Happy Thanksgiving

I was torn as to whether we should try to do something to approximate Thanksgiving today or if I should just give up and do something really Japanese like eat ramen.  But in the end I decided to give it a shot despite our small kitchen.

While John was at work (he gets Friday off instead) I did some grocery shopping, with some entertaining finds.

I saw this mistake in more than one store

So, our final menu was chicken picata, mashed potatoes, and green beans with almonds.  I also found a place to buy pie and got a slice of pecan for John and apple for myself.

Here's our dinner

And our pie

Other than that things are pretty good.  My friends from Hong Kong are coming to visit tomorrow, so it should be a good weekend.  There's not much to report on the apartment front.  But in the spirit of Thanksgiving, here is what I am thankful for this year.

1.  Being married to my wonderful husband and getting to share this new adventure with him.

2.  Kind and supportive friends and family that we have here and around the world.

3.  That the dollar has been getting stronger against the yen all week.

Hope you all have happy Thanksgivings!

We're here!

I can't believe we've already been here for more than a week!

Our temporary apartment is very small, much smaller than last summer, but at least it's a place to stay.  Again the kitchen only has one burner (so stay tuned for an interesting Thanksgiving post), but we're making it work.  Tonight I made potato soup for dinner (which John claims to have never eaten before) complete with a cheesy bacon crouton.

And although things tend to be pricier, I've found kiwis to be a bargain.  And I do love their packaging.

Most of what we've been doing is looking for apartments (beside John's whole job thing), and it's not nearly as fun as International House Hunters makes it look.  Mainly it's exhausting, emotional, and agonizing.  We've seen a ton of places and we've applied for two.  We just found out this evening that one of them rejected us, but we're waiting to hear from the other place, and I'm going to see another place tomorrow.  I know it sounds really weird that a place rejected us, but here there's a whole negotiation process over the price, and because John's firm signs our lease for us they require the apartment to agree to certain terms, so that's where the hang up was.  But just to lighten to the mood here is a picture of the funniest things we've seen so far while searching.

In case we forgot what room it was?

Otherwise, we've been accomplishing things and seeing friends and mostly being happy to be here.  I discovered some amazing cookies that are actually German, I think.  If you ever come across some Chocolate Happy Hippos, I highly recommend them!

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving, and I'll be sure to post soon about ours.  And keep us in your thoughts that hopefully we'll have some good apartment news to share soon.

A Strange Beginning

Welcome back to our blog, round 3!    It's crazy that it's finally here, but on Saturday morning we're moving to Tokyo.    First, I want to say that although we're ready to be settled somewhere, it has been a blessing to have the last few months to spend so much time with friends and family, to be able to travel, and to really relax and get things in order before leaving.

But now, on to the stories.  John started work (orientation) last week at the DC office, which meant that we had to be here last Sunday.  (Just in time for Hurricane Sandy to hit)  We had reserved a temporary apartment for our time here, but when we arrived something had gone wrong and there was no reservation.  After a little scrambling we ended up at a Holiday Inn.  Meanwhile hurricane Sandy made her appearance.  On the plus side John didn't have work on Monday or Tuesday, but much to his frustration our hotel's power went our about 2 minutes before Monday Night Football started, and didn't come back on until lunch time Tuesday.  We were very lucky to be in DC rather than New York or New Jersey, but it was definitely not the beginning that either of us had expected.

Finally on Wednesday John started work, and we moved from the Holiday Inn in Alexandria to a hotel in DC.  So far John has found the DC office, and the firm as a whole, to be very friendly and welcoming and orientation has been painless (and even interesting at times).  Meanwhile, I was able to visit my old office from last year and today went to the US Postal Museum (who knew there was one of those?)

But, looking to the future here are a few things we're looking forward in Japan:

1.  Warmer weather (and warmer clothes).  Guess which couple accidentally packed all their winter clothes and coats/jackets in their shipping container in August?

2.  Karaoke!

3.  Our first scheduled visitors!  Our friends Christine & Tim are teaching in Hong Kong right now, and they'll be coming to visit Thanksgiving weekend.

In the future I promise more exciting posts, as well as pictures.  But please know how much we care about everyone, and that we are only an email/g-chat/facetime/skype away.

xoxo

Wendy

Final Thoughts for the Summer

I can't believe how quickly these 10 weeks have flown by.  We're all packed up and leaving for the airport in less than two hours.  Actually, it's funny, but I'm writing this at 9:30 am Saturday in Tokyo, and we will be landing at exactly the same time in California.  Lucky us, we get to do Saturday twice!

I remember at the end of last summer how desperately ready to come home I was.  And to be fair, I'm sure a big part of that was visiting 4 places over the summer rather than one, combined with how difficult our trip in China was.  But this summer, I feel a lot more settled, and a little sad to be leaving, although I am really looking forward to seeing family and friends.

This summer, I feel like we proved that we could live here in the future and be really happy.  We made friends (that got job offers last night, so they'll definitely be back next year!!), found favorite restaurants, and starting making a little place for ourselves in Tokyo.  So, whatever happens I believe that John and I have a beautiful future ahead of us, and I know that we'll keep working to make Japan a part of it.

Cake Buffet!

Japan is full of amazing things.  Most days I discover at least one thing that I love.  One of these discoveries was the fact that cake buffets exist.  You pay 1480 yen and get 90 minutes of all you can eat cake.  But besides cake they have lots of drinks and real food like pasta and curry to keep you from going into a sugar coma.

Weeks ago Raku and I decided we needed to go, but we finally got around to it yesterday.  That reminds me, I haven't talked about Raku yet have I?  One of the other summer associates working with Grant is here with his fiance, so we were introduced.  And we have so much in common.  Not only are we in the whole coming to Japan with a significant other situation, we could totally relate to the whole being in a relationship with a law student/future lawyer thing.  On top of that she just graduated with her MSW, but most importantly she's super fun!  Basically we were destined to be friends.  And it's been so great.  We go running together (she is an excellent motivator) and have all kinds of fun adventures.  We also plot together to figure out what to do with our lives once we actually live here.

Anyways, enough gushing about Raku, on to the pictures!

I think this pretty much says it all.

There were probably 30-40 types of cake, as well as jello, gummy things, and ice cream.

Our first selections.

Raku decided to go healthy with her next selection.  (And I'm sorry this picture is sideways, I've tried uploading multiple times, restarting my computer, etc. and it will not upload in the correct orientation no matter what I do).

Again, sorry it's sideways.  But, as you can see, I obviously know what the priorities should be at a cake buffet.

After our culinary adventure we set off to buy fake glasses.  There is this hilarious new trend where girls are wearing super thick black glasses.  My favorite ones are the kind that don't even bother to have lenses.  So, we clearly needed some.

I really loved these, even though I don't look like it in the picture.  But sadly, they were sunglasses, and that is just not good enough.

Raku's final selection.  We seriously spent about 2 hours trying on glasses searching for the perfect ones.

Mine!  I thought they were great because they combined 2 trends (floral print on everything and huge glasses), but John was horrified because he is a purist and thinks ONLY black frames are acceptable.  (let's just take a second to remember that we are wearing huge fake glasses without lenses...how serious do we need to be?)

Setsuden aka The Brown Out

Before John and I came here we were hearing all sorts of things about how there wasn't going to be enough power in Japan this summer because of the nuclear plants that are off line.  We heard that there might be rolling blackouts in the afternoons or that trains might not be running normally and that it was basically going to be a disaster.

Well, electricity is a big concern, but so far there have not been any black outs.  Instead, campaigns have started up, and everyone is voluntarily conserving as much power as possible (in the majority of cases) in order prevent black outs and to allow trains to function normally.  This is especially important to a lot of  tech companies because they say that having to turn computers and servers off for 3 hours would basically be devastating to their work.  (John can explain this better than me).  So, this electricity saving campaign has been named Setsuden.  I don't think anyone really loves it, but it's better than the alternative.

I've been taking pictures of everything I can to illustrate it, but I always seem to miss the TV screens that show current electricity usage.  Earlier in the summer consumption was at about 70-75% of what can currently be provided during peak times, but as it's gotten hotter consumption has increased to about 85-88%.  I haven't seen numbers hit the 90's yet, but I'm sure it's coming.

This is the main logo for the campaign that we see all over the place.  Lights are being left off as much as possible.  Air conditioning is being used sparingly, government offices (including schools) are required to keep it at 28 c which is 82 f and many other offices are leaving theirs that high voluntarily!

This is one of the subway ticket machines.  They've turned about half of them off to use less power.

Some vending machines have been turned off completely (notice the tape over the places you would put money in) while other are now set to turn off at night or to not light up.

Almost all down escalators (and some up) have been turned off.

There are also many encouraging signs.  This one says Genki for Japan, which sort of means health or energy for Japan.

A sign at a restaurant.

Well, you can't really read the sign hanging up here (blame John's iPhone), but it says Cheer Up Japan, and has a lot of signatures on it.

At Shrines, people will often buy blocks of wood and write wishes on them.  This one isn't in perfect English, but the sentiment is clear.

So, I'm not sure if I've covered everything you're all wondering about what it's like here in regards to the recent disaster.  But if you have questions or want to know more, just leave a comment!

Ao Oni (Blue Demon)

I'm sitting here, having what is in my mind a delicious beer (but apparently not according to the users on BeerAdvocate), but perhaps my tastes have been tainted by the lackluster Japanese market.

The beer is unfiltered and has a full bodied taste unlike many other beers on the Japanese market. The nose is malty with some hints of citrus (but mostly malts). Once it hits your tongue its still pretty malty (as far as west coast IPAs go) but has a good amount of hops to balance it out. I would comment on the mouth feel, but no one cares.

Apparently the owner of this brewery worked at Stone Brewery for three years, which means this beer is very bitter by Japanese standards. Importantly, this actually tastes like an American beer and is not as light and "empty" as many other Japanese beers I've had. Even the very hoppy beers I've had that are trying to copy the West Coast IPA style seem to go just for insane bitterness and forget that there are other tastes that one might like to find in a beer to balance the tastes.

I only bought one can of this (for 410 yen which is more than it goes for in America) but I think I'll be buying some more in the near future.