Japanese House Tour Part 1

It is always amazing to me how little time it takes to accumulate things. I have moved a lot in my life and each time I manage to pare my things down to only a few suitcases. Inevitably time passes and those few suitcases multiply.

So, it has happened again. Somehow, without being really aware of it, the few suitcases of personal items we brought to Japan increased until we are now able to comfortably fill and furnish a small house. Our furnishings are still pretty spartan compared with most of the Japanese houses and apartments we have been to though. Dustin and I have noticed people's tendency to have towering mountains of furniture and assorted stuff that stretches to the ceiling and covers almost every available bit of flooring. I am pretty sure that I would lose my mind if I had to spend every waking moment keeping the boys from bounding into, climbing, and toppling endless stacks of stuff. Maybe this is why children here are kept out of the house in day cares, kindergartens, and endless extra curricular classes from such an early age.

Without further ado, here is a tour of one half of our new place:

When you enter through the front door, you find yourself in a large, old style genkan. There is a 36 cm step from this concrete entrance area onto a wooden landing that takes you into the rest of the house.

ただいま!

From the landing, there is a door to the left, a door to the right, and a flight of stairs leading to the second floor. Today, we will enter through the door on the left. 

Beyond the door is a small sunroom with large sliding patio doors on the left and a tatami "living room" on the right.

Here is a view of the sunroom from inside the tatami room.

This is the tatami room that we have turned into our living room

And here is a different angle of the room showing the traditional shrine alcove which has been turned into our TV corner. This is no reflection on how much importance we place on our television, but was just a nice out of the way spot for it. Theo seems pretty pumped about playing Smooth Moves. There is a big closet with double sliding doors on the back wall and a door that leads to the washing machine and shower area between the closet and the couch.

When you go through this door, you find yourself in a short hallway where the washing machine is located.

To the left of the washing machine there is a doorway that leads to the fully waterproof bath/shower area. 

For those of you who have never had the pleasure of using a Japanese bathtub, here is a closer look at it. It is not as long the bathtubs we have in the West, but much deeper. It is about 50 cm deep so you can immerse much more of your body in the water. 

It also has a complicated and new fangled set of controls that allows you to adjust the temperature, fill the tub at the touch of a button, and circulate the water in the bathtub through a heater that maintains it at the same temperature throughout your bath. Also, the water can be saved and reheated in the future to whatever temperature you like by pressing a button. This might seem strange, but since you fully scrub yourself down before getting in, the water is clean enough to save for the next bath. 

The thing that attracted us to this house was the perfect blending of old and new. We are guessing that it was built during the post war reconstruction period, which puts it at about 60 - 65 years old. There are a lot of aspects that have been kept in their original state, like the large, deep genkan, or entranceway, the worn wooden stairs and landing, the deep windowsills, and old exposed timbers. However, much of the inside has been completely updated. In the few months before we moved in, the windows were all replaced, all interior walls and doors were repapered, new wooden flooring was put in the kitchen and dining room, new tatami was laid, all new cabinets, sinks, and counters were put into the kitchen and bathroom, a new western style toilet complete with a washlet was installed, and the shower room and bathtub were replaced. In other words, it is like living in a completely new house, but without the impersonal, plastic, modular feel of most new houses in Japan. We get to enjoy the history and layout of a traditional Japanese home without any of the inconvenience or deterioration that usually accompanies a 65 year old structure.   

That's enough house touring for now. Next time we will find out what lies beyond the right hand door and up the stairs! 

Pulling Up Stakes

Our current apartment was provided to us by the Board of Education when we arrived in Fukuyama. They rent about 10 apartments in our neighbourhood and since they often hire unmarried, childless English teachers the size of the apartments are usually more than adequate. We are the first family with more than one child that has been hired in this city and I don't think Dustin's supervisor put in a lot of thought before we came into our need for extra space or adult privacy.

A few months ago, Dustin and I finally decided that our tiny apartment was simply too small for the four of us, but especially our two rambunctious boys. We started to casually look around at places for rent, but we hadn't gone to view anything or even talked to the Board of Education about possibly moving. What we had read about other ALTs on the JET Programme who wanted to find a place to live other than the apartment provided for them, was that it was possible but you would have to pay all of the key money (a non-refundable down payment, damage deposit, landlord and real estate agent fee that is usually 3-7 months rent) on the new place and your rent would no longer be subsidized. Because of this massive investment on our part we were only half serious about wanting to move. In the meantime, a cute little house in our neighbourhood that had been undergoing massive interior renovations became available for rent. It is a slightly older, more traditional style house with a fenced in yard that is miraculously unpaved and not covered in a million boulders and clipped trees; perfect for planting grass and letting the kids take their energy outside. 


We met with the real estate agent who informed us that the key money was an astronomical 385,000 yen (about 5,000 $ Canadian), but the monthly rent is pretty cheap and there was the perfect amount of inside and outside space for us. Next we talked to the Board of Education about canceling our current lease so that we could rent the house. We were informed that, no, we weren't allowed to move, not even if we paid our own key money and rent. We even offered to continue to pay rent on both places until our current apartment's lease ran out in August, but they wouldn't hear of it. So, we sat around and moped for a few weeks feeling even more cooped up than before.

Just when we had gotten over the blow having our dream knocked out from under us, Dustin's supervisor called us and said that after numerous discussions on her end, they decided cancel our apartment lease, pay the key money on the house for us, and subsidize our rent to the same degree that they do on our apartment. I am not sure what prompted the sudden and extreme change of mind, but who am I to question the hand that feeds me? In the future, I hope that the Fukuyama Board of Education will take into consideration the family size of those they are hiring and rent appropriately sized apartments. This was new territory for them, but we are so grateful at how generous and accommodating they are being.

So, we are moving on May 31st and are excited beyond words. I will post pictures of our new place as soon as we can after moving but unfortunately, it will take about a month or two for our internet to be hooked up, so my ability to post will be severely limited from Thursday on.

Counting Down the Days

This is it: our last few days in Canada are ticking steadily away. We have been in Landmark since the kids and I returned from Banff and are enjoying being around all of our family here. We have been keeping extremely busy trying to get everything squared away. I haven't even really had any time to feel lonely without Dustin's company, and the past three weeks have gone ridiculously fast, so the being busy has been a great thing.

Selling memories

The first weekend in August was taken up by a massive garage sale in which I was able to sell a lot of our things off while gaining a bit of change to pay for our flights. It was a fairly successful endeavour and was worth the effort of setting it up and getting everything priced. I was afraid that Theo would go ballistic when he saw other kids fondling and leaving with his toys or books, but he only had one mild episode and then was pretty much o.k. with it. I was pretty sad to see a lot of things go and I was actually surprised to realize how sentimental I was being about the littlest things. After the garage sale was over, I donated the remaining items to our local thrift store and felt the true final severing of the Manitoba chapter in our lives.

We spent last weekend at the old farm house that my in-laws are renovating outside of Riding Mountain National Park. They own 160 acres of forest and field with a national park on one side and basically no neighbours. It is a really nice way to get away from everything and Theo had an absolutely wonderful time wandering around, getting to ride on the quad, and generally enjoying the outdoors. William is truly a lover of the outdoors so there was hardly a fuss from him all weekend.

Theo contemplating the meaning of life on his stump chair

William is always calm when he gets to be outside

Theo pretending to fish on the little beaver dam pond

So proud to go for a ride with Grandpa

This week I have continued to keep busy with the remainder of our packing, mailing a few bins of our things, and stuffing everything else into suitcases. I am going to be relieved on Monday when all of this preparation is over and we can finally board that plane. 

Meanwhile I have been talking with Dustin on Skype and everything seems to be going well on the other side of the ocean. He is pleased with his job so far, the people living near us, and our apartment. It seems surreal to think that at this time next week, we will all be there together, crammed into our teensy apartment!

The Path of Least Resistance

One of the problems that I keep running into since Dustin and I have started studying Japanese is controlling the impulse to blurt out German words. After years of studying German, my brain seems hardwired to come up with the German word for something instead of the correct word in Japanese. It will probably take a while before I stop doing this, and I am sure that I will be embarrassed a few times in Japan when I randomly insert German into sentences.

Learning German is a very pleasant experience for an English speaker. The vocabulary, syntax, and phrases are similar to English but with the added benefit of being so much more  organized and predictable. As a kid I thought it was much more fun to play Nintendo games with the Game Genie. Legitimately beating Mario Bros. caused a certain level of pride, but playing it with infinite lives and infinite Fire Mario just made it so much more fun. Learning German was a very similar experience for me, like learning a foreign language with the native English speaker Game Genie.

I am finding Japanese to be much more difficult, but ultimately more rewarding language learning experience. It is not nearly as intuitive for me, but I am enjoying the challenge. Dustin has another Japanese class starting tomorrow, in addition to the one we are currently taking at the U of M, but this one is through the JET Programme. I think we are both anticipating/dreading having to rely on our feeble language base very soon.

Theo has been trying to speak Japanese to us, which usually involves repeating nonsensical lists of words he has picked up from watching Anpanman or shouting "いただきます" at the top of his lungs before each meal. It is neat to see how much his three year old brain is understanding about the impending move and encountering a foreign language.

Friendly Manitoba

I love Manitoba, I do. Sometimes it just feels as though I am convincing myself of this. Most of the time, my attitude towards living here is well described by the Weakerthans' song "One Great City".

The other day, I was listening to Winnipeg artist and general good-guy Del Barber's song "Home to Manitoba". I found myself actually waxing nostalgic while listening and was shocked to think that I might possibly miss this place when we are gone. I have never been homesick in all of the dozens of times we have moved, since I have never felt that I actually had a definite place that I could call home. I have lived in Manitoba longer than any other place, got married and had my children here, so maybe, just maybe, this time I will feel a twinge?

Manitoba, at least it's not Saskatchewan

Only about an hour after thinking all of these loyal thoughts about Manitoba, I stepped outside to bring the kids to the park. I was struck by a biting, cold, unpleasant wind that cut through my clothes, whipped my hair into my eyes, and blew a cloud of dirt in the kids' faces. The only place I know of that might just have colder and more intense winds than Manitoba is on Jupiter, but I am sure that we come in a close second. Every loving thought from earlier was blown away with this wind.

Oh, to live in a land that has mountains and trees!

The Beginning of the End

The past week has been full of productivity, goodbyes, and frantic running around.

About two weeks ago we decided to put our house up for sale. I was absolutely dreading having to do dozens of house showings and all of the house cleaning that would entail. Not that our house is in a constant state of ramshackle decrepitude, but I am a bit OCD when it comes to making sure things are presentable when strangers come over. This is actually insanely hard considering Theo is an unbridled force of destruction, the embodiment of entropy, and William usually cries unless he is being held. We had our first showing last week and my mom and step-mom were a great help in giving the house a once over. The same person came back a second time with a home inspector and by Friday the house was officially sold. We have set the possession date for August 1st, so that gives us until Dustin leaves to get everything sold, packed, or stored away. I will then spend the two weeks until the kids, Karlee, and I leave at my in-laws house. It feels great to check one fairly large to do off of our list and know that I won't have frantically tidy up for anymore last minute showings.

William and Grandpa

Not everything has been all business, however. The weather has officially become pleasantly warm, hovering around 20 degrees or so, and for a brief window Manitoba is relatively free of insects. We are of course in the middle of tick season, but you can't win them all. With this nice sunny weather, our weekend was full of family gatherings. My dad, who just recently arrived back from Mexico where he lives, left on Monday for Indonesia. We had a bit of a goodbye party for him on Saturday. He won't be arriving back until after we leave for Japan, and it hasn't quite sunk in that I won't be seeing him again for years potentially. At least we had a week or so to catch up and the opportunity to meet William before he left. On Sunday we had a barbecue at my in-laws and enjoyed their large and lovely back yard. I am trying to appreciate the mosquito free outdoors as much as possible, and it helps when you know people with nice yards that actually have grass in them.

Der Theodor im Fußballtor

It felt like old times on Monday when I realized that we had our Japanese class in the evening and I hadn't really reviewed anything from the week before. I discovered that my ability to cram last minute has gone downhill drastically since I was in school, but I managed to absorb a bit.

Throw in an appointment with the doctor, a car inspection, and a trip down to the U.S., and all in all, this week has felt like a busy blur. It has been hectic but I am pretty sure that every week until we leave will be about the same, so I might as well get used to it!

The Great Purge

One of the things on my mental to do list is to go through everything in our house and basement and decide which category it fits into:

1. Give to select family members
2. Give to a thrift store
3. Sell online/at a future garage sale
4. Take to Japan with us
5. Store until our return

We are attempting to take only what is absolutely necessary to Japan with us. This is much easier said than done when you are packing for two children as well. The good news is that we can find everything we are leaving behind when we get to Japan, but we really don't want to have to shell out for toys and clothes that we already have. Thank goodness their clothes are smaller than ours and Theo prefers playing outside with sticks and rocks more than chunks of plastic. We also want to store as little as possible, probably just my wedding dress and a box of keepsakes.

So, does anyone want our stuff? If there has ever been anything of ours that you wanted or something that you needed lately, maybe we have it and most certainly are wanting to get rid of it. We will be having a massive garage sale in Landmark at some point in July, but if you want first dibs on anything, just ask!

More Surprises

As of yet, we have no idea where we will be living in Japan. There are many aspects of applying for the JET Programme that require you to be an insanely patient and laid back person, and this is certainly one of them. Not many people I know would be excited about signing themselves and their family up for a life in an absolutely unknown location in a foreign country. Add to that the 7 month applications time and that you only have a rough guess of what your housing will be like is enough to turn most people off. Though we are certainly not the most patient of people, no one could accuse of not being laid back. The unknown just makes this all the more exciting.

We have been told that we will find out our placement in May. Basically, the government works with various contracting organizations to find best where to place you. On our applications we were asked to put three preferences, but they make no promises that you will actually get placed in one of the areas that you requested. Picking our three preferences turned out to be really informative. After hours and days of googling all of the different regions and prefectures of Japan, we were able to see which had geography, climate, foods, etc. which appealed to us the most. We finally decided on Miyazaki, Kochi, and Okayama Prefectures. They are all in the southern-ish part of Japan since we really don't want to have to deal with cold winters anymore. We also specified that we want to live in a rural community. We feel that living in a small town or village will force us to learn Japanese faster, allow us to experience more traditional Japanese culture, become part of the community, and have greater access to the outdoors. We will be anxiously waiting until sometime in May when they decide where to place us.

The Long Awaited News

Yesterday we received the email that we have been anticipating for months. Dustin will be working as an ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) for the Japanese Exchange Teaching Programme starting in July. We began the whole application process for this job in October, so almost seven months later it is a relief to find out all of our planning and energy has not been wasted.

For those of you who haven't been subjected to us talking about Japan for months and months, I will be going over some of the details of the job and our move in the next few posts. We are hoping that this blog will be a little glimpse into what it took to get into the JET Programme, our last few hectic months in Manitoba, and what life is like for our little family once we arrive in Japan.