Christeph: On the Lam

Life is shaping up here in Noshiro. The first week was a combination of whirlwind activity (attending festivals, visiting city offices to set up gas, electricity, water, etc.) and stultifying boredom (sitting in a house with no car, no bikes, and no internet).

Being the house husband that I am, my day starts at about 7am. We were very lucky and didn’t have much in the way of jet lag, but part of the reason for that is simply that we only transitioned about 3/4 of the way to Japan time. We go to bed and rise about two hours earlier than we did in California.

Steph gets picked up by her boss at 7:50 sharp, and after that I am left to putter around the house. I discovered a TV channel that has “World News Hour” in the morning, where I get to watch the news in Japanese, Korean, French, American and BBCish. I’ve noticed that everyone else talks about Lebanon and Israel, while the US broadcast spends more time on Iraq.

Most days I do a load of laundry. We have a very high-tech (but low-capacity) washing machine which has about 6 operating modes and a lot of blinkenlichts and buttons on the front panel, none of which I can read. In the middle of washing the first load, it stopped and showed “U2″ on the display, refusing to continue. I finally found a list of error messages under the lid; but I had no idea what the message said. I ran for the dictionary and ultimately got the gist of the error: put the lid down, einstein. Fortunately the “default” washing mode seems to do the job, and I figured out how to put it in dryer mode. Unfortunately, it kind of sucks as a dryer, taking 3-4 hours to dry about 1/4 of a full load. So that means hitting the old clothesline, something I haven’t done in a long time.

Japan is a very “traditional” society in terms of gender roles, so staying home and doing laundry is not a manly thing to do. I try not to be seen taking the rack of clothes to dry outside. But who are we kidding? I’ve always been the laundry guy in our house anyway.

Once the laundry is hung out to dry, it’s time to figure out what to do with the rest of the day. These days that means making the 15 minute walk into town to find Internet access. The pickings have not been good. There is a hotel with free internet and a very small lobby. I can go sit there but the front desk people look uncomfortable. There is a little $3/hour internet shop, but it doesn’t open till 11am and is closed Tuesdays. Last night I discovered that the city library has a wireless network, so I’m going to try that today. Boy oh boy, can I not wait until we have internet access at home.

Home. People have been asking about the house and we are terrible friends for taking so long to tell you about it. Our house is pretty awesome. It’s way bigger than we ever expected of the famously tight Japanese living space. The house is a two-story (!) basically cube-shaped dwelling, with the bedrooms on the second floor and living room and plumbing on the first floor. It is slightly smaller overall than our San Diego house was, but it feels big because of the second floor. That means: come visit! We have prodigious guest space, so get on it. I’m sure we will have found something to do in town by the time you get here.

Our neighborhood is an interesting combination of nice houses and really amazingly crummy tin shacks. I think Steph has already mentioned this, but the crummy shacks are all owned by our nutso landlady. Our house forms the border between the shacks and the nice stuff. Fortunately all of our living spaces and windows are on the nice-facing side of the house.

I’ve set up my office in our bedroom (as usual) because there was already a delightful little desk there, and I like the location next to the second-floor window and balcony. Unfortunately all the windows means it’s super-hot in here most of the day, but nothing that a few fans won’t solve.

Oh, another thing about our neighborhood that is pretty great: there is a giant forest at the end of our block. Apparently this is an erosion-control forest that was planned by some famous local guy back in the day. It’s about the same size as the actual city, making for dramatic aerial photos of the area. I’ll try to find one of these photos online, or else I’ll scan in the brochure we have laying around here. The forest is full of walking and biking paths which are pretty nice. Unfortunately there is nothing of interest on the other side. We hiked through the other night, expecting a dramatic sunset over the Sea of Japan, but what we found was: a lumber mill, a cement plant, a coal-fired power plant, and a shipping channel. Yes, the lovely Noshiro coastline is completely obscured by a concrete breakwater. But at least there is a kilometer-thick forest between us and that! When we see the Sea of Japan, we will certainly let you know.

Steph’s workday ends at 4:15 and it looks like she’ll be taking the train home from now on. After that we usually wander around town, in turns shopping, eating, and exploring. Our mission these days is to duck into as many local restaurants as possible and see who is welcoming and who is just uncomfortable having us in their shop. Shopkeepers here have mostly been very friendly. My favorites are little old men who yell “HELLO” whenever they see us.

Then it’s back home and basically reading; taking a second shower to wash off the stickiness of walking all over town in hot and humid weather; writing blog entries and saving them on the computer until the next internet access opportunity; and finally bed time around 10pm.

With that, it’s about 10am Wednesday now and I’m going to hit the library and see how long I can spend there mooching their internet without getting kicked out.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 9th, 2006 at 1:48 pm and is filed under Ambiance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.