanese characters. Also, there were no pictures for me to point at while requesting "kudasai" (bring me a....). But the most obvious difference was what happened as we were seated. We actually had to take off our shoes to enter the section where the tables were located, then we were seated on floor mats next to tables that were about a foot and a half tall. Fortunately, the guys I work with have been around for a little while and they explained a few things for me. The most interesting point of conversation was a food item called natto. Natto is another word for "soy beans decorated for Halloween". And by that, I mean that these soy beans are fermented and appear to have spiderwebs all throughout their sticky globby clumpy form. Very interesting to look at, but I didn't get the nerve to try any. Maybe next time. It didn't help that my coworkers said that they had a pretty bad smell to them too. I didn't get close enough to find out, but will probably do so sometime in the next few years, especially after a fermented beverage or two.

In other good news this week, I passed my on-the-road driving test. Sounds like a simple task, but if you've driven on one side of the road and one side of the car your whole life, it is a very interesting experience to try everything from the other side for a change. The running joke here is that the driver's education cars have the cleanest windshields in the country, because we Americans try to use the turning signals that we think are on the left side of the steering wheel, but instead find the windshield wipers that are there instead. Regardless, I'm now considered a professional driver in Japan so if you're over here on a visit, stay off the sidewalks!

Blog Comments

For those of you that don't know, one of the many great things about weblogs like The Japan Years site that you're reading now is the ability for anyone to comment on posts that Nicki, Josh, or I write. If you're interested in posting to this blog, take a look at the bottom of the most recent post... you'll see the "posted by" line, which includes the time of the post and at the far right the number of comments posted. Simply click your mouse on the word "comments", and a little pop-up box will open up. Leave your comment in the box provided, then you can choose an identity either by creating a blogger account that has a user name and password or you can send us something anonymously. Then you'll be prompted to enter the Word Verification, which basically prevents a spammer from setting up a computer program to send a bunch of unwanted comments/advertisements, etc. because the word verification has to actually be typed in and can't be done automatically by a computer program. Finally, you just click the blue "login and publish" button. Just a note, if you choose to send us an anonymous post, but would like for us to know who you are, then please put your name at the end for clarity. Otherwise, we'll just assume that you are a figment from our already naughty imaginations.

We'd love to hear from you. Oh, and sometimes the experience can be educational, like Alan's recent comments on Japanese food, where he gave a lot of good information on the traditional Japanese diet, including a few words about natto.