Hello all!!! Yes tis me again, after a very long hiatus. I am writing to you sitting at the (sort of) counter in our new home! Yes, we are in and this is the main reason I haven’t written to you in three weeks, what with packing, moving, unpacking and cleaning. There is one other reason I didn’t write two weeks ago, which actually occurred during that week, and which I will get back to in a short while.

Back to the (sort of) counter; the base structure is in place, however, the benchtop is yet to be installed. We know that the structure was built in the last week, or so, before handover and so the templating will have occurred after that time. Craig tells me it used to take around two weeks from templating to instalment when he was working at Adelaide Marble (they did benchtops…). In lieu of the actual benchtop, we have borrowed the top of our desk, which is somewhat smaller, to act as a partial benchtop.

Today we went to Nitori to buy some stools using the gift vouchers we got as another gift from the car dealer (arriving unexpectedly in the mail) along with some accumulated points on our Nitori pointo kado (point card). Yes, money is pretty tight at the moment – the other day we had just over ¥500 left in our bank account – but thankfully we had some money ready to transfer in Australia, so we are still able to eat 😊. We got caught out by a very high fee we weren’t expecting for the registration of our new home (trap for new home building novices). Luckily we had just enough money in the bank to pay that bill.

Returning to the other reason I didn’t write a post two weeks ago; frankly, I just didn’t feel up to it because during that week we found out that Customs were holding up our goods and chattels from Australia. This is because they believe that the kitchenware, cookware and glasses we have shipped over here are not our personal items and not for personal use but rather for commercial use in our minshuku. If they deem any items to be for commercial use we will have to pay a 30% import duty on the total value of the items.

To make that assessment, they have asked for a complete itemised list, including how old (whether new or not and actual age) and giving each item or set a value. So, Crown (the movers) have to unpack the identified boxes/cartons, list everything (with photos, it seems), and then we have to provide the other information. Given that all of the items are at least five years old, it is going to be very difficult to assign a value. I’m not sure if they will want purchase price, replacement value, or depreciated value. The other issue is that we are going to have to pay a significant amount of money to Crown for this ‘extra’ service – the boxes were minimally described as they were packed because many of their staff were off sick the day our items were packed for shipping.

A conundrum and in part I think it comes from the fact that we have a lot of the above items. We tried to explain that we used to do a lot of cooking and entertaining, some being quite large gatherings, but that wasn’t enough. Part of the problem seems to be a difference in life styles between here and in Australia. People tend to eat out a lot here and are not overly big on home entertaining.

As a result, not only do we have a (sort of) counter, but we also have very little in the way of furniture. We only have what we were using in the (quite small) flat. So, we sit on the floor in our tiled lounge area on the zaisu (legless Japanese chairs) we used in our tatami bedroom (because the tv was in there – no antenna socket elsewhere to use) to watch tv, eat our meals, etc – that is, up until today! Now we can eat at the (sort of) counter.

Despite the issues above (and a few other minor issues, such as no curtains yet, etc), it is wonderful being in here. We have so much more space in our area and we have a backyard – small, I concede, but we will be able to use it and grow things. The kids have settled in here reasonably well – nothing like they were after the very big move from Australia, which did traumatise them somewhat. They have more room to run around and play and eventually we will be able to put them outside. The weather has ever so slightly warmed up, so it may be fairly soon. Apparently it has been the coldest winter in 30 years. Just in time for me to experience it.

Last post I mentioned Setsubun. One of the rituals undertaken on Setsubun is mamemaki (throwing of roasted soybeans) to ward off evil and bring in good luck. It is usually performed by the toshiotoko of the household (the male who was born in the corresponding animal year on the Chinese zodiac), or else the male head of the household (traditional…). Roasted soybeans are thrown either out of the door or at a member of the family wearing an Oni (demon) mask, while the people say “Demons out! Luck in!” (Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!).

As it happens Craig is a dog, so we actually had a toshiotoko to perform the mamemaki. We had decided to do this at both the flat and our new home. On the Saturday of Setsubun we came up here to the Very Nearly Minshuku (as it was then) to undertake the rituals, however, when we got here no-one was here, so we couldn’t get in (yes, we should have thought of the fact that they may not work on Setsubun). Not to be put off, we winged it, with Craig throwing the beans from the front verandah at me while I was running around on the road with the mask on. It was fun! I can only imagine what the neighbours thought…

During the interim period between posts, we have had Valentine’s Day, with the associated chocolate buying frenzy that occurs. I decided to take Craig to the Salon du Chocolat at iSetan, so he could experience first hand just how truly mesmerised people could be by chocolate (although he already had some idea about the power of chocolate through some of our friends…you know who you are 😊). There quite a few different stalls this year, but it seemed there was a lot of very similar product, with French, Belgian, Swiss and Japanese all ending up looking very much alike.

On a final note, sadly we continue to find lonely gloves and mittens strewn around as we walk to various destinations. This time we were particularly taken with two mittens and also a fairly bedraggled, but paired up couple. We figured the paired up couple at least had each other, despite their run down state, and we have taken photos of the mittens in the hope they may find their true glove match. The first mitten is a spiritual type, praying singlehandedly at a local shrine. The second was a little sheepish, at first, but we managed to take this photo once we reassured her we weren’t trying to pull the wool over her eyes and that we thought suitable glove partners would flock to her looking for new pastures. All you need is glove…

Cheers for now!!!