The Occasional Nomads

It’s almost hard for us to believe but just a week ago we were still in Tokyo and celebrating Mother’s Day with our son, daughter-in-law, and grandkids. The day was absolutely lovely, and we walked over to nearby Komazawa Olympic Park and enjoyed the wonderful picnic lunch M had had catered by a nearby department store. M & M surprised me with a strawberry cake for my birthday, and gave me a teacup patterned with the symbols of each of Japan’s 47 prefectures which I absolutely love. I also received a small cloth bag with a chidori (plover) design and a small inu hariko charm for my purse. It was an all-around lovely day and a great last outing with our family. Both Brett and I even managed to get a little sunburned!

We picked up our grandson from school one last time on Monday afternoon, and once M and M both were home from work we said our (very tearful) goodbyes and rode the train home for the last time. Brett and I enjoyed a delicious sushi dinner at a restaurant near our apartment, and then finished the evening with sesame soft ice cream from the shop on the corner. It was a lovely way to say farewell to the neighborhood – we thoroughly enjoyed our time there and the location. After we finished our ice cream it was back to the apartment to finish up the last of the packing and get some sleep before having to be up early the next morning for the trip out to the airport.

We’re still settling in to our apartment in Portland’s West Hills, but so far we’re quite happy with it. Our first apartment on the east side was the absolutely perfect place to pull ourselves together for a couple of days after the long flight from Japan, but our permanent place for the summer is pretty wonderful too. We have a well-equipped kitchen with a dishwasher (yeah!), the bed is comfortable, we love the mid-century decor and furnishings, and we even have a guest room! We are completely unpacked and it will be nice to settle in for a while.

I will be holding the first of three giveaways next week beginning on Thursday! While I think all three are great I am going to do the “big” one first so that everyone who wants can participate (the winner of each won’t be able to enter the other two). Each giveaway will run for two weeks, and you’ll be able to enter once every day with the winner chosen at random. I’m pretty excited about all of them, but especially the first one and hope you’ll be motivated to enter!

This afternoon I am:

• Reading: I’m reading another Val McDermid mystery, Insidious Intent, while I wait for another library book to come off of hold. Her books are real page turners and fun to read. Reading has been sporadic the past few days though because my jet lag made it difficult to concentrate, but thankfully that has passed (somewhat).
• Listening to: Brett’s the only other one up because it’s early in the morning here: 6:30 a.m. I am never up this early, but thanks to the magic of jet lag, here I am. I’ve actually been up since 2:00 a.m., but have spent my time reading and working on this post. Anyway, I’m listening to Brett making coffee, but otherwise YaYu is still asleep and it’s quiet outside. It was raining earlier this morning, but it seems to have stopped for the time being.
• Watching: We have a quite extensive number of cable channels to watch here, so Brett and I are thinking we might binge-watch Game of Thrones on HBO this summer – we’ve never seen any of it. Crazy Rich Asians is available too whenever I need a fix! Not sure what we’re watching this evening – we’re letting YaYu choose.
• Cooking/baking: YaYu will be with us for another 10 days and has asked me to fix several of her favorite things, but tonight she’s doing the cooking and making fried rice (I’ll be having fried cauliflower rice!).
• Happy I accomplished last week: I don’t really count leaving Japan as an accomplishment, but the journey was a long one and I’m glad we’re through it. Brett and I have shopped at Costco, Trader Joe’s, New Season’s and Target and we’re well stocked for the summer (although we’re going to Fubonn Asian supermarket today). I found a great pair of trail shoes that I’m looking forward to breaking in, and Brett also found a new pair of shoes at Costco that he’s thrilled with (his pair of Skechers also gave out). I visited the walk-in clinic of our former healthcare provider and got my prescriptions refilled for the summer, just in time as I had just three tablets left. The doctor also ordered another bone density test to be done to make sure I really need the medication I was taking for osteoporosis. Both Brett and I will see the doctor in July for physicals, etc. and to get our prescriptions set for the year. I need to have my cholesterol levels checked, and a mammogram done before we take off for England.
• Looking forward to next week: Next week is all about relaxing and spending time with YaYu, and getting to know our new location. Hopefully I can also start managing this jet lag a little better – I see improvement every day, but I’m still on a wacky sleep schedule (actually no schedule at all). We plan to do some hiking this week on one of the trails in the forest near the apartment, and also walk down the hill into downtown and see how that goes. Brett and I are going to get senior Tri-Met passes so we can get around town using public transportation, and we’re also going to investigate signing up for Zipcar for those days when we need to have a car.

  

• Thinking of good things that happened: I am still a bit stunned that we made it to Portland with all our stuff – I kept thinking if one of our suitcases was going to get lost, this would be the trip but even though they arrived on different flights (Brett’s suitcase came in on an earlier flight for some reason and was waiting for us), they both arrived safe and sound. I love that our summer apartment has lots of storage space – it was easy to unpack this time and get everything put away. I’m very happy about the great lightweight trail shoes I bought this past week and am looking forward to breaking them in this summer so I’ll be ready for some serious walking when we get to England.
• Thinking of frugal things we did: This was not a frugal week. We bought A LOT of food and supplies for the summer, and along with my shoe purchase we really messed with our daily spending total. On the plus side, we won’t need to shop for quite a while, for anything. I was going to buy an Instant Pot this summer but the apartment has both a slow cooker and a rice cooker so I will forego the Instant Pot for another few months. We’ve started saving our change and $1 bills again – I’m hoping to save enough this summer to cover one of our train trips while we’re in England.

  

  

• Grateful for: While I enjoy traveling, I’m very thankful we have a nice, affordable place to stay for the summer, and the chance to unpack once again for a while and unwind before hitting the road again. We’re here long enough that I can set out some things we bought in Japan to enjoy them and the memories.
• Bonus question: What has your best travel experience between locations and what has been your worst? Hands down taking the train between Perth and Sydney was our most amazing travel experience. It was comfortable, the food and serve was great, the other passengers were nice, and the scenery and outings magnificent. Train travel throughout Europe was pretty great overall too. When it comes to flying the best trip was our flight from Hawaii to Portland in first class – absolutely wonderful! That’s not going to happen again though. Our best economy flight experience was the one from Gatwick to Boston last December on Norwegian Air. We had loads of legroom, the food was very good (the first perfectly cooked chicken breast) and the service was amazing. The worst travel day? The journey from Bordeaux to Florence was a very long and difficult day, and I think we used every form of transportation to get there except for a donkey and a bicycle. We made it but really had to be on our toes the entire time as there was lots that could have gone wrong. The (thankfully again) short flight on Iberia Airlines from Lisbon to Madrid on our way back to the U.S. was absolutely miserable. We are not tall people and our knees were pressed up against the back of the seats in front of us – I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like for taller people. Plus, once the plane took off we never saw a flight attendant again until we landed. The most awful flight though, hands down, was the one from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Paris. It was extremely long and extremely crowded, and departed late so full of lots of unhappy people. The minute the plane took off the women in front of us reclined their seats and we couldn’t move (and if I reclined mine the woman behind me pounded on the seat to put it back up!). The only way we survived those flights was to keep reminding ourselves that they would eventually get us to where we wanted to be.

We have another busy week ahead: Later today we are taking YaYu around to several thrift stores so she can look for things to take to Japan this summer, and we’ll also stop at Fubonn supermarket to get some other things she wants to take along, like hot sauce. Brett is taking her to get her military ID card renewed tomorrow morning and we may visit some more thrift stores; the car goes back to the airport on Tuesday; and I will be setting up appointments to get my bone density scan done (I can walk to the hospital from our apartment though!); and I will also be calling the dentist to get the rest of my dental work finished while we’re here. Brett is going to register to take a Japanese class at the community college along with his calligraphy class. I was going to enroll in the Japanese class as well, but decided to stick with Memrise and use along with a text as the classes offered this summer are beginner level, and below where I’m already at. We’re hoping too that the weather will cooperate this coming week so we can get out for some hiking on the nearby trails.

I hope all of you had a very good week, that lots of good things happened for you and that you’re looking forward to what’s happening this coming week. I hope you’ll stick around for next week’s exciting giveaway too!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there! Today would be my traditional Day of Doing Nothing, where Brett and the girls take care of all the chores and wait on me hand and foot, but this year there is too much going on for that to happen (and no girls around to help Brett). We’re relaxing at home now, but in a little while we’re heading over to the park near our son’s place for a picnic with them. Yesterday we handed over the few last things we had in the cupboards and refrigerator to our DIL so the apartment is ready for cleaning and last minute packing on Monday.

This is it though – our final Sunday in Japan. What an absolutely wonderful time we have had here! We are so, so sad about going but have enough to do before we leave on Tuesday that we hopefully won’t sink too far into melancholy. The only thing we are looking forward to leaving behind is our apartment. While the location has been superb, and the apartment clean and the kitchen well-equipped, it’s otherwise been a somewhat stressful place to live with very uncomfortable furniture, funky decor, and a so-so bed and bathroom. We realize that the apartment we had originally requested may have been too small to host Meiling and her boyfriend when they came, but it would have suited us far, far better in the long run. We’re apparently leaving at a fortuitous time as well as a new house is being built right next door (and I mean up close next door) and the construction noise during the day is becoming annoying. There are also other noisy tenants in the building now, including a group of some rather loud American college students.

But, we’ll be back to Japan soon – we already have plans to come at least for a month in the fall of 2020 to be here for our granddaughter’s fourth birthday, but hopefully we will be able to stay longer. We had once dreamed of being here for the Olympics, but have now rethought that idea: we don’t really want to deal with the huge crowds along with Tokyo’s sweltering summer head and humidity.

Everything is ready for us in Portland – we will be staying in one Airbnb for three nights when we arrive, and then move to our long-term rental in the west hills on the 17th. Before we move over there, and in between bouts of jet lag, we will shop for food and supplies for the summer and take care of a few other errands on the east side of the city. YaYu arrives late at night on the 17th, and will be with us until the 25th (I think) before heading over to Japan for the summer. Meiling’s graduation happens mid-June, and Brett’s sister will hopefully be able to join us for that and stay with us for a few days. Brett is planning to continue his calligraphy lessons throughout the summer, and we both intend to sign up for Japanese lessons – our time here has shown us how woefully inadequate our language skills are. We are also going to somewhat try to be tourists in Portland this summer, and visit places and do things we normally never did there, or at least didn’t do very often.

Anyway, this morning I am:

1. Reading: I finished two Val McDermid mysteries this past week (I read Broken Ground in two days!) and am now just about finished with The Library Book by Susan Orlean. I’m not sure what I’m going to read next.
2. Listening to: We’re enjoying a very quiet morning – there’s not even a sound outside. The leaves aren’t moving on any of the trees either which means it’s going to be another hot day. It’s almost hard to believe how bitterly cold it was when we arrived back in February, and we’re now wearing summer clothing.
3. Watching: Remember all those movies I planned to watch last week? I didn’t watch even one of them because I was too busy reading! I’m hoping I get to watch Crazy Rich Asians once again on the flight to the U.S. – love that movie!

   

4. Cooking/baking: There are no longer food nor supplies in the house to do any sort of cooking so we have been eating out the past few days. We had okonomiyaki, Japanese savory pancakes, on Friday evening; McDonald’s last night (one more Teriyaki McBurger for me) because we were feeling tired and lazy; and tonight we’ll probably pick up a bento somewhere or maybe get one last order of takoyaki. We’re going out for sushi tomorrow evening, will have something from the bakery on Tuesday morning before we leave the apartment, and finish our Japan eating odyssey with lunch at Narita before we depart.

   

5. Happy I accomplished this past week: This past week has been a series of chores necessary for moving on and we’ve mostly gotten them accomplished; thankfully there are just a few more small things left to do. We’re down to the last few items to fit into the suitcases and we have our fingers crossed that everything will fit. Brett had his last calligraphy lessons and did OK on his final work product. It has been a challenging endeavor for him because he has to use his right hand (he’s left-handed) but he enjoys it and is looking forward to continuing to learn. I also found and booked an Airbnb in Portland for us to stay in when we return to Portland next December to get us through Christmas there once again.
6. Looking forward to next week: The only thing I’m looking forward to next week is that I will be able to once again understand what people, signs, magazines and newspapers around me are saying. I am not looking forward to the jet lag I know is coming – I think it’s going to be brutal this time.

   

   

7. Thinking of good things that happened: We had a wonderful time last weekend with our daughter-in-law’s parents. We started out with snacks at their home and toured her mom’s beautiful garden (she’s a master gardener) before going out for lunch at a restaurant in the countryside. Afterwards we spent some time walking through a lovely nature park and wetlands near to the restaurant – it was an all around great day. Brett and I had a fun trip to Sogo’s food gallery in Yokohama on Tuesday. We bought a few items and then finished with fancy pancakes for lunch. The restaurant was named Butter, but I think butter was about the only thing I didn’t get with my pancakes! We were so glad to have finally eaten at the okonomiyaki restaurant last Friday. We have walked by it nearly every day we’ve been here and alway said we’d eat there “one of these days.” The restaurant was small but the food was fantastic and I’m sad we didn’t get to eat there more than just this once.

   

   

   

8. Thinking of frugal things we did: We’ve done an outstanding job of using up all the food we had here in the apartment if I do say so myself. Very little went over to our son’s. Last Wednesday Brett went to the grand opening of a new 7-11 store that opened just down the street and scored some nice discounts on several items that we have eaten this past week or used for our grandson’s after-school treats. I reserved a hotel room for an overnight stay near Eugene for Meiling’s graduation and saved $40.47 off the price using my Expedia reward points. And, we’re leaving with a daily spending average for our entire time in Japan of $45.75 per day which makes us very happy (currently $43.75/day for May).
9. Grateful for: Both Brett and I are so very, very thankful for the extended period of time we have been able to spend in Japan near our son and his family. It’s been all that we hoped for and more.
10. Japanese word of the week: sayonara さようなら. While sayonara means good-bye, it also carries a sense of finality, and is used in situations where one will never be returning or not for a very long time, much like the word farewell in English. Sayonara is often used casually in Japanese speech, but you really don’t hear it much in regular conversation. We will be using the more informal jā matane when we say our goodbyes tomorrow, which means “see you again soon.”

Tuesday is my 67th birthday and Brett has been joking that I will get to enjoy it twice this year – thanks to the miracle of international travel it will be Tuesday morning once again when we arrive in the U.S. Not funny though – on Tuesday here we’ll be running the gauntlet to get out to the airport onto the plane, and all we’re going to want to do once we get to Portland on Tuesday is sleep. Oh well, there’s always hope for a special birthday next year!

I’d like to wish all of the moms a wonderful, wonderful day today! I hope everyone had a great week and that lots of good things happened for you, and that you have a great week coming up. See you back in the U.S.!

It’s almost impossible to think about, but we have only 10 days left to go in Japan (counting today)! We haven’t figured out how we’re going to accomplish it, but on May 14 we and all our luggage will head out to Narita Airport and leave for the United States in the late afternoon. We’ve seen and done everything we wanted to here and then some, spent loads of wonderful time with our son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren, eaten all the food, accomplished everything else we set out to do while we were here and even a few things we hadn’t planned on. Our three months in Japan has been everything we hoped for and more.

We’ve had a relaxing and not too busy week: we returned from last weekend’s Golden Week getaway on Monday evening; unpacked, did our laundry, and rested on Tuesday, visited the Tokyo National Museum on Wednesday; Brett went to his calligraphy lesson on Thursday; and on Friday we did a self-guided walking tour of the Yanaka neighborhood. A little later today we’re going up to Saitama Prefecture for a visit and lunch with our daughter-in-law’s parents, and are looking forward very much to seeing them again. Because of Golden Week every place we’ve gone has been quite crowded, but we decided that’s just part of the experience.

One of Brett’s and my big jobs this summer will be to inventory all of the things we’ve been traveling with and get rid of or store what is unnecessary and replenish or replace things that are needed. For example, my trusty Skechers have to be replaced – the memory foam soles that were so comfortable at the beginning of our travels have completely broken down, the inside fabric is falling apart, and both pairs are now quite uncomfortable. I must have taken nearly a million steps in them though. I think I have worn the pair of clogs I brought along all of two times, so they will go into storage and be replaced with a good pair of walking/hiking shoes for treks while we’re in England. I also have a couple of jackets that have turned out to be impractical, and can see that a lightweight rain jacket would take up less space and get used more, so I’ll be on the lookout for one of those as well. Some of my clothes I’m just plain sick of at this point and want to swap them out, but thankfully I still am happy with most of them. Brett is in a similar position and wants to change out a few things and add a couple of things as well. We’ve started on a list but will get serious about it all once we’ve settled into our Portland apartment later this month.

This morning I am:

• Reading: I finished up another one of Susan Spann’s mysteries, Blade of the Samurai,. Because of the amount of historical detail she includes, I was able to appreciate much more many of the things I viewed at the National Museum this past week. I am still waiting for a couple of books to come off of hold at the library but was able to download a book by one of the authors, Cross and Burn, by Val McDermid. She’s a new-to-me mystery writer from Scotland. So far the book I’m reading now is a real page-turner and I can’t wait to read more of her work (and she has written a lot).
• Listening to: Our grandson slept over with us last night, so he and Brett are chatting right now. We’re getting ready to go up for lunch with his other set of grandparents in a short while. Otherwise it’s very quiet here – not many people outside. The sun is shining brightly too – it’s supposed to up to 77º today!
• Watching: I watched a couple of favorite movies this past week on days that I wasn’t too tired or reading: The King’s Speech and Lincoln. This week I am going to choose between Doubt, The Theory of Everything, The Imitation Game and Apollo 13. Neither Brett nor I have missed not watching television while we’ve been in Japan, and at this point doubt we’ll get a television again when we finally settle down.
• Cooking/baking: I’m not sure what we’re having tonight as I’m fairly sure our DIL’s mother will feed us well for lunch. The freezer here is now cleared out, and we’re going to start stopping by the grocery store each day to pick up what we need for dinner rather than do a weekly shop and end up with any leftovers.

  

• Happy I accomplished this past week: I had a lot to write about after last weekend’s travels, and got four blog posts done. Writing is a genuine effort for me (I am never satisfied), so I’m glad I was able to get last week’s posts done in a timely manner. Even though we were tired, Brett and I both were glad we made the effort to go to Ueno Park to the National Museum and to the Yanaka neighborhood. Believe it or not, even after all my time in Japan, this was my first trip to Ueno Park! Other than those things, I don’t think I accomplished all that much other than the regular everyday stuff I do around here.

  

• Looking forward to next week: We are heading back to Yokohama again to visit the Sogo department store food gallery in the basement. We want to buy a package of bird cookies, and a kind of Japanese green tea “pudding” I love, made with kudzu starch as the thickener. Brett has his final class and will take his first calligraphy exam this coming week! We’re also hoping for better weather this week too – we’ve had quite a bit of rainy weather this past week, including a major thunderstorm yesterday. What we’re not looking forward to is dragging out the suitcases toward the end of the week and getting started on the packing.

  

• Thinking of good things that happened: Our visits to the Tokyo National Museum and the Yanaka neighborhood were the last two items on our list of things we wanted to see and do during our stay in Tokyo. I think the only thing we missed out on was our visit to Shinjuku, but it will be here when we come back. We’ve heard from all three of the girls this week: Meiling is getting ready for her last set of finals; WenYu is currently in Florence, Italy during her spring break (and eating gelato every day); and YaYu is finishing up her first year of school and not looking forward to her finals. We stopped at a shop selling traditional Japanese sweets when we were in Yanaka to pick up a small gift for M’s parents, and the shop carried another one of my favorites: mochi filled with red bean paste and wrapped in a fresh, aromatic bamboo leaf. They were every bit as good as I remembered them.

  

• Thinking of frugal things we did: We didn’t spend much this week – just two small trips to the grocery store, the present for M’s parents and mochi for me, and a stop for lunch when we visited Yanaka. We have done a good job of eating out of our refrigerator and pantry this past week and had no food waste. Both of us are very happy with our April spending totals, and hope we can keep it up in May, although we have some big grocery shops to take care of in Portland as we set up for the summer.

  

• Grateful for: Both Brett and I are extremely thankful for our son’s generosity throughout our stay in Japan, and for the wonderful time we had with them last weekend on our getaway. We are glad we have been able to give back just a little by picking up and watching our grandchildren in the afternoons, a pleasure for us and a small way to make their lives easier, especially with our daughter-in-law returning to work outside the home.
• Japanese word of the week: yada やだ. This is an expression my grandchildren use over and over, and although I understood it to mean “no” or “don’t” more accurately means “I don’t like that!” or “I don’t want to!” Children often use it to mean “Stop it!” Yada is often compared to the word dame だめ, which generally means “wrong,” “no good,” “useless,” or “hopeless.” Dame is usually said to stop an action immediately, especially when said to children.

Ten days to go . . . I almost can’t believe it. I’m pretty sure from here on out it’s all going to fly by, and the next thing we know we’ll be on our way out to the airport. It’s all been wonderful though, the visit of a lifetime and I would do it again in a heartbeat!

I hope all of you had a very good week, and that plenty of good things happened for you!