Day 7: More Shopping: Reality Check on Living Costs

Well, we made it through our first week here. Whoopeeeee! It's been fun and it flew by very rapidly. We're getting settled in and it's feeling more like home. We've gone on a lot of little shopping trips for basic house items. An example is today's purchases:

small pedestal fan (on sale), $20
battery charger with 4 AA batteries (value pack), $38
wall stud finder, $12
credit card sized level for hanging things straight (very cheap, but I hope it works), $8
knife sharpener (The exact same one we gave away the day before we moved!), $16
hand duster and refill pack (on sale), $6

It doesn't take long to get to $100!

At the store the boys were getting a little tired of all the shopping we were doing. They had a row of coin-operated toy/candy machines like in the US. The machines were 100 Yen (~$1), 200 Yen (~$2) and 300 Yen (~$3). I gave the boys 200 Yen ($2) each and it pacified them for about 10 minutes while they figured out what they wanted. If in the US, I would never have given them $2 each for these types of machines. In Japan, 200 Yen ($2) was cheap. It's all relative when it comes to costs.

They had a pet section at that store. A cat cost $980. The dogs there were about $800 and up. Some were $1500. They looked like ordinary pets that I would see in the US. I must be missing something. Maybe these were purebreds, but I hardly think so because the store was more of a discount store. It wasn't an expensive store at all. Even the hamsters were about $8 and up.

After those purchases we went to a grocery store to buy food for the next few days: $50. Not sure what our weekly food bill will be but it's looking like close to $100 per week for the basics. It will be more if we add in special meals and drinks like Coke, beer, liquor. Not sure what it will be once we have some people over.

In the afternoon the remodeling company representative came by so we could go over some fixes with him. As with any remodeling job, communication with the representative doesn't always travel down to the guys doing the work. There was nothing major, but a few details got dropped.

Tomorrow morning we'll make a visit to Michael's school to get him signed up. It's summer vacation but some of the staff are still there. We're looking forward to visiting his school!!!!! Michael will see firsthand what the walk is like from home to school. He'll need to walk to school every day. Hopefully he'll find some friends who live along the way to walk with.

Someone asked how we are doing with reading things around us. Michael and Terry are working together on this. We can figure out the basics. For Terry, the Chinese characters are starting to come back a little, and the Japanese characters are getting clearer again. For Michael, it's more a matter of getting used to reading Japanese on a daily basis. He hasn't learned many of the Chinese characters yet, but that will change shortly. There are 1945 basic Chinese characters taught through high school. These 1945 characters can be pronounced many different ways each depending on whether they are used alone or with another Chinese characters. Terry used to know about 300 basic Chinese characters. Needless to say, he cannot read a daily newspaper (that's why he subscribes to one of the daily English language newspapers).

Other advances this week include Michael's great gains in using chopsticks. He's really advanced in his abilities. Tommy has gotten a lot better as well.

I would like to end week one by sharing my 3 favorite slogans so far:

1. From Kanebo brand cosmetics: For Beautiful Human Life
2. From Kirin Lager Beer: The mature, mellow taste & deep, foamy head make Kirin Lager Beer a wonderful harmony of refreshing taste and refined quality.
3. Instead of Ronald McDonald, it's McDonald-san (maku donarudo-san).

So ends the first week. All is well and we are adjusting fine.