Blog No.94
Author: Stephanie Wendler

Many people who were involved or heard about my move from America to Japan complimented me on my awesome orginizational skills, my aggressive commitment to the idea, or my sheer endurance in carrying out the move. For the most part, I would agree with them. This move was no petty feat. I successfully relocated myself, my absent-minded professor, and my two cats to our new home in Senzokuike. This involved overcoming some of the following obstacles by myself:

・Obtaining a Japanese Work Visa completely separate from my husband's (who is a research scientist at ELSI) so I could have a full-time job on arrival.
・Finding a suitable job in Tokyo that would sponsor said visa, and keep me happily occupied.
・Finishing emptying out our old apartment and cleaning it, by myself, because lover moved to Japan a month before me to go to a conference.
・Taking our car and items we neither wanted to get rid of or take with us to my parent's house in Illinois, from Oregon; 36 hours of driving time on a solo road trip.
・Overseeing or taking care of all of the nitpicky details involved in moving our two cats through Japan's rather strict quarantine procedures. Which included vaccinations, multiple vet inspections, government approval on both ends of paperwork, 6 months of waiting, and very stressed cats, hiring a pet mover to do most of the stressing for me, and paying somewhere around US$3000.
・Packing up everything I wanted to take with me into my two suitcases - which didn't quite fit. So I adopted the strategy: "If I can wear it, it can come with me." Which resulted in my landing in Narita wearing: two pairs of sweatpants, two sweaters, and two coats - in the middle of August, not to mention suitcases weighing exactly 120lbs total.

But all of these I overcame one way or the other. There were however three key mistakes that I made that I want to share with you in hopes of preventing their repetition.

1. There is no rush in paying deposit money for housing before you need to - no matter what the sales agent says. I made the mistake of paying around $200 in deposit to a share house thinking I would need to live on my own for a month. However this proved to be unnecessary due to the awesome staff at ELSI who managed to change my sweetheart's original single booking at the Tokyo Tech International House to a booking for two people. Deposits are non-refundable, and because I succumbed to sales pressure I basically threw money away about 36 hours before the problem solved itself. When making travel arrangements be absolutely sure of your needs before paying out money.

2. Though chu-hai is delicious, cans do not balance on beds (which in Japan's closet-like hotel rooms are the only place to stretch out) nor do they play well with expensive laptops. I know full well the appeal of playing videogames or trolling the internet while sprawled out with your beverage of choice. However if you lack stable surfaces bottles with sealable lids are a must. This mistakes cost me $300 and two-months of computer deprivation.

3. Living in Japan is exciting and wonderful! I fully encourage you to try everything on offer. However please think twice before making large scale purchases. My specific experience is with the "beds vs. futons" debate. My lover was really for the idea embodied in futons: they were cheaper, and easily mobile - you could even make them disappear entirely into a closet and then use the room for other purposes! So I caved, and we bought some. However this taught me that we are not, in fact, Japanese. We do not even make the bed in the morning much less fold up or put away a futon. Which resulted in them sitting there for weeks. About every 2-3 weeks I would move one to discover giant wet spots underneath them and then have to go through the 2-3 hour chore of airing them out. Ultimately - we were too lazy or busy to ever bother with their advantages. Our bedroom floor is quite hard, meaning we had to buy 3-4 each to be able to sleep on them without waking up in pain - which made them just as expensive to buy not to mention even more of a bother to air out or clean. Last week as a birthday present to myself I bought us beds. Two single beds shoved together are pretty close to the king size bed we were used to sleeping on. That mistake - $1200.

Thus ends the brief synopsis of the tale of my move to Japan. I hope there are useful lessons to be shared here!