Apartment at House Elm

Hello,

This is the view from our walk from our hotel to the University.  This photo was taken in the middle of the street in front of the JR Train Station.  The mountains in the distance look exciting.

Someone requested a photo of the crowds,  so below is a photo of the people getting off the subway at JR station.  What is not being captured in the photo is the crush of people all around you.  I am not sure how to get a photo of that.

 This photo is a little bit surreal with the window washer on our bank seeming to float in the air.

 The fall colors are great with the early morning sun coming through the leaves.

 Below is a photo of Kakemura-san, or as she has requested I call her, Maiko.  She is standing next to the sign for the building, the Institute of Seismology and Volcanology.  She has been very helpful for Bre and me.  Speaking of needing help, in our new apartment we had two problems.  One was that the water that we thought was turned on was actually turned off, and we didn't know how to turn it back on.  The other issue was that we found mildew in several places in the apartment and it has a bad mildew smell.

I went to the convenience store last night and bought a bottle of water.  We camped out in the apartment last night.  This morning we got up early and came to school to send Tanioka-san an email asking for help getting the water turned on.  We don't have internet at our apartment or cell phones so communication is difficult.  We had to go back to our apartment because the man from the gas company was coming out this morning to turn on the gas.  The man from the gas company didn't speak very much english, though he did speak more English than we speak Japanese.  In the process of testing the hot water heater the man from the gas company was able to turn on the water.  We were very very excited.  Water and gas.  I learned Mizu is water and Gazu (sp?) is gas.  Doomo Arigato is thank you.

Anyway, going back to Tanioka-san.  We had sent him the email that our water was out.  After the man from the gas company came and fixed everything we went into the University.  I remembered that we had sent the email to Tanioka-san, and I had an image of him going to our apartment while we were not there.  I asked Maiko where Tanioka-san had gone, she said that he had just left a few minutes ago to go to our place.  She was able to call him and tell him to come back.  The whole situation was quite funny and everyone chuckled.  A comedy of timing, you might say.

Tanioka-san called the landlord about the mold problem and the landlord promised to call the cleaning company.  So hopefully that ties up our loose ends.

 Here are some photos of lunch.  The first photo is Bre's lunch of tofu, miso soup, rice, and chicken that was coated in mayo and fried.  The second photo is pretty much the same except instead of fried chicken there is a dish with fish.  The fish is covered by plastic.

 Here is a photo of the outside of our apartment building.   We moved into the apartment last night.  Tanioka-san gave us a ride to the big Aeon store where we got some bedding, a pot for cooking, cleaning supplies, and some food.  I will include more photos of the apartment at a later date.

 These photos are all by Bre of me on the new (to us) bike.

That's all for now.

-Kyle (and Bre)

A Bicycle on Tuesday

I am happy to see all the comments on the blog.  I noticed two requests that I will have to work on.  Dave asked to photos of the food and my Mom asked for photos of the crowds.  Look for these in the next blog posting.

On Tuesday Bre and I went to her office for her to start working.  When we arrived we learned that the internet is not set up for us to use.  We ended up visiting a Russian visiting professor that Bre knows, Tanya, who has unlocked wireless internet in her office.  We went out to get lunch at the cafeteria with Tanya and Bre's office mate Adit (ah-deet) and a friend of Adit's. 

Thanks to Bre's professor in Seattle, Jody, we made a connection with a Russian student, Olga.  Olga was good friends with Jody when Jody was in Sapporo last year.  Olga had a bicycle she wasn't using and suggested that we go to pick it up at 7pm.  We are very excited to get a bicycle.  The city is very flat and everyone rides a bicycle. 

We waited around at Bre's office until 6pm and then walked over to the Aeon grocery store.  This will be the closest grocery store to our apartment, we think.  It is quite big and has an exciting collection of fruit and vegetables, which we are craving.  Rice balls, fish products, seaweed and tofu only cover so many of your basic food groups.  Anyway the photos below are from the grocery store.  The first two photos are of a moving walkway that goes down a floor so that you can take your shopping cart to the underground parking garage with ease.

Here are some freshly caught fish in ice.

Maybe I found tomato sauce?

 I am not sure what this stuff is.  It looked exciting.  It was in the toiletries section below the toothbrushes.  I imagine it could be denture cleaning tablets, or some crazy type of mouthwash.

So around 7pm, or 1900 since the Japanese use military time, we found Olga's place (Tanya had thankfully given us a map and described in detail how to get there).  She lives in the international student houseing with her son Vladez (I am not sure I spelled his name correctly.)  Vladez is in preschool and was very cheerful.  Olga invited us in for Russian style dinner.  We had soup, bread, slices of tomato, pear and apple slices, some fish, tea, jam on crackers and cookies. Olga is very nice and helpful-- we are all very excited to have made a new friend.  On Saturday Olga says she will take us to a place to buy less expensive fruits and vegetables, and also a 2nd-hand store for things for our apartment.

The bicycle that Olga gave us is very old, but it works well!  As far as we can tell, all Japanese bicycles look like this, but with differing levels of shiny-ness. Olga warned us that the bicycle is not registered.  In Sapporo you have to register your bicycle with the police.  She was stopped by the police with the bicycle and told that it was not registered to her.  She told the policeman that she doesn't speak any Japanese and somehow got away.   She warned us that if the police stop us on the bike it may be confiscated.  I feel like this is quite the immigrant experience.  We are aliens with an unregistered and probably illegal bicycle.  :)

 This is a photo of the university campus at night.

This is the biggest personal car and the most ridiculous I have seen in Japan.  And of course it is American.  I underexposed the first photo so that you can see how bright its neon glows.

This is a photo of our hotel, the Chisun Hotel, which we will leave Wednesday morning.

Mondy and the paperwork blitz

 Day 5,

Monday was a blur.  We went to Bre's office and met with Maiko Kakemura-san, one of the office ladies who speaks English.  As we were walking to the university I came upon this small truck.  I thought the truck was incredibly small.  I realize you don't have a scale in the photo, but I am 6'2" and I was holding the camera at eye level, which is about the same height as the tuck.  It couldn't have been more than 6' tall and 12' long.  Even that may be giving it too much credit for size.

 Here is the organized chaos that is a Japanese power pole.  I think the pole is made of steel.

 Here is Kyle on the University Campus.  Hokkadai (Hokkaido University) has the largest campus of any university in Japan.  It is very nice.

 Below is Bre at her new office.  It has a great window looking out at the woods.  Perfect for spacing out if needed.

 It was around this point when we met up with Maiko Kakemura-san.  She led us through the subway system to the ward office where we registered for our official alien registration.  Next we went up to the National Health Insurance program.  It was upstairs in the same building.  We got a steal of a deal for the first 5 months.  The insurance for the both of us came to 10,800 Yen.  The current exchange rate is 78 Yen to the dollar.  In US dollars we paid $138 for 5 months insurance for 2 people.  The amount you pay is based on how much you earned in the previous year.  In our case because we did not have jobs in Japan over the last year we counted as not making anything over the previous year.  Oh, the magic of socialized medicine!

We went to the immigration office to get the re-entry visas so that we can leave and return to Japan.

After the insurance we went out to eat at Yoshinoya fast food restaurant.  I thought it was good and quite cheap.  It was the sort of place that only salary-men go.  According to Kakemura-san women almost never go and tourists almost never go.  Bre and Kakemura-san were the only women in the place.  We had the beef bowl with carmelized onions and lots of rice.  I had a side of pickled vegetables, and Bre had a side of Kimchee.  Bre thought the Kimchee didn't taste like Korean Kimchee, but rather a Japanized version of Kimchee.  I am not enough of a Kimchee expert to be able to tell.

The last place we went was the Bank.  We got a bank account and will have our bank cards sent to us in the mail shortly.

We returned to Bre's office and thanked Kakemura-san for spending most of her day helping us.  We met Adit, who shares Bre's office.  Adit is Indonesian and is fluent in English and speaks some Japanese.  He offered to help us get cell phones today.

The rest of the photo's I took on the walk home.  You may notice that it was raining.  It made the photos quite exciting with the light reflected off everything that was wet. We stopped by the 100 Yen store and got umbrellas.  As you can see in the last photo Bre is very happy with her umbrella.

 That's all for now.

-Kyle (and Bre) in Japan

Day 2 (and 3) in Japan

Hello again,

I realize that my last post of Day 1 in Japan actually more like the first 24 hours in Japan.  Anyway, after the last posting we went to meet with Tanioka-san (Bre's host for her research work in Japan) and he brought us to the University Co-op housing office where we got great help at finding an apartment.  The apartment that we chose is on the Western edge of the university campus.  It is on the second floor and faces south, so it will get plenty of light in the winter.  The apartment has a bedroom, living room, small kitchen, small toilet room and a separate small shower room.  There is a alcove to take your shoes off in as you enter the apartment.  We will need to get slippers and guest slippers.  You are not supposed to walk around in someone's house in your regular shoes.  It is quite nice and at 51.5 meters squared it seemed big enough.  Our current hotel room is 13.8 meters squared, which is just barely big enough for our suitcases, a bed, bathroom, and very short hallway.  The new apartment comes furnished because the last tenants left their furniture behind.  Apparently this is something you can do in Japan.  Who knew?  The lady at the Co-op who helped us find the housing actually drove us out to see the apartment.  We will move in on Wednesday, and Tanioka-san offered to help us move.

The second part of our goal for yesterday, adjusting to the time zone ended up in failure.  We took a nap in the afternoon and went to bed around 6pm, meaning that we woke up at 4am.  Today we will do better, no naps!

This morning we tried the hotel's breakfast.  Some of the details of the breakfast I didn't understand because I don't read or understand Japanese.  I think it was an all you can eat breakfast.  The portions were very small and the food was mysterious.  Bre tried the salted and fermented squid internal organs along with several other dishes.  Bre says that she put this item on her plate before reading the description.  Whatever the case may be I watched her eat it all.  I am not sure what I ate, the English descriptions of each dish were limited.  I am discovering that while food adventures can be fun, first thing in the morning is not a time when I am looking for a food adventure.

For lunch we went to the 7-11 convenience store across the street from the hotel.  A 7-11 store in Japan is not at all like a 7-11 store in the US.  I really liked the food that we got at the 7-11.  There is an element of surprise since we can only guess what the food is based how it looks.  I had a vegetable and noodle salad with hard boiled egg and a sesame sauce.  Bre had fried rice with scrambled egg and mystery meat.  We shared a sweet buttery dessert roll.  It cost half as much as the hotel breakfast and was very tasty.

 This is a photo of the JR Train Station in Sapporo.  It is only a few blocks from our hotel.  It reminds me of the train station in Berlin, only bigger and much more confusing.  Bre told me that on her previous trip to Sapporo she got lost in this station.  I can totally believe it.  The train station has, in addition to a train station, a very large mall spread out over 7 floors, a movie theater, a subway, a giant electronic store, and many other things that I have not yet figured out.  In the US a mall like this would be built with wide pathways and long sight lines.  This mall has narrow pathways, large crowds, short sight lines, and virtually all the signs are in Japanese.  In other words it was very foreign to me, despite having a Starbucks.

 Here is the police station outside the JR train station.  I like how small and modern it looks.  Surrounded by giant glass towers the police station is a one floor glass box.

 I like the fire hydrant and sign.  I assume that the reason there needs to be an 8 foot tall sign is that the snow gets so deep that you might lose the hydrant.  Nothing says a bad time like running over a fire hydrant in a snow storm.

 The series of photos above is from the University of Hokkaido campus.  I learned that this Univeristy is often referred to as Hokudai, much like the University of Washington is referred to as UW or U-dub.

The fall color is on, and according to Tanioka-san this is the time of year the university looks the best.  I enjoyed the long line of Ginko Trees changing their leaves.  We were not the only ones there photographing the leaves as they changed color.  There was a small army of Japanese photographers out this afternoon.

I included this last photo because I really like the image of the elephant electrical line worker fixing the line with his trunk.  It is the sort of image that I would never imagine before coming to Japan.

Tomorrow Bre and I will meet with the office lady at Bre's department and work on getting our alien registration.  The whole process is very complicated.  We have to get an apartment so that we can have an address for the alien registration.  We have to have the alien registration to apply for a bank account.  We are excited to meet Bre's new co-workers and get started!

I have been enjoying everyone's comments to the blog.  If you ask a question in the comments section I will do my best to respond in the comments section of the blog.  Thanks for reading!

-Kyle (and Bre)

Day 1 in Japan

Day 1 of living in Japan.


The first photo is of us and all our stuff at Seatac.  The long flight over to Osaka was uneventful.   It was only 12 hours and the food was disappointing.  Bre says that it was her first time flying across the pacific on an American airline (Delta), and it made her wish for Korean Air, or some other costumer service oriented airline.  I took a brief nap on the flight in.  Because we were flying West starting in the middle of the day the sun stayed with us all the way into Osaka.  Having the sunshine helped me stay alert.

Osaka airport is very nice.  I took these photos in the airport.  I particularly like the Applause store.  It looks nice and the name is the kind of name that I suspect an American would never think of for a business.  But really who doesn't like applause?  The photo above the applause store is a convienence store in the airport in Osaka.  I bought some snacks and a bottle of water at the store.  Without being able to read Japanese I spent a long time looking at the pictures of the food to figure out what to get.  The very first photo (3 photos up) is just looking at the cool architecture of the Osaka airport from the inside.

The airport was very clean and neat.  We brought a package of dried salmon from the US as a gift.  On the Customs forms it stated that you may not bring in pre-packaged meat.  The explanation was something about preventing the spread of hoof and mouth disease.  I was worried about this and afraid that I would have to throw out the salmon.  We found the customs declaration area as we were coming in and I asked the customs officer if the dried salmon would be OK.  She looked at the box and read the ingredients carefully before saying that fish is fine.   The customs lady then asked hopefully if we had any other meat products.  I got the impression that I could have made her day if I had brought in a package of sausage or beef that she could confiscate.  Bre explained to me that in most countries fish is not considered a meat, and that is why it was OK.

The rest of the photos are from our walk around Sapporo this morning.  I particularly like the plastic monkeys holding the rails to keep people off the new sidewalk curb.

Our plans for the rest of the day are to go out to look for apartments with Tanioka-san, our host, and work on adjusting from the jet-lag.

That's all for now.

-Kyle (and Bre)

T-20 hours and counting

I sold my trusty car of 12 years and 70,000 miles.  We had so many adventures together.  The road trip to Mexico, many drives back and forth across Central Washington and North Idaho, spinning in the snow, getting stuck in the mud, and too many other adventures to count.  I hope the new owners appreciate it a for few more years.

Bre and I have suspended our phones, done our final shopping.  Now we just need to weigh our bags to stay under the weight limit and get on the plane.  I am ready to go.  Our visas are ready, international drivers licenses prepared, and we even have a ride from the airport in Sapporo.  Hello Japan, here we come!

Getting ready for the wedding

Bre and I are a force of order in a universe of chaos getting this thing under control.  We have so many details to sort out.  I am amazed that anyone would choose to do this as a career.  Wedding Planning?  It's all crazy. 

Some of the pieces are starting to fall into place.  We have the parking set, a plan for the ceremony, the photographs and the reception.  We have a committee of very very helpful people that have taken on the tasks of organizing some of our tasks.  There is a kitchen team, a reception set-up team, a worship room team, a decorations team, and a parking team.

I am looking forward to having this done and over.  Going to Japan will be relaxing in comparison. 

On a blogging note there is a way to leave comments.  If you are following the blog please let me know.  I will be more likely to write if I know that someone is reading what I have been putting out there.

-Kyle