Almost not homeless

Good news! We’re going to be moving into a house on Friday! By moving, I mean schlepping the nine bags we carried with us from the States, plus a few groceries and postal boxes we’ve accumulated, into an empty home maybe ¼ mile from the hotel we’ve been staying in. We get the keys at 1:30 and delivery men are supposed to arrive by 3:30 with a couple of loaner beds, a couch, and a few tables and dressers. On Tuesday, we’ll receive five small boxes of our stuff, shipped by the Air Force, which will help us to feel a bit more comfortable. (More clothes! Pots and pans! Toys!)

For this assignment, the Air Force requires us to live on base. When you have a kid, they don’t want you to live outside the gate. Although we were initially a bit disappointed by that rule, it does ease our transition here and removes a lot of potentially rather large headaches in trying to get situated. I remember rather clearly the stress we experienced in England when we were house-hunting in Cambridge, 45 minutes from RAF Mildenhall. (It was totally worth it, though.) I can’t imagine how much more difficult that would be here, given the language and cultural differences.

Our new home is a town home. I haven’t been inside of it yet but Wil, Liam and I pressed our noses to its windows and I can say that it looks pretty good. We’ve seen another home a few doors down – occupied by the family of the man Wil is replacing – so I at least know what the layout looks like. We were offered a different home in another neighborhood – there’s a strict bureaucracy here that can be a little, um, frustrating – but when we refused it, we were able to negotiate a counter move into this property.

Our household goods – meaning all of the furniture and stuff which will fill our new home here – are set to arrive sometime between mid-August and early September. We’ll be living a bit sparsely in the meanwhile. After all, television is overrated, right? And closets stuffed with clothes. And kitchens filled with gadgets. And baskets filled with toys. And walls hung with art. And bookcases filled with books….

Wait a minute. I’m making myself a little sad here. The important thing, the lovely thing, is that the new home is in precisely the location we wanted. Wil can walk to work. We can walk to the base commissary, library, BX, Officers’ Club, and numerous on-base restaurants. Even better, in some ways, is the short walk to the base gate, where we can access Japanese restaurants and shops. We’ll also be able to stroll to a train station which will be our portal to greater Tokyo. And that, my friends, is the really, really, good news.