We're in our new home

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.