the joys of buying a house

just a few random observations from the last 8 months of house hunting:

we were in no rush to buy. We thought we would take a year or so to look around and find a good place. But seriously, after even 2 months of looking (which is maybe 2-3 weekends of going out and actually looking at houses, but also spending every night looking on the internet for houses) we got a bit disillusioned. It has been a LONG 8 months, and we were ready to give up several times - usually since all the "good" houses are snapped up so fast.

sometimes looking at a house on paper it is perfect (or crap) but actually seeing the place changed how we thought of it. Many times we were disappointed by the environmental factors - like being up behind a factory (reeking of oil), on a main road, basically no sunlight....
The house we are buying, truthfully wasn't on our list of houses to see. we didn't like the room layout, so we had culled it. But J added it on at the last minute, basically because it was so close to the station. When we got there, the overall balance of the house/yard/close to station/environment (close to park, station, quiet road, no houses in front of it) outweighed the fact that it wasn't our ideal 間取り.
I guess what we learned from house hunting was that as much as a pain it is, going to see lots of houses is the only way. And not to skip over houses just because of their room layout (which in the end was not one of our deciding factors)

best to go look at houses on Saturday morning.
Usually when we went on Sunday mornings, and found a place we liked, the RE agent would ring the "central property hotline" (seems to be a number that controls all these things) only to be told that someone had already put a bid in (申し込み） on that house.
So it is only a bid, you say, BUT the thing is, in this climate, with the house market at such a low price, houses are selling like hotcakes. It is a buyer's market. A lot of houses have dropped their prices, are selling fast, and the number of houses on the market has fallen by 2/3rds since this time last year. So, in effect: too many people trying to buy too few houses. A day makes a difference.

Also, banks are lending money out more easily, so in our experience, the houses that had a bid on them generally went to sale. Once or twice we put the second "dibs" on a house, but always the first bidder got it.

we had an initial list of conditions we wanted in a house. Wanted a counter kitchen, 2 story house, 4 rooms - one should be a washitsu off the side of the living room, 2 car parking, ....etc etc. In the end, the house we bought matched hardly any criteria. We changed our way of thinking after seeing houses, and added more criteria. I guess there were some things that we wouldn't budge on though, like NO buses, at least within 15min (10min better) walk to station. Oh, and it had to be a carpark that I could reverse the car into! (some of the places the car parks are sooooo tiny, I would never have been able to maneuver around them)

the time taken from when we put the bid in, until the loan came through, and we collect the keys has been 7 and 3/4weeks. And we have pushed them all the way. Nearly every week we were asked to collect more documents, furikomi money (for house inspection) yada-yada, and we did it all in the fastest turn around time possible...but still it took a month for the loan approval to come through. We obviously had more of a reason to push the process, what with all of us leaving the country as it turns out 4 days after moving in (5 days after getting the key in our hot little hands)....but it was a frustrating 2 months and lots of paper pushing.

So we have 2 more days until we are proud home owners. It has been a long haul. Hope owning a house is worth it......

just babbling

was a bit excited on Sunday afternoon at a sports store at a shopping mall close-by to see one of the "Ten Tere" Kids from the nhk program 天才テレビくん。 They sing and dance and K loves watching them. She imitates them and does the "max" thing. I think she wants to be one when she grows up (just like Wentz Eiji and Ozawa Akane, now劇団一人's wife)

Anyway, I am pretty sure that Kazuma was behind us in line. I was so excited, trying to tell J that he is a kid from TV without making it obvious (you know what men are like!) and K was hanging around him, trying to get his attention too, I think. Too exciting!

Had an incident today that cemented in my head that I should just wait until the last minute to pack the rest of our stuff....couldn't find the pasta, for our lunch. Seems J had packed all the food away in a packing frenzy on the weekend, and SEALED THE BOX!!!! So I was opening boxes labeleed "kitchen" and "food" in a panic at lunch time, wondering if I was going to have to go buy more pasta despite the fact that we have several half used packs here ....which is why I wanted to make pasta in the first place. Anyway, found the pasta spirals and we had that with the last of the meat in the freezer (costco beef mince).

Dinner tonight is another green thai curry, using up all leftover veges, and chicken. I taste-tested it and it was pretty spicy! Hope I can eat it.

still no luck in finding my sunnies, despite lots of helpful suggestions of where to look from friends. *sigh* I think I might have to accept that they are gone....the only other hope now is that they turn up when unpacking, somehow..

R is away at PIL for the week while we get ready to move, but I still took K out for a big walk this morning, we were gone for about an hour. Only went down the road to drop off a goya at a friend's house and then pick up some jelly at the supermarket. I hoped the long walk would wear K out and make it easy to put her down for a nap, but truthfully it didn't seem to make much difference.

Finally got everything sorted, like gas/electricity/internet/water services. It is so much easier when you can do it all on the internet. Except of course for bloody internet providers - how hear do they make it to cancel the services!!! But it is all happening now. We *might* have internet up and running before we head off to Aus, but I am not holding my breath...at least it will be up for when J gets back so we can skype him from my parent's house while we are gone. So we won't forget him, you know ;)

losing stuff and moving stuff

Sitting here having an ume-shu minus the "shu" (guess that makes it ume juice) and racking my rains trying work out WHERE THE HELL my sunglasses might be. I definitely had them on yesterday afternoon on way home from playgroup (because I basically cannot see without them, even on a cloudy day the glare usually gets me) since I don't remember squinting all the way home. But they are now no where to be found. And I have even gotten well into the habit of putting them in their mega huge sunglass case, so it is not like they wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb anywhere.....

This follows high on the heels of a lost camera batter charger - we have been looking for THAT for 3 weeks now. I cannot find it anywhere. Also, can't remember where it would have been last. Obviously, it is not in all the usual places. gaaah.

And it doesn't help now that we have started packing - I am constantly wondering if I might have put it in with such and such in this box...but I guess it will either turn up before we move, or come out of some random box once we have.

So yes, we are moving, next Saturday actually.

Into a house.

That we bought.

Crazy stuff. It started out as a simple observation that we could *buy* an apartment for the price we are paying each month in rent, but then of course we thought about it and realised that we don't like the apartment lifestyle (what with dog, and kid, and camping/surfing trips, having a car park miles away i.e. not in the front yard is a bummer....) so we started looking at houses. Again, I say crazy - looking for a house in metropolitan Kanto!!!! I don't know how many times we found a great place in Chiba or some other inaka town and said to each other "man I wish we could live here!" but one of main conditions with moving was that J would be able to commute within about 30mins, door-to-door. We figured there was no point living in a great place that HE never got to be in, or got to see us in!!! Cut to 7months later, after searching on the internet every night for houses, spending weekends out looking at houses only to be bitterly disappointed when they are located beside a shinkansen line/factory/cemetery etc etc, or are built on a block the size of what we would use to park the car on in Australia, getting well and truly over the whole househunting biz, and we found a place that we like. It is not our dream home, but it is hopefully ok for now. Saving graces of the house are undercover parking for 2 cars, 4 min walk to train station, and a very teeny tiny, but definitely existent back yard!! We spent the last 2 months sitting on the edge of our seat waiting for loan approval (it came through last week) and J signed the papers yesterday. We have to push the moving to make it by the end of the month, because all of us - me, K, J and his parents - are going o/s on Sept 2nd. We are spending a week in Cairns, then K and I are going down to Bris for the rest of the month (thank you jetstar!!) So basically I will move into my new house, then 4 days later go o/s for a month. Yay.

So I am trying to use up everything possible in the fridge/freezer before the start of next week. I had a pile of capsicums in the fridge for some reason, so last night's dinner was: Spaghetti bolognaise, with red and yellow capsicum and 100% beef mince. Yum

On the menu for tonight:

goya champuru (still got some goya to get ride of)

chili prawns (prawns found in the freezer)

nira egg roll (left over nira)

wakame miso soup (tons of wakame still)

vine-ripened tomatoes (without lettuce because it is so expensive at the moment, and would cause more stuff to go INTO the fridge if I bought it)

Tomorrow night:

pork chops with shiitake mushrooms and onions

asparagus

mashed potatoes

pumpkin

We have one room already full of boxes, and still piles of shit everywhere that needs to be packed, but I am very much a last minute doer. I can't get myself motivated to pack ages in advance, as I am always worried I will need that random object we haven't used since we got here sometime between packing it in a box and moving. J is on my case to do it little by little, which I know I should, but I have assured him that I will get there. I am already having trouble sleeping (must be the excitement) so figure I won't sleep much next week before the move.

One good thing, I have a feeling that the little amount of pre-moving cleaning and packing I have been doing has somehow helped me lose a few grams.... I feel slightly less stuffed into my clothes. Probably the 10000L of sweat that I am outing every time I move an inch. Also have less of an appetite (especially for snacking) so am looking forward to what the scales say at the end of the move! I am already down 3.5% on my starting (over)weight. My goal is to get about 7% off, which would put me back to where I was pre-K. That's too cryptic, isn't it. Basically I have lost 1.5 kg, and need to loose another 2.5kg.

So I guess I should at least attempt to get one box filled while the monster is asleep - yesterday's effort ended up in K packing up half the cutlery in with the winter clothes....note to self, don't take eyes off boxes while K is around. We would have had to eat with out hands until December if I didn't catch her in the act!! hehe.

wak-a-me-up before you go-go

Third attempt at tonkotsu ramen tonight was yet again thwarted by me. Actually, I only thwarted the first and third attempts (both times saying we had stuff in the fridge that needed to be used up). The second time was last weekend when we walked around there only to find it closed for obon. All well and fine to take holidays, but it has only been open for since August 6th!!

Anyway, tonight we made do with:

salmon

clams (butter/sake)

daikon radish, lettuce, red capsicum salad

vine ripened tomatoes (yum!!) dressed in virgin olive oil and sea salt

wakame miso soup

rice

We got a big packet of fresh wakame seaweed from MIL ages ago, as I must have mentioned once that K likes it. I have been racking my brain how we are going to get through it all (it is the size of a large ziplock bag packed jam full of wakame), and asked J what else I could make with it to get rid of it. Turns out J thought I was being scingy* with it - I was putting what I thought was a reasonable amount in the miso soup, but apparently I should have been putting like 7-8 times MORE in. I can't believe he though I was being scingy though, with free wakame! lol!

This morning was pretty good - we got to the bank at 9am, to beat the rush, only to find it totally empty. Like, seriously, I was the only one there for at least the first 25mins after opening! There are more people lining up for pachinko and the supermarket opening time! Crazy!

Came back home and grabbed R to take her for a walk - managed to get K to sit in the pram so that was easy.

Lunchtime however, was a write off - K refused to eat her sandwich, spilt a glass of milk everywhere (a habit she is getting into lately *sigh*) then played with her banana and got it everywhere. So she ended up having basically nothing to eat as I took it all away from her. She did go down for a nap easy though, so might have just been a bit tired. But she was a pain in the butt all afternoon - plugging things (like the vacuum cord) into the power point, pulling out the computer cord, and just basically annoying me. I know I have to be more patient, but I am so not good with the little things - they DO annoy me and get me worked up. aarrrggghhhhh.

Anyway, tomorrow is playgroup and she is usually a good girl when we go out to that, so fingers crossed tomorrow morning is not a repeat performance.

* a spell check revealed that I was using the word "scingy" instead of "stingy" lol. My english is going to crap! On skype to my brother this afternoon I couldn't remember the word for those buoy type things hanging over the side of boats like bumper bars to stop them bumping into other boats (the answer was "fenders" - of course!!)

just another dinner post

Monday night we made curry - again, J's request. This time we used a new curry roux. It was kinda fruity, and sweet, not at all spicy, so K scoffed it down too. I usually make curry with beef, but this time J wanted pork, and it was kinda nice for a change.

Tuesday night was pad thai noodles, which was really yummy too! K was a bit sceptic about it, perhaps the fish sauce was too overpowering, but she finished up a plate of it anyway.

Gee things are sooooo much easier when K can eat the same food as us. We don't have to order special dinners at restaurants, as she usually just shares with me. And the kiddies meals choices at Japanese restaurants are so much better than that in Aus (fish fingers and chips, pizza and chips or chicken nuggets and chips!!) Here they have a mini adults meal for kids .... like at Joyful which we never go to actually, but look at the great meals they have!!

So K has just had a bowl of cereal for breakky, I had the last piece of pizza and we are about to head down to the bank, then take R for a walk. But looking out the window, I see some ominous looking clouds. Hmm, hope if it is gonna rain, it at least holds out until after we get home.

sailing away and fireworks

This is what happens when I don't write up a post straight away - fully forgotten what we had for dinner Thursday and Friday night last week....although I do think there was an alfredo clam spaghetti in there somewhere.

We had a lovely weekend.

Saturday morning woke up to an email from a friend of J asking us if we wanted to come out on his yacht for the day.......now there is an invitation we just couldn't refuse! So we drove the 2 and a half hours to the tip of the Miura peninsula to the marina. It was such a perfect summer's day. We motored around the bay for a little bit (he said next time he would put up the sails, but this time it was a bit hard with so many non-yachties on the boat) then anchored offshore while the boys had a paddle, and K, me and another friend of J's sat on deck eating beer snacks.

We had to leave early, at about 4pm,, to drive back home to be in time to go to my friend's place to see the fireworks from their roof. We haven't seen fireworks for a few summers, so it was really good to watch. K wasn't scared of the fireworks, but she also wasn't that interested. However, she managed to entertain herself by putting on and off everyone's shoes. After the fireworks we had a drink and some dessert, then moseyed on home at about 9:30pm. It was a long day, but K was an absolute angel all day, especially on the boat.

Sunday morning we woke up and pottered around the house until about 10:30a, when J suggested we go to sushi train for lunch. So we piled into the car and got there just on opening time (along with 100 other people in the line-up! lol) luckily got a seat and ate our fill of sushi. K is eating more, and more different things at sushi these days - yesterday she had
1) chawan-mushi (savory egg pudding)
2) salmon roe sushi
3) prawn and avocado sushi
4) egg roll

Wow - she eats almost as much as me! lol. Yesterday I was going full-blast from the start, and so got full quickly, so 6 plates for me. I usually am around the 7 plate, with dessert mark.

Then in the afternoon, after K's brief nap (*sigh* for some reason K was not such an angel today - she must have worn out her wings on Saturday?) we headed to Costco to get a family sized pizza and eat it there. Have never done this before, but I was really feeling like pizza, and Costco's pizza is GOOD (in that greasy fast food from home way). But man the pizza's there are huge! I was almost embarrassed carrying that huge box! There was enough left over for K and my breakfast this morning. Cold Pizza - YAY!!

toilet tales

Every Thursday we go to playgroup by train. We walk 12mins to the station, catch a JR train for 10mins, then change to catch a different JR line 3mins to our final destinaton. Usually as we are changing platforms, K says she wants to go to the toilet. About a month ago, I found they had built a fab new, clean, big baby's room within the JR station area. It has 4 nappy change stations, a nursing room with 3 seperate mini rooms inside, lounge chairs provided, hot water to miz bottles etc with, and a mummy/baby toilet that you is not only big enough to manouver around with a pram, but also has a kiddy's toilet in it. Very cool. Every time we stop here, K piddles and we all get very excited.

And the thing is - it is always empty! No one seems to use this great baby room. Well, until the last couple of times, when I have got there and the toilet is engaged (there is only one toilet in the room). Fair enough, we can wait. BUT how pissed off was I when an old lady came hobbling out of the toilet almost 5 minutes later. There is a disabled toilet and womens toilets less than 5m away that surely she could have used...it actually stands out MORE than the baby room. But, whatever, she is old and decrepid, maybe she could't wait, give her the benefit of the doubt. But the next week, the toilet was engaged again. This time a very nice looking, well dressed 50yo-ish woman comes out of the toilet. She looks at me, then K and says "there is a kiddy's toilet in there" and I turned to her and said "yes, that is why I think it is a bit strange that someone like you is using it!"

And while we are on the subject, I can't remember how many times similar middle-aged women have jumped the queque and used the disabled toilets. Fair enough if they are quick about it, but they take FOREVER! What the hell are they doing in there...apart from folding the tip of the toilet paper into a nice little triangle shape for easy use next time?

I guess now that K is out of nappies during the day (we still have training pants on when we go out, but regular undies at home) I am seeing much more of the inside of various toilets! She even woke up this morning with a dry nappy! yay for her. She is doing really well, and I think has finally got the grasp of it. Granted we are still having some issues with the number 2, but we are getting there.

We're all mad

I wanted to know why if we call 狂牛病　(BSE) "Mad Cow's Disease", then we don't we call 狂犬病 (Rabies) "Mad Dog's Disease"?
But apparently the urban dictionary does have it as mad dog's disease. So there we go.

In any case, we took R down for her rabies vaccination shot today. She was supposed to get it in May - oops. And she was supposed to get her 9種混合 (not sure what 9 types of diseases we are vaccinating against) vaccination shot this month, but since we forgot about rabies, we got that done first, and will take her back at the end of the month for 9種混合.

I tried a re-match of the 30-a-day:

Dinner ささみ　シソ梅肉巻き
1)chicken (sasami)
2)perilla leaf (shiso 紫蘇 - a new kanji for me!)
3)salted plum (梅肉）

salad
4) lettuce
5) tomato
6) daikon radish
7) cucumber
8) celery
9) red capsicum
10) yellow capsicum

pasta
11) spaghetti
12) clams in alfredo sauce
13) with sliced onions

Lunch Pizza Toast
14) bread
15) cheese
16) salami

Snack
17) grapes (shared with K)

Breakfast
18) cookies (I know, I know) with my cuppa

*sigh* still less than 20. I know breakfast and lunch are my downfalls, but what can I say, I am lazy through the day and don't feel like full meals.

30 A DAY

oops, had the caps lock on there.

So they say that you are supposed to eat 30 different foods a day (well, MIL says it at least.) I aways thought this was near impossible, but I think today we may have done it. Let me list it up and see:

Dinner
1) Zucchini (s/p and grilled in olive oil)
2) Snow peas (steamed, and served with butter)
3) Chicken wings teriyaki style
4) Tomatoes, drizzled with olive oil and sea salt
5) Sunny lettuce
6) tofu (with the lettuce and a 和風onion dressing to make a tofu salad)
7) grilled fish (太刀魚)
8) soy beans 枝豆

Supper
9) smoked salmon
10) camembert cheese
11) salami
12) crackers
for a little after dinner platter with chuhai treat!

Lunch
13) egg
14) bread (egg sandwhiches)
15) grapes

Breakfast
16) costco biscuits (yummy!) with my morning cuppa tea.

So ok, that is no where near 30 now that I counted it up.
Hmmmm, it really isn't easy! I don't know if I can count condiments (like olive oil, mayo) but I guess that still doesn't even make it to 20 items.

Might have to try harder to get to 30.

Oh, just remembered J had the leftovers of the thai curry, so....
17) eggplant
18) potato
19) ししとう
20) onion
21) rice.....

getting closer! (but also most likely about to burst from so much food, aarrrggghhh)

green curry

Made a Thai Green curry last night using this packet mix

but I have to say that it was pretty average. It really had no taste, and I was quite dissapointed in it. I did manage to use up the last of my eggplant, and some sweet peppers（ししとう） that MIL gave us from her vege garden though.

Next time, however, I will be using this mix instead to make my thai curry (bought at costco last night in a mad 7pm "Let's go to costco" moment. We came back with this, a pad thai set, a bunch of bananas, a bottle of white wine, some salami and a mighty big box of those yummy soft biscuits.)

I have used the pad thai and tom yum kun(sp?) soup before and they turned out nice (well, except for the tom yum kun soup which was far too hot for me to handle, wuss that I am) so I am hoping the curry is nice too.
Don't know why the sudden urge to make Thai curry... Must be the heat?