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!

And we're off!!!

Whoever said "he who would travel happily must travel light" clearly didn't have a 3-year old with them! We pretty much filled a Honda Pilot with our 3 giant duffle bags, 2 suitcases, and assorted carry on items. Andy and I each were carrying what felt like a week's worth of snacks and enough electronics to open a small store! Whatever it was, it was not packing light. In spite of all the laptops, I-pads, DVD player, kids books, puzzles, Thomas trains & track, yarn for 4 sweaters, etc., we actually did pack light with our clothes. I'm hoping that I do not end up regretting how frugal I was with only 5 pairs of pants/capris/jeans and 2 skirts to last the entire semester. I'm not exactly shaped for "Japanese sizing", so buying new clothes in Morioka isn't a realistic option. Catie and Andy should be fine, so we all packed a minimum of clothes.  

The flight was as grueling as any 13 hour flight would be, but was lightened by some spectacular views of Alaska. Flying over Glacier Bay and the Chugach mountains was amazing- I've never seen calving glaciers from a plane before. It was so cool being able to watch one glacier after another pass beneath us and have Catie merrily point out icebergs. She, being 3, was convinced that seeing icebergs meant she was seeing penguins and nothing I said was going to change her opinion. According to her, we saw a lot of penguins from the plane. As we flew along the coast, we were rewarded with amazing views of the mountains and glacial rivers pouring big plumes of glacial milk out through textbook deltas into the ocean. We even flew by Denali! We were in the clouds over the Canadian Rockies and the Aleutians, but the whole Alaska portion of the flight was just awesome!

Denali from the plane (I was so excited over Glacier Bay, I forgot to take a picture)

It helped that Catie is pretty much a rockstar traveller. She spent the flight snacking, playing with sticker books, watching movies, or napping. When we arrived, she asked us "are we in Japan now?" with a voice full of excitement and awe. We, and pretty much everyone else on the plane, were bleary eyed, dehydrated and exhausted, and there was Catie, perky as ever and thrilled to be one step further on our adventure. Everyone around us just smiled. She then proceeded to skip and dance all the way to Customs.

Our flight was slightly delayed leaving Chicago, which meant that we arrived along with 2 other international flights. Immigration was a zoo! Just as I was about to step into the very long line, a customs official said "no, you have kid, please use priority lane". We went from having an hour or more long wait to being 2nd in line! Gotta love Japan! It was also pretty cool to receive our Gajin cards right in immigration. It used to take half a day in the prefectural government office to get one, so this was a major improvement.

Catie with the brand new and super fast E6 Shinkansen

Narita was booked full being the week before Obon and right in the midst of summer vacation, so we shipped the bulk of our luggage to the apartment and then headed into Tokyo for the night. We thought this meant we'd be able to catch an earlier train up to Morioka, but somehow there was a train blackout that caused massive delays on all the Shinkansen (bullet trains) arriving into Tokyo. Tokyo Eki was beyond crazy! Even on a quiet day it's always a busy place with steady streams of people coursing through the station, but we've never seen so many people simply waiting. Every support post, every stair, and every empty space was full of people sitting or standing around. The shear amount of "confusion and delay" was a little scary, but we made it through and Catie got to ride on her first bullet train (an express even faster than Gordon's!!!).

We arrived in Morioka around 3 PM and Yuki brought us to the prefectural office to register and get our national health insurance cards and then to the E-house apartment. More on that later!

Planning a semester in Japan

A few years ago, Andy & I decided it would be fun to lead the Earlham SICE program to Morioka, Japan. We put ourselves on the list and waited...

Here we are one week from departure and I’m wondering what ever possessed me to think this was a good idea! We’re struggling to pare down everything the 3 of us might need to live in a Morioka for a semester into the absolute minimum. Packing is never much fun and this is probably the worst I've dealt with. The weather will range from high summer (80s & 90s) when we arrive to snow by mid-November. I've been warned by several people that "E-House", as the Earlham apartment is called, is rather small with limited storage space, so we have to pack light. I want to bring enough toys, books, and games to keep Catie entertained in our new environment, but am coming up against the limited space again. Ugh.

Other than the pain of packing, I'm sure this will be a grand adventure! Catie is looking forward to attending preschool and riding on trains. I think Andy is happy to be going back to spend some time in a country he loves. And I guess I’m just up for the excitement of living in a new environment. One of the things I'm most looking forward to is seeing how Catie experiences this new culture. I'm always surprised by the things she notices and think that watching her see Japan will be fun. 

In spite of the name of this blog, we did not consciously set out to raise an international child. We have never wanted to be one of those families who home schooled their kids while traveling the globe. All this travel just seems to happen. I'll keep you posted on our latest chapter as parents of a blonde preschooler in northern Japan.