We're approaching the end of week 5 in Tokyo and it's been a big week. We moved into our new home on Monday and had the fun of arranging furniture and unpacking over 100 boxes that arrived at Yokohoma port last week after 3 weeks at sea.
Our new neighbourhood is called Kamiyamacho, a 10 minute walk from the mega-manic Shibuya and to our local subway station Yoyogi-Koen (as in the surname 'Cohen' which does not refer to my mothers maiden name but means a park in Japanese). It took me longer to work out how to pronounce this suburb ('Ka-mi-yah-ma-cho') than it did to find the actual house.
The March 2011 Earthquake and Tsunami had a massive impact on the expatriate community in Tokyo. Despite all the obvious impacts this type of natural and national disaster had on the country's economy there has been a significant exodus of expats from Japan. They either got nervous and left on their own accord or companies have cut budgets and sent them home resulting in a large number of vacant properties in some of Tokyo's best expat suburbs.
Having experienced the rather unpleasant and stressful process of finding a decent rental in London and years later in Sydney, the expectations of our long term property set-up were pretty low. This is Tokyo, recently rated the most expensive city in the world. I was hopeful for a decent looking shoebox to fit all our stuff we had brought over.
In our second week here I met Nakagawa-san. A real estate agent from Century 21 who fetched Jonah and I from our apartment in Aoyama and drove us around numerous suburbs to view properties. Every one was a great size, perfectly liveable. This was going to be a lot easier than I expected. Aside from anything, I was driven around (with my baby on my lap) and given a lot more than just a 15 minute slot to view a property with no-one else in site. There wasn't a lot of competition out there.
The process was made a lot easier by the fact that Nakagawa-san and Japanese people in general love babies. He was happy to hold him and watch him crawl around while I checked out each apartment. Although we had learned about the custom of always removing your shoes when entering a home (and wearing slippers) before we arrived in Japan, I forgot and wore my lace up trainers. This meant taking my trainers on and off about 8 times that morning. I made sure to wear my havianas the next time I met up with Nakagawa-san.
On the second morning, the first house I saw I loved and told Nakagawa-san we were in business. We moved in 3 weeks later.
We share a wall with the Morgans, a Kiwi couple who came to say hello as we moved in and the Latvian embassy is across the road. I've not met the ambassador yet but am looking out for him and his wife...and I've met some neighbours who are also British School families. We had some tea yesterday with one of them and I was glad to hear we're living in a quiet block built on a cliff-top making this very solid ground to live. As a result this has become a very sought after block and street given we live in such an earthquake prone region.
We have a local, lively high street called the Kamiyama Street . I've walked along it a few times with the kids. It's narrow and busy but filled with lots of Japanese cafes, restaurants and convenience stores. We've discovered a quick lunch for the girls called Onigri : a triangle sushi with seaweed on the outside and a filling of cooked salmon or tuna fish in side the centre. Cheap (130Y/ $1.20) and it passed the Rachel test. It must be good.
The Japanese don't appear to do alfresco dining (probably a space thing) so yesterday after we bought our lunch I managed to find a few crates stacked outside 7-11. We made some seats for the girls to eat lunch while Jonah ate his rice cakes in his mountain buggy. Felt just like the old days outside Jeds with our coffee and spelt scones from Organic, except we probably stuck out like a bunch of sore thumbs to the locals in our new hood.
We had a great team of unpackers helping us on Monday. They were incredibly courteous and hard working. Deliveries of all our electrical appliances arrived and from IKEA, installation of internet, tv, phone lines and an official came by from the ward office to talk us through the garbage process. Mikiko was there from Tokyo Orientations most of the morning to help with translation - not sure how any expats settle here without these godsend relocation consultants.
All 3 kids were home, it's been half term this week so it was a BIG Monday. Ath and I were tired but managed to have a house in good shape by 11pm.
Most importantly we're thrilled to call this our new Sarakinsky 'home' in Kamiyamacho for the next 12 months. And even happier that we know how to pronounce that to the locals. And at the expense of never having to see another box again - I'd quite happily live in Tokyo for the rest of my life.
Friday, 26 October 2012
Thursday, 11 October 2012
Where the streets have no name
I love my walk to school with the kids everyday which is now an established routine since arriving in Tokyo 2 and half weeks ago. Getting 3 kids and 3 bags ready and out the door at 8am isn't quite as fun, its pretty brutal to be honest (especially when we were used to schools on our doorstep in Australia) but I figure that morning rush hour is universally hard work for all parents no matter where one lives.
We leave our apartment in Aoyama, which is located in a suburb called Jingumae and take a left out the hotel and then another left. We walk for about 500 metres along a road that falls within the quirky neighbourhood of Harajuku.
When we first heard our address '3-1-29 Jingumae' we asked our relocation consultant Meiko 'What's with all the numbers?'
In Tokyo the streets do not have names unless they are very large and very important streets. The numbers tell you the 'chome' which is the part of a suburb your home is located in, another number represents your street and the final number indicates your house number.
I'll admit it I'm a real map person. Maybe it's the old Contiki Tour Guide in me, but I love a good map and enjoy navigating my way through foreign places. But to be perfectly honest I'm thrown here. I now need to find places by looking at maps where streets have no names. This will be interesting.
Harajuku feels like a key fashion hub of Tokyo with lots of funky shops selling clothing and all types of accessories. On the weekend it's filled with youngsters dressing up as punk dolls, with dyed hair in every imaginable colour and it's got a very retro vibe - a bit like London's Camden but a bit cooler and less dingy.
Walking down this curvy narrow street in Harajuku I think my mother would freak out. She used to worry that crossing Glenyr Avenue in Bondi with the kids was dangerous. Here there are no pavements, only a single car lane and I have a buggy, a baby and 2 kids. It's like being in a live ride of dodgem cars.
The shops on either side are elaborate. There are a lot of hair salons and boutique upmarket wedding shops. Im not sure if they sell wedding dresses or it's where the bridal parties go before the wedding. But there are a lot of them. There are some amazing clothing shops too and then every now and again we'll pass a quaint shop selling beautiful Japanese items like embellished chopsticks and kimonos .
We survive the road in Harajuku and make a right onto Omotosando. This is aptly known as Tokyo's - Champs Elysee : Prada, Louis V, Dolce and Gabanna, Blvgari, Chimmy Choo and every other upmarket clothing label you can think of has a bold presence on Omotosando with gorgeous building facades and there are a couple of departmental stores too that remind me of Harvey Nichols in London or Printemps in Paris.
We turn left at Chanel and then have another 10 minutes down the coolest street - with no name of course - until we hit the British School which marks the end of our walk. This street is a bit wider, full of cafes, funky stores and it's a buzz in the afternoons.
We often see teams of photographers and lots of interesting looking people. We pass about 3 Starbucks's on route, lots of Family Marts (like a 7 Eleven) where we often stop to buy afternoon snacks and take pit stops on our way home. Its about a 25 minute walk for the girls each way. They moaned a lot at the beginning. They were unfit and kept telling us they missed our car. But it's a firm part of our routine now, they're getting fitter and its a great time to soak up the atmosphere in our quirky new neighbourhood.
We leave our apartment in Aoyama, which is located in a suburb called Jingumae and take a left out the hotel and then another left. We walk for about 500 metres along a road that falls within the quirky neighbourhood of Harajuku.
When we first heard our address '3-1-29 Jingumae' we asked our relocation consultant Meiko 'What's with all the numbers?'
In Tokyo the streets do not have names unless they are very large and very important streets. The numbers tell you the 'chome' which is the part of a suburb your home is located in, another number represents your street and the final number indicates your house number.
I'll admit it I'm a real map person. Maybe it's the old Contiki Tour Guide in me, but I love a good map and enjoy navigating my way through foreign places. But to be perfectly honest I'm thrown here. I now need to find places by looking at maps where streets have no names. This will be interesting.
Harajuku feels like a key fashion hub of Tokyo with lots of funky shops selling clothing and all types of accessories. On the weekend it's filled with youngsters dressing up as punk dolls, with dyed hair in every imaginable colour and it's got a very retro vibe - a bit like London's Camden but a bit cooler and less dingy.
Walking down this curvy narrow street in Harajuku I think my mother would freak out. She used to worry that crossing Glenyr Avenue in Bondi with the kids was dangerous. Here there are no pavements, only a single car lane and I have a buggy, a baby and 2 kids. It's like being in a live ride of dodgem cars.
The shops on either side are elaborate. There are a lot of hair salons and boutique upmarket wedding shops. Im not sure if they sell wedding dresses or it's where the bridal parties go before the wedding. But there are a lot of them. There are some amazing clothing shops too and then every now and again we'll pass a quaint shop selling beautiful Japanese items like embellished chopsticks and kimonos .
We survive the road in Harajuku and make a right onto Omotosando. This is aptly known as Tokyo's - Champs Elysee : Prada, Louis V, Dolce and Gabanna, Blvgari, Chimmy Choo and every other upmarket clothing label you can think of has a bold presence on Omotosando with gorgeous building facades and there are a couple of departmental stores too that remind me of Harvey Nichols in London or Printemps in Paris.
We turn left at Chanel and then have another 10 minutes down the coolest street - with no name of course - until we hit the British School which marks the end of our walk. This street is a bit wider, full of cafes, funky stores and it's a buzz in the afternoons.
We often see teams of photographers and lots of interesting looking people. We pass about 3 Starbucks's on route, lots of Family Marts (like a 7 Eleven) where we often stop to buy afternoon snacks and take pit stops on our way home. Its about a 25 minute walk for the girls each way. They moaned a lot at the beginning. They were unfit and kept telling us they missed our car. But it's a firm part of our routine now, they're getting fitter and its a great time to soak up the atmosphere in our quirky new neighbourhood.
Thursday, 4 October 2012
Hello Tokyo!
As I sit in our serviced apartment in Shibuya-ku, Tokyo with my three kids asleep and my husband at formal welcome dinner (hosted by his Japanese colleagues entertaining him at a karaoke evening - just the sort of entertainment Ath loves) it's hard to believe that this all started with a 'what if' conversation between Atholl and I.
What if we were to uproot our family and go live somewhere completely different for a period of time, taking us out of our comfort zone of the easy-going eastern suburbs in Sydney. Assessing our relocation to Australia 5 years ago, we could never have imagined such a smooth ride. Life is good, we love the beach life style, jobs are solid..it's too easy. It was time to move on and experience something new before we get to that stage when people will start saying 'wont you screw up your kids?'
Wrapping up a full life in Sydney was a massive task. Every bone of our bodies ached after the physical labour of packing up our house in Bondi. Saying a temporary goodbye to many wonderful friends took it's toll emotionally and arriving in Tokyo, I felt like a wash-out. Although there was not much time to recover, when you got 3 kids to feed, I slept more in the first 24 hours after arriving in Tokyo than I did the whole week before leaving Australia.
We took some training prior to arriving in Tokyo, to help soften the blow of 'culture shock' which proved helpful to develop a sense of cultural intelligence and insights into this very interesting culture. The words I've read everywhere in expat guide books and websites is 'don't jump in too quickly'. I've taken that advice quite seriously. Typically Ath & I are the sort of travellers who tend to arrive in a new place and head out immediately to seek adventure before unpacking our clothes.
But this is different. Tokyo is a sprawling metropolis, strong foreign culture underpins a very fast paced, high-tech and high energy city. We're here for a year, at least, and we need to take this slow. So early days were spent taking it all in with a few short works and basic admin things, like getting our residence cards, mobile phones and bank accounts. Atholl took care of this, I took the the kids. He was amazed at the bureaucracy and ridiculous amount of manual paper work involved. Fortunately Meiko (our relocation consultant) was there to take him around and translate along the way.
Key insight 10 days in: its unbelievable how alienated you feel not understanding anything.
Simple tasks like taking a cab, grocery shopping or reading the instructions of my rice cooker in the serviced apartment are challenges. For now my job is home keeper, taking care of my family and feeding the kids, these things I've take for granted forever wont be easy over here.
So I've overcooked my rice and bought a $20 packet of salmon thinking it was fresh when it fact it came smoked and salted (inedible actually) and I know there's alot more of that to come. But I am feeling content. it's all in the spirit of 'what if' and adventure. There is so much to learn, and so much of this amazing city to explore. Ath is learning Japanese every day for 3 hours, the girls learn it too at school, Jonah babbles like he gets it all. So perhaps that will be my next calling - take some Japanese classes to help me around a grocery store and buy the right kind of fish next time.
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