Isahaya Return - July 2006
Konnichiwa everyone,
We moved into our home-away-from-home a week ago and have been doing all those settling things, which means Dave translated 3,600 million pages of instructions and got our Internet and wireless working.
I’ve never in my life lived in a real, honest to goodness neighborhood, so this is a new experience. The blocks aren’t in a grid, so I twist and wind my way through the streets, getting lost and back tracking. I got over the drive-on-the-left intimidation quickly but continue to get in the wrong side of the car. The really funny thing is that it’s the same, exact car we leased last year. Same license plate, same little scrape on the bumper (not that I know anything about that). The rental folks have clearly been saving it for us. Maybe no one else would rent it.
Once in the right block, we just look for the bright orange house with the aquamarine Astroturf on the stoop. We even have a few lawn gnomes to complete the picture. I’ve decided that the owners must hate their neighbors. Seriously, the house has really worked out well for us and we’re especially enjoying our traditional tatami room. I’ll have to fill it with calligraphy and flower arrangements to make it authentic. Right now we’re calling it the electronics shrine room since its outlets are accommodating the 3,600 million chargers we own.
Leaving Vermont was hectic, with the builder literally driving the last nail in the new garage as we were loading our suitcases in the car, so it was nice to spend a few days in Tokyo decompressing. We met friends one day and generally noodled around some really cool museums.
A local family, the Bartletts, have been enthusiastically championing our return and it’s been fun catching up with them. Angela and I have birthdays a day apart, so we celebrated with the families by spending a night at a ryokan; a traditional Japanese inn. This one was in the onsen community of Obama, a sea village at the foot of our favorite local volcano-- about an hour’s drive from our place. I think most people wouldn’t consider going to an onsen/hot spring during the middle of a Nagasaki summer, but we decided we needed to increase our core temperature a few hundred notches.
Happy summer!
Love, barbara
See some pictures at http://photos.yahoo.com/~iverlink the folder is called 2006-July.
We moved into our home-away-from-home a week ago and have been doing all those settling things, which means Dave translated 3,600 million pages of instructions and got our Internet and wireless working.
I’ve never in my life lived in a real, honest to goodness neighborhood, so this is a new experience. The blocks aren’t in a grid, so I twist and wind my way through the streets, getting lost and back tracking. I got over the drive-on-the-left intimidation quickly but continue to get in the wrong side of the car. The really funny thing is that it’s the same, exact car we leased last year. Same license plate, same little scrape on the bumper (not that I know anything about that). The rental folks have clearly been saving it for us. Maybe no one else would rent it.
Once in the right block, we just look for the bright orange house with the aquamarine Astroturf on the stoop. We even have a few lawn gnomes to complete the picture. I’ve decided that the owners must hate their neighbors. Seriously, the house has really worked out well for us and we’re especially enjoying our traditional tatami room. I’ll have to fill it with calligraphy and flower arrangements to make it authentic. Right now we’re calling it the electronics shrine room since its outlets are accommodating the 3,600 million chargers we own.
Leaving Vermont was hectic, with the builder literally driving the last nail in the new garage as we were loading our suitcases in the car, so it was nice to spend a few days in Tokyo decompressing. We met friends one day and generally noodled around some really cool museums.
A local family, the Bartletts, have been enthusiastically championing our return and it’s been fun catching up with them. Angela and I have birthdays a day apart, so we celebrated with the families by spending a night at a ryokan; a traditional Japanese inn. This one was in the onsen community of Obama, a sea village at the foot of our favorite local volcano-- about an hour’s drive from our place. I think most people wouldn’t consider going to an onsen/hot spring during the middle of a Nagasaki summer, but we decided we needed to increase our core temperature a few hundred notches.
Happy summer!
Love, barbara
See some pictures at http://photos.yahoo.com/~iverlink the folder is called 2006-July.
posted by Barbara Meehan Iverson at 12:18 AM
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