Our First Five Days in Tokyo

Episode № 115 shares our first five days in Tokyo; a little required shopping, firework watching, and getting familiar with APO shipping.

Transcript

Episode № 115 Our First Five Days in Tokyo

Welcome back!

Lady Jupiter Podcast is the audio companion to LadyJupiter.com a lifestyle blog that I update when I can. Truly, it’s easier to prioritize blogging when you haven’t just moved to Tokyo. So the blog will be on hold until further notice. It’s fine, I’m just busy.

In this episode I’ll share an update on our life as affected by the U.S. military, then continue with the tiniest blog update, and wrap up with something domestic.

Today in our military-affected lives we are a family reunited, and happy to be together at all, but especially happy in the land of the rising sun.

Also! Isn’t it funny how we learn a word from reading, and later learn how it’s really pronounced. Well, that’s me and Tan-ZANIA or TANZA-nia. Oops - sorry; I didn’t hear that until I was editing the last episode and I wanted to let you know that I did think it sounded funny, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Just a classic example of putting EM-phasis on the wrong SYL-Lable. It’s a thing.

And extra apologies for my lightly shaky voice last episode too. I foolishly let my allergy medications run out, and I let my inhaler expire. Turns out that I’m allergic to Japan too (also my dog likes to roll in the grass, then roll in the bed. Be advised that I am VERY allergic to grass). So I’ve been coughing, sneezing, and dealing with a constantly runny nose for several days before I finally reached out to my doctor and begged for renewed prescriptions. Constant coughing affects my voice, so I do apologize. I have my new medications now, so I’m back on track with the regular breathing - yay!

Onward!

So last episode was the long travel day. Kid Jupiter and I arrived in Tokyo about six hours later than planned, and in a surprise twist - entirely without the checked luggage that we last saw in Seattle.

Anyway. Mister Jupiter was already at Haneda, and was waiting for us outside of customs. We were communicating the whole time of course, so he was well aware of our Seattle delay that caused the surprise re-ticketing in Honolulu, then confirming lost luggage in Tokyo. He had treats and snacks ready for us in his tall and shiny Toyota VOXY; a Japanese minivan that Toyota has been making since 2001.

We climbed into the van, and got moving. This wasn’t my first time in Japan, but it actually was my first time being in a Japanese vehicle, with the steering wheel on the right side of the car, and driving on the left side of the road. Despite the novelty of Tokyo in the evening in a car, Kid Jupiter and I were calm and relaxed. After a day’s worth of very little sleep, very high stress, and eating anything thrown at me, I was very content to just sit and be driven.

An hour later we were home. Mike Dog was happy to see us again, and we humans are just happy that we can start adjusting to our new normal. It’s easy to say that Kid Jupiter and I hit the ground running, but it was outside commentary that confirmed that we really do. Shortly after Kid Jupiter went to bed after our arrival, a friend came over for cold beverages, and he even brought me my car. Remember when I left my Prius in Illinois…in the middle of June? Well, that was for him and his family. So I was only without a vehicle for two weeks, I just needed to get myself in Tokyo to meet my new-to-me car; a stately Nissan Cube.

After a solid nap we were all up and moving. A great deal of our waking time having to do with the pre-5am sun in Tokyo. My kid rises with the sun, however I do not. This will be a struggle for a while.

My first order of business was to do some laundry because lost luggage means finite underwear, you understand this priority. As soon as my one outfit was clean, we took a family trip to the BX. I bought some clothes, but started running into my issue with American clothing stores. I try to shop in the women’s section because I am closer to 40 than 20, but the smallest sizes I can find in-person are often too big for me. I fit better in clothes from the junior’s section, but I don’t want low-rise destroyed jeans and cropped spaghetti strap tops. Luckily I did find one pair of hiking pants, some yoga pants, and one shirt. Seriously - the BX is not a place where I can reliably buy clothes…especially not in the women’s section.

Otherwise I got my Japanese phone number that day and we switched off our American phone numbers. We visited the post office and relaxed a bit before going to my first saké send-off at the terminal. Fewer than 24 hours in Japan, Kid Jupiter and I met most of the local leadership and shared short stories.

Two days later I had a little more clothes because the excess clothes I mailed myself arrived. Just in time too - because I wanted to wear something different to our first festival on base. Not only did we enjoy the Fourth of July celebration, but we got to meet the Friendship Club (a group of English-speaking locals who enjoy being involved with stuff on base). We shared food and watched fireworks together. They surprised me with a ton of little gifts, and little do they know that I’m preparing return gifts for them…I just need some time with Google Translate and a printer.

It was fun watching normal fireworks - back in Little Rock, the firework show was often sponsored by Lockheed and sometimes included grenades. By contrast we had regular fireworks visible from the other side of the airfield. Kid Jupiter missed them entirely because he was asleep in Mister Jupiter’s lap. Sunrise that day was 4:31am, which means that Kid Jupiter was up at 4:35am. His bedroom got the blackout shades first, but he’s still waking up a bit too early.

Now that we’re here together, it means that we can all go out when we have friends in town. A few days after our first hanabi, we had sushi with an old friend that I haven’t seen in seven or eight years at least?! We ate in a popular restaurant that that always has at least one table of Americans. You order food from a tablet, your dishes arrive via train, and each table has a hot water dispenser so I can have all of the matcha that I can handle. I especially love Genki Sushi because I can start each meal with my favorites, sardine nigiri and savory egg custard. Both are national treasures to my tastebuds. Sardine sushi has been a favorite for years, and I don’t recall ever seeing it available in the states (however I did have some in Little Rock - at a Japanese restaurant called Mt. Fuji. The sardine was part of my chirashi bowl. Yum). The savory custards are new to me, but I already buy them anytime that I see them. Chawanmushi is just a non-sweet custard that can be made a million ways. While exact ingredients will vary, you can expect it to be made with dashi, to include mushrooms, and have a few little vegetables and protein nibbles like mussels or bite-sized chicken. It’s my favorite appetizer and I know that I’ll start making it myself one day. But until then? I’ll order it every time I see it on a menu, or ready to grab from a grocery store.

Well, now I’ve just made myself hungry. Please excuse me while I drive over to Uobei? Honestly I don’t know how to pronounce the name of the restaurant, and I know I’m not alone - most English speakers here simply call it Genki Sushi because it’s part of the signage and we can say it. I’ll figure it out soon enough.

For today’s LadyJupiter.com update…the site is still up and running.

And lastly something domestic.

I’ve slowly been collecting notes about what companies ship to APO addresses, mostly for casual reference because we can realistically buy whatever we need out here.

Most retailers are clear about YES, APO shipping is available, but not express orders - retailers like Target, and Gap for example.

But every now and again I run into an online shop that is clear about zero APO shipping, like Quince and my formerly beloved Container Store.

That last one was a big surprise, but I’ve been able to work around organizing without access to Container Store. As luck would have it, two of my favorite product lines are actually Japanese and easy for me to buy on Amazon.co.jp. One is a line of plastic baskets whose handles never get in the way, and they nest together snug-ly but not too tight. I bought several of the white ones in the States. But here in Japan I looked at the bottom and searched online for the same “Hachimankasei” that’s clearly printed on the underside. And lo and behold I could easily purchase the same baskets, but also in different colors…plus matching lids if I want to stack them without nesting.

And my favorite wire bins that I used to only find at Container Store? The brand is “Muji” and they’re also easily available online. Pricing is comparable to Container Store, but I did find a near-dupe at Joyful Honda, then later I found nice wire bins (with a more open grid, so less material in the same space) super cheap at Standard Products - more on that later.

Otherwise Mister Jupiter and I have learned that several companies will ship to APO addresses if you ask nicely; their online stores didn’t supply a confident YAY or NAY when searched. I reached out to Biosense before moving to Japan, because a friend convinced me to buy one of their breath ketone meters (honestly it was an easy sale; I’ve been eyeballing them for years, but couldn’t justify the $300. All I needed was a real life friend to recommend it, and the one other casual biohacker I know positively gushed about his Biosense, so I bought one too). That purchase was a little fraught because the online cart didn’t accept my shipping address. So I plugged in my mother’s address in the United States to make the order at all, then let Biosense know my order number. At that point we were already communicating and they were expecting my order. Someone along the way re-routed my ketone breath meter to Japan before it accidentally went to Texas. Similar with my husband’s fancy espresso machine. The typical shipping weight exceeded APO allowance, so a polite string of emails between Mister Jupiter and Espresso Coffee Machine of Heidelberg Germany, yielded one machine divided in two boxes to us in Japan. Perfectly reasonable. We got our objects from our post office, and those companies both made sales to Americans overseas (who talk to other Americans overseas and are very happy to share the details of how we acquired goods that don’t clearly ship to APO addresses).

And that’s it for today.

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I will talk to you when I can record next. 

Bye for now!