April 17th, 2008

Hi Everyone!!

So we are now in our apartment. I will be posting photos of our apartment sometime after Monday probably. We would like to get out furniture first!

We have been in our apartment now for about a week and what a week its been.
Steve has been trying to figure out the best possible way to get to work. There are 3 stations within 10-15min walking distance. He is defiantly getting his exercise.
We are not as close to the station as we thought. He is okay with it when its nice out, but when its raining its really no fun.

Work for him has been going good. They go to work between 9:30am-10am he is always the first guy there since he is used to being at work at 8am. They don't leave until about 9pm. But he is not required to stay that late. He gets his work done and is working about a 10hr day and comes home. Most of the guys can speak english if he needs them too. But he is doing pretty good with his Japanese.

We went to Ikea for furniture shopping and everything else. It was pretty fun, although its really tough shopping and not having a car. We had to make 2 trips, the 2nd trip was all the small stuff, like bedding, towels, dishes etc. They do deliver but not glass, and of course we didn't find this out until we got to the cashier. So we bagged and boxed up what we couldn't ship, we made it onto the shuttle and to the subway station. But things were too heavy so we had to get a cab to take us home! Everything else will be delivered on Monday!

I also finally got out to the grocery store for the first time. I kept putting it off because I was nervous to go on my own. But, it went ok! I ended up needing to go to 3 different stores to get everything we needed. The first one is about 15-20 min walk. I had 2 of those hand baskets, they have carts that you put both on while you are shopping. I found pretty much everything, its hard to shop when most all the labels are in Japanese unless it American food. And of course the American food is mostly junk food and things we shouldn't be buying. The meat areas were scarce. They don't have packages of pork chops and chicken, etc. Everything is single wrapped. And one pork chop was about $4.00 so pretty expensive. Now the fish area was huge. Too bad we are not big fish fans. Salmon and some other fish looked good because it was so fresh, so I grabbed some white fish and we are going to try it tonight. I have some spagehetti sauce on the stove cooking just in case!

I was walking through meat and fish are and actually started to get a little nauseous. With the fish heads, and octopus, chicken cartliage, and some other stuff that I have no idea what some of it was but just didn't look good! I made it through though. This weekend we are going to see if we can find the costco and see what they have there. Hopefully it will be cheaper.

Last night we had tacos!! The tomatoes were so good. I can't even describe. Now I know why they serve chilled tomatoes as a side dish at some restaurants. There were incredibly sweet. Just like the Strawberries here.

So anyways when I got done grocery shopping I had brought a large Ikea bag and another huge over the shoulder bag, but unfortunately they were way to heavy. I would say all together at least 100pounds, if not more. I strapped them on and grabbed my purse/bag which also had groceries in it and the 2 other grocery bags and made it about 10 mins through the subway station (groc. store is in the station), up about 30 the steps, down the street a little and had to stop and grab a cab. So today I am paying for that. Those little baskets can be rather deceiving. I mean I am pretty strong, but I actually have a bruise on my shoulder from the bags.

We also went to Tokyo at night to see the lights! It was amazing how many people were there. Also we went into this tall cylinder building about 10 floors, it was a mall. We almost left since there are malls everywhere. But we decided to just walk through and it was like club and street clothes, and accessories on every floor. It was also ALL womens clothes. Of course most of the clothes are too small for me but it was fun to walk through! In 2 years I might buy something fun from there. All I got was this pretty butterfly hair thing!

Anways I think that is about all that is going on! The weather has been off and on rainy. This morning we had a pretty good rain/wind storm. I started getting a little nervous but its over now! I love the view from the apartment and watching the boats. I will get some pics soon to post of that.
You can leave comments if anyone has questions about anything. You can also email me at amanda.droke@onesourcetalent.com or Steve at s_dumouchelle@yahoo.com.


We miss everyone.
Amanda and Steve