The first pictures are in . . .

So that’s our place.

There were the usual moving-in issues the first night: cold showers because the gas wasn’t yet turned on (and even if it were, we’re not sure we’d know how to work the computerized bath heater system), no toilet paper (thankfully, advertising in Japan frequently takes the form of little packs of Kleenex, so we’d amassed a fair amount of them in Tokyo), and much difficulty working the A/C (and, friends, it is HOT and STICKY here). We did finally manage to figure out the A/C and selected a bedroom, and were sound asleep by 8:30pm. Of course, now it’s 5am as I write this . . .

The place is a little Spartan (4 bedroom-style Spartan-ness), but these are the before pictures. I think that the place has a lot of potential – I just wish I a) knew if there was an Ikea in the Tokyo area, and b) had watched more of those decorating-on-a-budget shows. Really, though I guess I’d need the decorating-on-a-budget-where-you-don’t-speak-the-language-and-can’t-drive-anywhere show. That might be too challenging for a mere decorating show; prime-time reality TV, here we come!

The driving thing is a big issue at this point (number one thing you don’t want to hear when moving into a new place in a foreign country where you can’t yet drive: “the grocery store nearby just closed a few days ago. You’ll have to use the mini-mart a mile up the road, or drive into town”). We had, in fact, planned to get a car, but this will take time – about three weeks. In the meantime, we have some bikes being delivered tomorrow.

We really, really need a car here. Tsukuba is surprisingly spread out for a Japanese city. Everyone drives, and everyone tells us we need a car. This house is about a ten minute drive from the train station and about a twenty-minute drive from the university (they are both in the same direction from our house). Near Tsukuba station is this newly built shopping complex with neat looking stores (and a LUSH store – take that, Bellevue Square!). It`s only a 50-minute train ride from downtown Tokyo.

The other big thing is internet (I feel guilty for sounding like a spoiled American: I want my car! I want my internet! But, hey, when you’re living in the middle of the country in a country where you can’t speak the language, these things do take on a certain heightened importance, no?). We’ve heard about this great deal with Yahoo that comes with cheap international calling. But the bad thing is that it may take as long as two months to get that internet into our place. There’s an internet café about a fifteen-minute bike ride from here, so I guess we’ll be frequenting that place, too.

We also now have cellphones. I didn`t get one that makes hot chocolate, but mine does do radio and TV, email/text messages, and the like. Watch for the mass email with our numbers that we`ll be sending out soon.