Day 3 - Another full day in Japan

Thursday Sept 3rd, 2009

Well we made it through the night in our house alone. We woke up this morning about 5:00am and got out of bed around 6:00am. We had breakfast. Kellogg's Special K. Look at how small the box is. (Sorry Alex! Cereal selection here is very limited.) This is a normal size to buy. No extra large family size here.

So far this is an absolutely wonderful house, except for the pig farm across the road. The smell is very bad some days, and we never know when we open the door what air we will experience. We decided to name the smell Buta-san, which means Mr. Pig. That way we let each other know if we smell the farm and we can hold our breath when we are out side. Every other farm smells better than a pig farm. At least that's what we think right now. :)

We are still trying to adapt to the time change. At first we thought it would be ok since we are sleeping on Japan time, but we are feeling the weight of change. We got up today and went on a walk around our neighborhood. It was a little rainy, but beautiful. so many little roads, we were afraid to get lost. we made it to the main street and back. On our walk home we met one of the neighbors, Shimakata-san. He was very nice and very patient to try and talk to us in Japannese. I thought Paul did very well talking to him. Shimakata-san is a great neighbor to Obata-san.

Today we went to town to see about getting our alien registration cards. (Don't want to be an illegal alien!)We filled out all the forms and found out that it would take 1 month to get. EEEEK! That means we have to wait 1 month to get a cell phone, Internet, or a bank account. Oh well we will have to wait. We also ordered our Hanko, a circular Japanese stamp like a signature. Everyone has one here for legal documents and we will need one so that we can sign important documents and get a Japanese Bank account.

Then we stopped by one of Obata-san's friend's businesses. Mr. Hirokami and his company built the building for Haruna church of Christ. He also gave Obata-san a very large discount to build it. We sat and talked (well Obata-san talked, we listened) with him next door at his wife's coffee shop. The coffee was excellent. We have met so many nice people and the friendships that are made between neighbors is amazing.

We also had sushi for lunch today from Beisia, the supermarket in town.

This evening we went to the home store in Maebashi and purchased a lot of things we wanted for our house. We needs things for storage and a few more cooking supplies. On our way home Rumiko-san wanted to stop at the $1.oo store. In Japan, it is called the Hyaku En (100 Yen) store. Yay! Lots of good thing to buy there. We bought a few good things and some paper to wrap our gifts that we brought from Kansas. There are lots of good people to thank for their generosity.

It was another long ay. and we went to bed early.