First Impressions

Overall, our first day and night in Morioka went well. Here are a few of my first impressions of our new living situation:

1)  Jet lag isn’t fun. After getting up and eating breakfast at 4:30 AM, Catie demanded a bike ride on “her new bike” at 6:00 this morning. I’m hoping it wears off in a few days.

2)  E-House is much bigger than I expected. It is a corner apartment on the 6^th floor of a 7-floor building. We have a gorgeous view of Mount Iwate out our bedroom window. It’s about 1 block from a shopping plaza with a big grocery store (Catie LOVES the car shopping carts), dry cleaner, plant nursery, and a ramen shop. Something for everyone! We’d been warned that it was right across the street from the hospital, so we were not surprised when we heard an ambulance at 3:30 AM. Contrary to my expectations, the apartment has a queen-sized western bed, big closet, and 2 large dressers in our room. The living room/office/Catie room combo is reasonably sized with big windows on 2 walls. She loved sleeping on a futon, but wasn’t all the sure about us packing it away in the morning. After the initial shock of seeing her bed packed up, she decided it was fun and proceeded to take out and put away her blankets and animals a half dozen times. I think it’s going to be ok.  

3)  Illiteracy is tougher than I remember. I had to ask Andy which was the dish soap versus the hand soap this morning. I need for my class to start!

4)  Japanese bike locks are way cooler than American ones.

5)  Throwing away trash is a major project here! Not only do we have 6 different trash/recycling bins in the apartment, but you have to WASH & DRY all the plastic! Every single piece of plastic and styrofoam needs to have all labels removed and be completely clean before you can throw it away. A single plastic juice bottle has to be broken down into a paper label (bin #1), clean & dry plastic cap (bin #2), and the clean and dry bottle itself (bin #3). Some things like styrofoam food trays even have to be washed, dried, and returned to the store!

6)  Netflix, Amazon Prime, and even PBS Kids aps DON’T WORK IN JAPAN!!! This might not be a big deal to the average ex-pat, but it’s devastating to a 3-year old who wants her Thomas fix (especially when bad mommy packed her real toy Thomas in the luggage that’s being shipped up from Tokyo). It looks like we need to set up a VPN or something else to block the geotracking on our I-pads so that poor Catie can get her shows back.

We’re off to dinner with Yuki’s family and a night of Sansa Odori festival dancing and drumming!