So, I wrote this a couple of days ago and am most likely currently crouching on the sidewalk outside of some poor person's house, stealing their unsecured wireless (thank you random stranger!). That is how much I love you guys.
We made our big move to Kitakyushu this past week. And thanks to a lot of really nice people, it all worked out and neither us nor our stuff were homeless for the weekend! We packed up and left our old place on Friday, and since there had to be an OWLS person there for the inspection of our apartment, we loaded up her car and she gave us a ride from Yanagawa to the OWLS headquarters in Kitakyushu (which is really lucky, since it is about a two and a half hour drive). Dylan had a afternoon of training, meetings, and whatnot, then we left most of our stuff at OWLS, and headed to Dylan's old host-mom's (or Aoki-Hotel as she jokingly calls it) for the Friday night through to Sunday. On Sunday, we headed back up to OWLS where we met up with Lee (a big important guy at OWLS whose actual job I don't know) who happened to have a meeting that day and agreed to go completely out of his way to give us and our stuff a ride to our apartment (with the addition of the rice maker, and our kitchen stuff, the two of us can no longer carry all our stuff in one trip, so that kinda ruled out taking the train).
For those of you who are curious (read: dad), Kitakyushu is a port city at the top of the island of Kyushu. It has a sort of bad reputation for being "dirty" since it is a very industrial city. Lot of factories and shipyards - kind of like that ugly part of Vancouver that you pass between the ferries and downtown, but a whole city's worth. According to Dylan, the first environmental protests in Japan took place here, in part led by the housewives who were upset that all of the laundry they hung out to dry was getting dirty from the pollution. Lately the city has been making a real effort to change that and just last year won some big important award for environmental awareness or something. That being said, we live in a more rural part of the city, so it is somewhat less ugly here - we have a view of some lovely mountains behind all of the smokestacks. We can also see Honshu off in the distance if we know where we are supposed to be looking (half of we has an eerie ability to always know where we are and the other half gets lost as soon as we turn a corner), and are at the part of Japan closest to Korea - I don't know if that means that we can see it at all, but you know.... For those interested in a somewhat more historical background (read: dad), Kitakyushu is also known as being lucky since it was originally the target for one of the atomic bombs due to it's large port. But it happened to be cloudy that day, so the bomb ended up going to Nagasaki instead. Which, let me tell you, is a chilling thought to have while living here.
Our apartment is lovely. It is bigger than any of the places we had looked at, but it also comes with a bigger price tag than we had hoped for. Let me tell you, between deposits, fees, and key money, I'm surprised anyone ever moves out of their parents' house in Japan! But I guess it works at making sure people moving into your building are going to stay there a while. We have a decent size kitchen/dining room (for Japan) that we have bought a gas range for and are going to buy a small fridge for probably today (our perishables are currently sitting on the balcony), a really nice bathroom, one room with regular floors and another room with tatami mats, which Dylan loves. It is on the second floor of a three story building. All in all, I'm happy, our bank account isn't. We are slowly getting settled. We've bought some lamps, a couple futons, some kneeling pads and a "chair" and have found the neighbourhood laundromat. Other than that, we have vague plans to a few luxuries such as curtains and a table or two, probably for once Dylan's gotten his November pay cheque. Oh, and the name of our building: Maison Clair. Yet another reason for Clair to come here...we're already roomies!
With the exception of Dylan waiting a little too long to contact the water company and them shutting of our water for an afternoon, we have most other things in order. Water, gas and electricity are taken care of. Dylan should be in the processes of changing his address on his alien registration card and then setting up a bank account as I write this. Which is good, since it turns out you need a Japanese bank account for a lot! Including getting the internet, getting paid, and making your apartment building owners happy. Now, before you think we are insanely impressive getting all of this stuff done, Dylan's OWLS people have been really helpful and taken care of a lot of this themselves or at least walked Dylan through it. I love them.
Last, but not least, apparently there was a hurricane that downgraded to a typhoon that passed over the tip of an island to the east of us yesterday. I don't know how that island faired (hopefully it wasn't too bad), but it was mighty windy here over night! Still is, for that matter. Nothing remotely dangerous for us, but I love storms, so I thought it was pretty cool.
