We Made It.

Talk about leaving things til the last minute. We were throwing stuff in the attic as the airport shuttle pulled up. The house is a mess. But now it's someone else's problem, because

WE'RE HERE!

Wilson, a work friend of Jeff's, picked us up at the airport in his minivan, tricked out with GPS, automatic tollpay (and there were a few tolls), and a camera out the back (which is good, because the view was completely blocked by our 7 pieces of luggage).

We're staying at the Yokohame Bay Sheraton for the moment. We meant to go out and get dinner when we got here around 7:30 pm, but we all decided to 'lie down for a minute.' We woke up between 3 and 4 am. We had baths and went out foraging for food. Luckily there are 3 or 4 mini-marts around the hotel, with my favorite seaweed-wrapped rice n tuna things. The kids had sandwiches (M was in raptures about the crustless white bread - I never get white bread) and mini-croissants. We sat on some steps in the dawn light and ate our breakfast. We went back in to the hotel and watched some weird TV. I fell back asleep and the rest of the family went to 'real' breakfast at the hotel lounge.

We had another walk in the real morning, down to this waterfront park we had been to before. I'll tell you what: August in Japan is hot. And the heavy, moist air reminded me forcibly of Cleveland in the summer. I saw a lot of women walking around with umbrellas against the hot sun, and lots of floppy hats. This makes me happy. I like hats, and they are very prevalent here.

After a quick trip to a depato to look at some futons (the kids will be sleeping on them when we get our own place, as will some of you who visit) and find Japanese-English dictionaries (and they had a MAC counter, too, so I could replace my nearly-gone favorite lipstick - joy!), we had some lunch at a noodle place. The kids then demonstrated how strung out they were as J & I had our ramen and beer. I looked up the word for annoying/tiresome: mendookusai. Now the kids are having some enforced rest time as J tries to lull them to sleep with a tennis match on TV. It isn't working.

Sorry this is so boring. We have only just arrived, and it's still surreal. As surreal as leaving Seattle was. That was exhausting. We crammed as much as we possibly could into the last week, I think. That was a lot of good-bye-ing amidst all the loose-end-tying (some ends are still loose, but many thanks to Dan for helping with that). I had a few lumps in my throat, and a few moments on the way to the airport and on the plane: Oh my god. What the hell are we doing??? I've already had some dreams of friends back home and a couple sad emails. To those folks: we love you and will miss you, but you wouldn't love us as much if we didn't do ridiculous things like move to Japan. Am I right?

But here we are. We are waiting to get a hold of Macky - whose phone is apparently not working at the moment - who supposedly has a list of potential homes for us to see this weekend. I don't like living in a hotel, especially with displaced children who are used to being more rambunctious than we are allowing. Nerves are getting a little frayed. Go to sleep, children, for all our sakes. Onegai shimasu.