Episode № 116 Luggage Recovery
Welcome back!
Lady Jupiter Podcast is the audio companion to LadyJupiter.com; a lifestyle blog that I won’t be updating for a while.
In this episode I will share an update on our life as affected by the U.S. military, then continue with a blog-related status check, and wrap up with something domestic.
Today in our military-affected lives we are loving our new duty station.
Since we last spoke I definitely enjoyed my chawanmushi, and had a great meal for maybe the equivalent of eight dollars. I’m amazed at how affordable food is overall. Like usual, I enjoy grocery shopping more than I should…and thanks to Tokyo’s famously dense population, there are a lot of food options within a few miles or kilometers. According to Google Maps, there are quite literally more than 50 (five zero) restaurants within ONE MILE of our home, and more than a dozen grocery stores. But don’t let the proximity fool you, walking from our home isn’t convenient. More on that later.
Anyway, our new neighborhood is packed full of people and the things that people need.
I love knowing what I can buy nearby. This is a huge perk over the United States, at least in the last three states we lived in. Kansas for example was nice, but if I wanted to go to Target I needed to drive over to Missouri. When we lived in Alabama, there were more vacant store fronts than occupied ones, but at least we had an H&M within a thirty minute drive, so I could buy some clothes. Then Arkansas was fifty/fifty; some things were easy to buy like fried food and ammunition, but I struggled to find clothing in my size and did a lot of shopping on Amazon to avoid being out in the pollen that I am very allergic to.
Speaking of clothing, my luggage was found in Honolulu. Japan Airlines moved the suitcases to Tokyo, then used Yamato to bring them to the Air Force Base (which was a happy surprise, I was certain that I would have to go back to the airport for them). Truly I was only without luggage for five days, and I was very happy to have more socks and underwear again. Same for Kid Jupiter. It’s nice when my day can start with just coffee, instead of coffee and non-negotiable laundry.
Being reunited with my travel essentials was especially nice because I was spending my afternoons writing an inventory of the two cases by memory. I meant to take photos of the contents before they were packed up - I thought about it in Spokane, but when it was actually 4am in Seattle, taking photos was no longer a priority. Anyway, I was recording the contents as I could recall them, while taking frequent breaks to empty the dehumidifiers.
I was immediately reminded of our last trip to Las Vegas. Someone in Mister Jupiter’s squadron similarly arrived without his luggage. I don’t recall which airline he flew, but they were quick to offer reimbursements for his receipts, and he quickly shopped and supplied receipts. He left Vegas with a new suitcase of new clothes that he was happier with when compared to the lost luggage.
I definitely tried tapping into that optimism, but it was a little hard because I thrift and fall in love with clothes that are not as easy to replace. Purses and shoes were on the top of my list - both for immediate replacement and highest prices. Otherwise I was only a little miffed that my few base layer shirts were in there and I wasn’t ready to start troubleshooting Japanese clothes yet (and surprise; long, slim fit plain cotton t-shirts remain difficult to locate - but there’s hope! I may have nailed down a potential source of plain tee-shirts for the family that also ships to APO addresses - more on that later).
Now that our suitcases are again in our possession, we continued living out of those suitcases, because our household goods haven’t been delivered yet. Two of our seven crates have AirTags, and both are nearby in Yokohama. Our shipment was actually scheduled to arrive in Japan back in June, when we were in Las Vegas. But the AirTags didn’t show any movement from California until I was in Washington. So we can only assume that the crates were in transit for a few weeks, but mostly they were waiting for us to catch up and get an address. So that’s where we are now. We have an address, and it’s been communicated that we’re ready to receive our crates. We’re on the shipper’s calendar and just waiting for our turn.
So while we wait on our crates, we’ve been working on obvious practical things. After six sleeps, I took my driving class and received my Operator’s Permit for Civilian Vehicle. It’s not a Japanese driver’s license, but I can legally drive my car in Japan.
With my permit in hand, Kid Jupiter and I started working on my favorite thing when settling in to a new address; resource management, which in this case is my local exploration to find out what’s easily available. The obvious start for us is to see what we have access to on base, then expand outward. This is much easier with a car.
Short daily trips to explore installation amenities serves two very practical purposes. One is that I am getting my eyes on locally available products and services. Two is that I am getting more practice driving on the right side of the car and the left side of the street. Not surprisingly, my southpaw husband finds driving here intuitive, but for the record he has also been here more than me (not just duration with this PCS, but also frequency - he used to come out here for work trips), so he’s driven such vehicles before. He definitely has that advantage of experience and the familiarity it brings.
I’ll get there too, soon enough.
For today’s LadyJupiter.com update…the site is up, but hasn’t been updated since June. I’ll get back to it when I can.
And lastly something domestic.
We’re trying to figure out how to lay out our home when our crates arrive. Two friends who also PCSed this cycle both took measurements of various furniture pieces so they could measure spaces in their empty home to determine placement, then use tape on the floor to guide the incoming furniture when it’s time.
I’ll definitely do that the next time we PCS, it’s a brilliant idea and easy to do.
We’re fairly confident that everything will fit in our little house. It does have storage, but the obvious spaces are weirdly deep. The last time that I had impractically deep storage space was in Alabama. The fridge was next to a section of same depth open cabinets that we used as a pantry and kind of spice rack. We owned that house so I bought some deep pull out wire racks so that I could actually use that space. We have almost the same pantry situation here, but we can’t install a bunch of stuff because this isn’t our house. Luckily the space is taller, and we can move the shelves - so that’s nice. But I can’t visualize our stuff in these cabinets. I know we’ll find a solution, I just wish that I could see it so I can get it right the first time.
Oh well, we both know that this move required some downsizing, and we shed a lot of furniture earlier this year - so we know that we’ve already made positive progress in that direction. Now it’s just a matter of time for us to actually have our stuff in our place, so we can organize and get on with our lives. Luckily there’s an IKEA nearby in Tachikawa. It’s about 20 minutes away, which is the closest I’ve ever lived to an IKEA, but during the week they open at 11am. That’s so late when Kid Jupiter is waking up shortly after sunrise. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of Swedish meatballs in the upcoming months.
And that’s it for today.
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I will talk to you when I can record next. —Bye for now!
