Home Sweet Japanese Home

We also hang out our clothes like everyone else.

An aerial view of the living room/dining room.

I love my Japanese refrigerator

Well, we moved into our house out in town last week.  It took the movers about 6 hours to unload/unpack our belongings.  We were surprised at how we did a good job of gauging how much to bring.  Everything pretty much has a place which is good.  Now I can justify why I need to go shopping since we need a few things (furniture, garbage cans, etc).

Our neighborhood is located about 3 miles from the base (about 10 minutes via car, 20 minutes via bicycle), in a really nice, newer neighborhood on the hillside.  When we say where we live, most people aren't familiar with the neighborhood, so we use the closest train station as a marker.  Speaking of the train, there's a tunnel for the trains underneath this development.  The first day I was at the house alone, I was startled by the train.  I/we don't even notice anymore.  We are desensitized from the train noises because we used to live next to the train track in North Seattle for 9 years.  The trains literally shook our place every time they went by.  I think that's why the boys were good sleepers when they were young.  The train would just lull them to sleep.

Our family is one of handful of Americans (American-Jin) living in the neighborhood.  We met a few of our neighbors last week when we brought them gifts.  Gift giving is a tradition here in Japan, so I was prepared and bought some items from home before we left.  All the neighbors were quite welcoming, and some were apologetic for not speaking more/better English.  The irony is that I/we feel the same not speaking their language better.  The neighbor directly across from us works on the Naval base and speaks pretty good English.  One of his dogs is named Marilyn Monroe!

Overall, I'm glad we chose to move out in town.  It will give us more of an opportunity to experience Japanese culture daily.