the first night

I was in the kitchen earlier today, warming up sweet and sour pork, while Jarrett attempted to make a phone call to his dad in the United States. After a couple attempts, he got through, and proceeded to have an internet conversation which was mostly fruitful, albeit punctuated with the minor hiccups of piggy-backing someone else's internet signal.

gomennasai, tonari

One of the topics of conversation was our individual daily alarm clocks. Personally, I find it hard to sleep after the local crow—which has the size and the requisite vocal power of a Buick—alights on my back porch and begins screaming. Jarrett, on the other hand, has a more developed capacity to sleep in the morning, and isn't waked until our neighbors drag out their futons and begin beating the ever-loving crap out of them each day.

However, we have been lazy Americans, and our futon has not seen much action. So to speak. We shake out the covers each day, and fold it into the closet, but that's all the maintenance we can muster.  It's been sixteen full days in country, and we have not yet hung the futon in the sun for all to see or beaten it like an adorable but disobedient child.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't give half a crap, but the futons of Japan are a far cry from the Western futons most Americans are accustomed to. To begin with, they are significantly thinner, which lends them the capacity to be quickly folded and stowed each day. However, our already flat bed grows flatter each night that we sleep on it, and if we would simply remember to hang it on the clothesline before going out one afternoon, we could return home to find it fluffy and warm, courtesy of Mr. Sun.

As I mostly eavesdropped on and occasionally participated in Jarrett and his dad's phone call, my mind wandered to our first night in the new apa—to, when we didn't even have a malnourished bed to forsake. It may be sixteen days since we've been in Tokyo, but it has only been fifteen days since we had a bed to call our own.

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Arriving at the Higashi-jujo station, we followed our leasing agent's instructions to the new place with fairly acceptable precision. There was one small wrong turn just out of the train station, but we were quickly back on the right path.

The weather was startlingly hot. Coming first from cool Oregon, then secondly by way of an oddly cooler California, we were grossly unprepared for the high heat and even higher humidity of Tokyo in August. What's worse, we seemed to be hurrying for no good reason whatsoever, and were getting incrementally hotter as we traversed the local shopping arcade, then spirited down the side streets which led us to our new home.

Opening the front door, we were initially taken by how small 20 square meters really is, but quickly seized upon the sight of the air conditioner. Hallelujah! Shoes off, bags down, reach for the remote...which doesn't work. We were literally pouring sweat down our faces and necks and back, and now our hearts were broken: the apa—to had no power.

The power was supposed to have been turned on early that morning, but that clearly wasn't the case. The water ran, but it wouldn't warm, which meant ice cold showers if we intended to clean our salty selves. The lights wouldn't turn on, which meant only about two more hours of visibility for the night. Worse yet, the pretty little air conditioner hung their, taunting us, as the curtainless windows superheated our own tiny greenhouse.

Our only option was to relax briefly, catch our communal breaths, then wander outside, where it was about half a degree lower than indoors. As luck would have it, while waiting for Jarrett to re-shoe himself,  I leaned sleepily against the wall next to the front door, tilted back my head, and looked up at the power breaker.

The power breaker, of course, was covered in Japanese writing. However, there was one switch which was larger than the rest, and clearly displayed a red square. Uhhmmm. . . I pondered my options. What's the worst that could happen? Uhhmmm. . . I was crazy sleepy, and even crazier from the heat, so I risked possible explosion or Godzilla attack, stood on my toes, reached for the sky, and threw the switch.

Nothing happened.

Jarrett and I synchronously swiveled our heads toward the air conditioner, and saw the sweet glow of a tiny green light. We dashed to the remote, mashing buttons covered in kanji, until the thing kicked on, and a gentle breeze washed over our pathetic faces. We stood in its presence for about five minutes, then slowly began turning on and off lights. We had power, and we wouldn't die right away.

Deciding to let the apa—to cool down, we continued our plans for a tentative little walk around the neighborhood. We padded down the closest main road, noted the closest shops of interest to us, then reversed course when we felt like dehydrated fruit. On the way back, I noticed a home fashion store in the distance, and we made a mental note to check it out the next morning in our search for household goods.

We didn't know it yet, but that store in the distance would become our go-to store for nearly everything in our new home, and we would buy a futon there the very next day. We didn't know that we would jump excitedly when they gave us a Point Card the following week, or that everything was reasonably priced and conveniently located. All we knew was that Nitori looked promising, and we needed to get some sleep.

Back in our icy little apa—to, we pulled clothes from our suitcases, and lined the floor to make a nest. It had been a long, hard two days, and (though it was only about 8:00 PM) we had lasted as long as possible. We kept a clear path to the new bathroom, lied down on the hard floor, and fell promptly asleep.

I don't know how long it took Jarrett to wake up, but it took me about 20 minutes. The floors are carpeted, which is unusual in Japan, but the floors underneath that thin, thin carpet are hard, wood floors. My back ached and my hips hurt, and my neck was killing me. On top of everything, the air conditioner was freezing us out of house and home, but neither of us dared to turn it off.

We tossed and we turned all night, and neither of us seemed to be asleep at the same time. When first light broke, we were up and achy and ready to start the day. We had survived the very first night in our very first Japanese apartment, and we were much worse for the wear, but we had smiles on our faces and were ready to shake off the night.

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