what do you see?

Hi everyone! Well, the move went pretty smoothly on Saturday. We were able to use the services of a moving company contracted by the school for their move, so about 8 or 9 guys with two trucks and a kind of crane (like on a fire truck) made the move a lot quicker! We've now spent two nights in the new apartment, and we did a bit of shopping yesterday, so it's starting to look like home now, and we're very happy with it. Telephone/net access is all up and running now, so please feel free to contact us!

Today is our last teaching day, tomorrow we have an all-day meeting, and then Wednesday onwards is our summer holiday! I hope to get a lot of web-work done (pics, audio, video etc. updated) during that time, so keep an eye out.

PS - some new pics on the picture site, there's a new "Kyoto and Nara" section (about time!) which I'm adding to, and a couple of new ones in the "Phil and Christine" album. I deleted a couple of old albums too.

Did a lot more driving on Sunday, and saw some beautiful scenery. We also saw a baby fox from the car, which stared at us curiously and didn't even run away - maybe rabid? It was cute anyway. We watched the sun set into the sea from the top of some cliffs at the end of Cape Notori, probably the best place we've found so far.


Yesterday was a public holiday here, so we drove out to Saroma lake, a massive lagoon protected from the sea by two long sandy spits. We walked most of the way down one of the spits, and back again (of course!) - took several hours. We saw a lot of wild flowers, herons, cranes and other birds. Then back to Kitami for refreshments in Mister Donuts. We also found a really good video/DVD rental place, where DVDs are only 99 yen a night, so we watched The Man Who Wasn't There last night.

Freedom! Today, we drove! Finally we were able to get out of Kitami, so we drove into the countryside, and saw a few lakes and a lot of beautiful scenery. Also had some great icecream. Here's our car, we have a dark green version: Car link

This morning I did most of what I described in the last post, plus measuring the parking space and drawing a scale map of it for the police. Now I just wait to be issued with the certificate next week...Insurance is sorted now.

Weather here has been cold (in the teens C) for a few days, while England is so hot! Why?! Actually it's nice to have some variety of summer weather, unlike in Tokyo.

Admin admin admin. Having had a personal hanko made a couple of weeks ago (a small stamp to use in place of a signature for important documents) I had to go to the city office to get an inkan shomei and an inkan shomei shou (a certificate of registration for the hanko). This is in order to use the hanko to buy a car. Before I can get the car, I have to obtain a jidosha no hokan basho shodaku shomei (basically permission to use a parking space and a detailed map showing the space, access to it, size etc.) - just got that from our new landlord today. Now I only have to fill in various forms about the car I will get (including details like exact size and weight of the car), take them to the police to get a certificate, and take that to another office to register the space to me and the car! So, almost there with that. Although I haven't mentioned the registration of the car itself, insurance, breakdown cover......

More news: We've got the apartment! We just finished the contracts and now have the keys, although we're not moving in until 26th. We're off to scout it out in a few minutes. Pictures online sometime soon!

OK we're back online! Our new modem arrived and we're now setup with fast unlimited access again!

Well here we go again...we're well into proceedings to sign up for the place that we really like...So far so good. The landlord's happy about us (important, what with us being foreigners and all), the contracts are drawn up and we're just waiting for them to be checked through. If all goes well, we should be able to sign by Monday at the latest...

We've also been offered an ex-company car for a very good price, so we're thinking about that now too. We'll probably take it, as it will be very easy to do all the neccesary paperwork and we know the car too.

So look out for a post around Monday when a lot of stuff should be finalised. Apart from that nothing much except it's raining.

Some progress! It looks like one of the 2 places we saw last week will be ours, and it's nice! But, based on last times results, not getting too excited yet. I'm off to the agency later today to do some paperwork, hopefully there won't be any weird clauses in the contract this time! More soon...

So...things have been more than a little stressful for us over the past week, trying to find a new place to live, while working and trying to sort this place out (it's not the best of apartments as you might have understood from the last entry!) It's feeling and looking a bit better now. There was a mix-up with our net access too, but hopefully we'll be fully on-line again by Friday/Saturday this week. I'll let you know of course.

OK we're in the temp. place, not entirely a cosy place really, quite bleak to be honest, lots of exposed pipes, weird curtain patterns and haunting looking ceiling tiles...were woken this morning by a child upstairs constantly running from one end of its apartment to the other...

So our efforts to find a new (nice!) place have been redoubled...we're seeing 2 tomorrow, one on Thursday, and hopefully more to come. I'll keep you posted as always. Have sent out our new address details, email me if you didn't get it and want it!