Settling In

Hey Everyone,

The past few days have kind of calmed down a bit. I've just been running around, talking to people, in hopes of finding a job. We got our convection oven (because the house not only came with no appliances but also has no room for an actual stove/oven anyways since the Japanese don't use ovens) and that will be installed later today- on our counter top. We are borrowing all of our appliances from base which is nice, but we are borrowing the Japanese ones since they will work better with our outlets and water hook-ups, etc. So we have appliances- yay!- but all the buttons and cautions and instructions are in Japanese! I have yet to do a load of laundry because i have no idea which button does what. We took pictures of all the control panels and Nick is going to show them to his coworker who will be able to translate them for us.

In other news, the Japanese have a very, very complicated garbage/recycling system. The picture to the right shows the different categories of garbage (left calendar) and then what gets picked up each day of the month (right calendar). Yikes! We had to go to this whole briefing where we were taught what we can throw away and what we can't and what category each type of trash belongs to and so on. And if we don't get it right, they won't take our bag of garbage and we have to right our name on each bag so they will know it's us. The woman who gave us the briefing was very understanding though and said that even some Japanese families mess up sometimes. So hopefully the garbage men are forgiving!

My last update for now is the: I drove on the roads today for the first time- ahhhh! Driving on the left is SO weird! But I safely made it from our house to base without hitting anyone and stayed on the left side the whole time. With Nick's assistance. Now I have to go back home solo...
Attn Japanese drivers: Clear the roads!!!! (Well actually, it's almost easier when there are cars on the road because I don't have to think as hard about staying on the left side, I can just follow traffic but still, the roads are so narrow it's terrifying!)

Wish me luck, Blogosphere!

Ta for now.