Yokels

Finally! It has been a while and we apologize. We are fully operational now, we have moved into our house, the pets are here and we have internet (wireless!). The car has been a dream, it is freedom we were okay living without and had even prepared ourselves for the possibility of not having one here; since we have bought the car it appears we have forgotten how nice it is not having to walk an average of 12 miles a day to conduct day-to-day errands etc.... We ended up buying a 1998 Nissan Cube for about $2000. It is nice and small, but has an incredible amount of cargo space for its size. The car has a kick-ass GPS, but alas it is all in Japanese; we cannot even use it to determine our location, let alone enter destination addresses for navigation. Driving is surprisingly natural, however we have both mistakenly activated the wipers when we really meant to use the directional signals, a basic Gaijin mistake. The scariest part about driving is not what one would think (driving on the left side of the road), it is avoiding the thousands of motorbikes that whizz by and weave through the traffic. They are fearless on everything from bicycles and Vespas to Harley-Davidsons. We are going to have to ask a Japanese friend (when we get one) to help us at least input our address into out GPS so we can always find our way home, in this case I think we shall name our car Lassie. Now if could only fetch the C-clamp.

The house, which is called Lumiere by the owners, is fantastic. It is one of the bigger houses in which we have lived, comparable to our house in Washington. It stands an impressive (well impressive for Japan) 1300 sqft (120.7sqm) atop a hill overlooking Oppama. The neighborhood is called "Shonan Takatori". The floors are beautiful and the layout is very clean and modern. The kitchen is small, but the house is setup for an American style range and oven so we were able to get one installed. There are also two rooms that are able to be partitioned with sliding frosted glass doors. We are not sure why one of the bedrooms is arranged with this feature, since there is a slight breech in privacy with the glass and there is no way to block out the light in the adjacent room, but it is still cool. The toilets are interesting, since they are separated from the actual sink and shower portion of the bathroom they have little faucets on top of the tank for washing your hands, very efficient. The number one greatest part about the house is the Japanese shower, with which we can never live without following our time here. In our next home we will demolish the existing shower and bathroom to replace it with a Japanese style one no matter the expense. There is no way to describe how incredible the shower is, to find out you just have to come visit. It is an enormous walk-in closet with a deep tub at one end and a shower head the sprays water at you like warm rain. We ordered a new sofa for the living room and once it arrives the house should be complete. We have gotten a few new things, but for all the niceties the house has one drawback. It is freezing. There are times when it is highly possible that inside the house is colder than the outside ambient temperature. We sleep under five layers of blankets and have to keep a heater on all night. Each room has a heater/AC unit mounted and are operated via remote control and are required to be operating if one should want to sit comfortably in the room. Turn it off and within seconds a shivering chill permeates through the room. Our fear is that it will be just the opposite in the summer.

What they don't tell you about your Japanese house when you are Gaijin
-Your lease states that you cannot wear shoes. (This wouldn't be as bad if the house wasn't reaching absolute zero)
-Throughout the day there are sweet little jingles that can be heard from passing trucks that are reminiscent of the ice cream man that we are still unable to figure out, only that they are not the ice cream man.
-The hot water has to be turned on every time we want to use it, there is a small panel on the wall in the kitchen and in the bathroom that makes a pleasant sound followed by woman speaking something in Japanese. It works every time.
-None of the closets have hanger bars and some don't have shelves.
-Recycling is intense, They collect garbage everyday (which a municipal service), the garbage has to be in clear biodegradable bags. Each day is a different type of waste (combustibles, plastic, glass & cans, non-combustibles). If you misplace and item in the wrong bag they do not collect you garbage and leave you a friendly note on the bag reminding you of the appropriate location of the misplaced item. We have four color-coded trash cans on the kitchen to aid in our sorting.
-Doing laundry down-right sucks. The base provided us with a washer and dryer, but the washer cycle takes forever and nothing comes out of the dryer, dry until it has been run through at least three to four cycles.
-To park a car at the house the police come to measure the spot to ensure the vehicle will fit and then issue a permit, it takes three days and costs $20.
-The three-pronged outlet does not exist in Japan.

We also recently took a trip to the surrounding areas of Mt. Fuji. It was the first time we saw snow here and it was beautiful. We will post something in more detail, but enjoy some of the photos in the new slide show. We have added an archive photo album under the current ones for your enjoyment!