aaannnddd.....I'm back!

I have returned once again to the digital world! The internet guy came by yesterday and we are reconnected to the world! It's been a busy couple of weeks with furniture shopping and setting up house etc. We still haven't finished, nothing is done quickly in Japan, and even furniture usually takes anywhere from a week to a month for delivery. We have managed to get the kitchen/dining area pretty much in order, all I'm missing now is a microwave/oven combo, a trastero(it's a furniture for holding dishes, microwave and rice cooker ) I don't know the word in English, Ha!  We have a small sofa on order to be delivered in about a week. We still need bedroom furniture and a desk  and chair and we should be set! We've enough to be reasonably comfortable now, the first couple weeks were tough with no chairs, just a couple of little stools we picked up to sit on...I mostly sat on the floor!
Here's a video of our place so far... apologies to Gary Jr. who will cringe at my terrible filming technique...

 

Last Sunday was Mother's Day, it was a quiet, little bit of a sad day without my Mom or kids here. Gary made me a nice bouquet of flowers and we went to dinner though so that was nice. During the afternoon I went and bought a bike, I've needed one to take to the grocery store and exploring. Here is my faithful steed!

 

 

As you can see she has small wheels and big baskets. I chose this style of bike because it's MUCH easier to maneuver on the streets and sidewalks around pedestrians and other bikes with the smaller wheels. It came with the front basket and I added the big back one so I could carry groceries and stuff.  I asked the guy at the store to bring my seat up high for me, he only knew a few words in /English but he understood long legs! On the way home I stopped in Inokashira Park to look around (okay I took a wrong turn and ended up at the park but it was serendipitous!)

 

Since it was Mother's Day there were lot's of picnics, performers and people out just enjoying the scenery!  I guess this was the hulahoop/spinning things get together group.

Anyway, I gave Gary a call and he told me where I'd taken a wrong turn and I found my way home again with the new bike. Yay!
My best neighborhood discovery so far is the LIBRARY! I discovered it quite by accident on one of my walkabouts. It's very nice and has a modest but varied selection of English books, and also many newspapers and magazines in English! I immediately got a library card and am SO happy!
That's it for today...just a quick catching up on stuff. We did other things this past week as well... boring stuff like registering in our new city ward and getting signed up for the national health insurance but the big things were the furniture and library!
Now of course we have begun the search for a church building so we can get started .... so much to do! Later!