“it loves you”

Jon reminded me today that I shouldn’t abandon the blog to work on other things. He says “it loves you. It just wants some love back.”
This is another reason I would not be a good Mommy. I forget about things.

Today I saw a child screaming… screaming, running after a woman and a stroller. The “mom”-woman was gaining distance and the little girls screams started sounding less and less like “fun game” and more like “mommy come back”. I wondered… was that woman running away from her child? Literally? Was she trying to abandon the girl in the middle of the park? And more importantly, did I fault her?

Anyways. I love you, teamEggers. I love that you’re dependable and don’t ask too much from me. My mom called me yesterday, as I was in the middle of what must have sounded like a quarter-life-crisis. Despite our glorious surroundings, which I keep forgetting to enjoy, I seem to be having a small mental breakdown over the past few weeks. I think things are on the upswing, and I resolve that March will be better.

So for you today, I bring a very happy tale of one girl who gets to stay in Japan.

Yesterday afternoon, I jumped on a train into the unexplored Burroughs of Yokohama.

• Final destination: The Japanese Immigration office.
• The task: An attempt to extend my 90-day tourist visa, so that I don’t have to leave the country in April.

After standing in various lines in a room that was set up similar to the DMV, lots of back and forth with a man named Ki-no-shi-ta, and the most charmingest smile I could muster, I was awarded a visa extension!

(I just had to buy a 40$ revenue stamp before they let me have it. Good thing I had some cash in my pocket!) Really though, $40 is a gift, considering that leaving the country to go to Hong Kong would have probably cost us close to $1500.

Happy, happy.

life, in boxes.

Hi Team! Michelle here, livin the hobo’s life – sleeping on a mattress in the middle of the floor, living out of boxes. Eating expired food.

What?

It turns out that a lot of our food is expired. Nearly everything that jon brought to the relationship, actually.
See, when we moved in to the house in Seattle together, he had a pantry full of things. Things, I am finding out this week, that expired two (sometimes three) years ago.

oh-seven? really jon? does that box really say “best before oh seven?!”. Jon, as nonchalant as ever just shrugs it off. “It’s a guideline, you see. I’m sure it’s still fine.“.

And THAT friends, is why we have stomachs of steel and can eat whatever we want in Japan. I’ve been in training since jon started going to the supermarket in college.

Meanwhile, I’ve got 7 short days left until I join jon in j-town. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to plan social-fun-things on 4 of those night. There are still people I want to see once more before we head out! There’s not enough time in the day! (Enter in Michelle’s addiction to Coffee and her opinion that we would certainly have saved the world by now if more people were as caffeinated as she is.)

Well kids, the Windex calls.

vehicle accidents.

A funny thing happened on the way home yesterday.

I was hit by a semi. In the car. The car…. was hit by a semi.
Everyone’s okay. It was just a fender-bender, but what the heck?

AND I found out jon’s plane was hit by lightening on his flight home from Japan. Why didn’t that come up before, jon?! He says it was no big deal and stuff like that happens frequently. *I’ve* never been on a plane that’s been hit by lightening. And furthermore, how did it take nearly a week to tell me? Wouldn’t you mention something like that when we have the standard “hi honey, how was your flight?” conversation. Sigh. Boys.

I suppose I am uncommunicative in other ways.

So back to the semi. We’re both sitting at a red light in south-downtown (1st and spokane), waiting to turn right, when the semi starts backing up. Now, I’ve never known cars to randomly back up at a stop light. I’ve never seen this. I didn’t know it was a possibility. On a hill, with a standard transmission, sure – there may be some rollback. But at flat red light, to physically put your car in reverse? No, I just didn’t know that was a possibility.

So the car doesn’t have any majour damage, though it will definitely need a new grill and perhaps a new front bumper. It’s unfortunate that a few deep scratches could cause an entire bumper to be replaced, but i suppose that’s the drawback to driving around in plastic cars.

In other news, we’ve been home for exactly one week now and life is officially back to normal. We’ve (just about) finished unpacking, jon’s going out to see Star Trek tonight with Kyle and Will, and I’m cooking dinner for some friends.

Actually, I’m looking forward to cooking dinner. It’s great to look through my recipes, find something with ingredients that I KNOW i can just go to the store and buy (you’d be surprised how hard it was to find things like cilantro in japan. it was there… sometimes. but let me tell you – it wasn’t called cilantro.) and cook in a kitchen with nice pans and sharp knives.

Like the bumblebee

We had a quick false alarm where we all thought we’d be flying home on Friday. Luckily, jon and stephen both found extra jobs to work on and now we’re clear again to stay until the 8th.

I keep talking about aligning expectations as a key to happiness, and I think I may be on to something. A few weeks ago I was gung-ho about wanting to stay here on a three year contract. But now that our time is drawing to an end, I’m eager to go “home”.

So. In a last ditch attempt to make the most of our time, we’ve got a busy week lined up.

Last Sunday, I took a solo-trip to the island of Enoshima. I have some rad pictures of fuji to share with you soon. Last night we had stephen and jill over for dinner (which turned out really good – I’m going to post the recipes soon!). Tonight we’re going to a soccer game and tomorrow a ping-pong tournament! Friday we’re trying to organize a picnic/bbq with all the japanese friends we’ve made while we’ve been here. Saturday is “garden day” – where we’re going to rock it old’school in the park. Perhaps there will be day-drinking? Sunday, unfortunately jon has to work.

In the meantime, my book is coming together nicely. I’m at about 150 pages and nearly through our April adventures. Just need to work on typography a bit. I’m looking forward to showing it to all of you. Sesame is busy as usual, though I have to admit that having some extra help (thanks to Caren!) means life doesn’t suck. I’m designing more and I haven’t threatened suicide in like, three weeks.

Kyoto [Part 2]

We pick up our story, confused, weary, and kind of sad towards the general injustices of the world. Why me? Why now?

But we persevered. And the story has a happier ending, so don’t you worry your pretty little heads.

After the silver temple, we were off to the main highlight of the day, which was the Kiyomizu temple. It’s crazy… on the way we found a handful MORE temples. They were honestly *everywhere*. As a Kyotan practicing Shinto or Buddhism, your really need not fear for your soul. Salvation is near. Etc.

Anyhow, on the way we picked up a disposable camera. I dont think I’ve held one of those in five years. It was weird. We’ll get the pictures when we’re back in Seattle, I’m sure, but it’s good to know that there’s a record of our travels somewhere. You may wonder why I always take so many pictures. Well, see… I have a terrible memory. Terrible. If I don’t take a million photos and blog about everything we do, I forget before the week is over.

I’m like a goldfish.

If it’s any surprise then, I can’t recall clearly how the rest of the afternoon went. I know we greatly enjoyed Kiyumizu. I fell in love with moss, proclaiming it a far superior choice for ground coverage over grass, and we got a few more temple signatures in our new stamp-book. Jon thinks they’ve got a racket going on. I… don’t care. I just hope the little old men writing in my books get a cut of the $3 I fork over.

After some quick Google’ing back at the train station, we stopped entertaining the idea that “maybe the battery wasn’t really charged?” and other battery-related user-error theories. It sounds like this is a fairly common problem with cannons. Which… sucks. Let me elaborate for just a second.

Canon is, we believe, the best company for a digital camera. Nikon makes great film-cameras, but Canon seems to do a great job digitally. Even after this experience, I would still recommend getting one. We were considering buying the same camera again, knowing full well that if it’s a hardware malfunction, it could happen to us a second time. They’re good cameras. So why, then, does Canon’s tech support suck so hardcore that they won’t eliminate this known error? Okay, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. We haven’t even sent in the camera to be repaired yet. We only have google-fueled theories about what’s wrong.

We bought a new camera. It’s smaller. It’s a Canon point-and-shoot variety, but it still takes fine photos and it definitely gets the job done. I hate it a little bit, just because of what it stands for, but looking at the photos afterwards there isn’t a HUGE difference between the two.

I will leave you with the first photo taken with our new Canon PowerShot AS100. (this is the Kyoto Tower)