This weekend we got a lot more information about the timeline for the new house, we started to put together a list of things we need to do to get ready, and we got some surprise news from an old friend.<\/p>\n
As for the house, it looks like we’ll pick up the key to the new place the night we fly back from America. We’ll have about a week and a half overlap between the old place and the new, and that should give us plenty of time to move in at a relatively leisurely pace. However, we’ve really got to get as much as possible done before our trip – packing, organizing, and throwing out the old stuff. It’s actually only a matter of weeks before we leave, so we’re starting to feel the pressure. <\/p>\n
So feeling this pressure we set out today to do some shopping. We’ve got a list of big ticket items that we’ve been putting off for a long time: a regular sized fridge, a new washing machine, a dining room table, not to mention some essentials like curtains and blinds, and light fixtures each room. Today we focused on the big stuff, and set out in search of a refrigerator and washing machine. We visited three places, but the last place turned out to be the best – the Yamada Denki store in Kakogawa. <\/p>\n
There is something about that place – we bought our big screen TV there, and the clerks are always friendly, they’ll bargain a little on price, and do whatever they can to help. Today was no exception, and you could really feel the difference between the older guy helping us and the younger (and more formal) employees at the other places. <\/p>\n
We picked out a refrigerator from Toshiba<\/a>, a washing machine from Hitachi<\/a>, and we set up a delivery for soon after we move in. The whole process was relatively easy, and we felt really good about the purchases afterwards. <\/p>\n We’ve still got plenty of shopping left to do, and it is pretty scary to be spending so much money – especially these days with the economy in the crapper. Kuniko and I are acting as two person economy stimulation squad – somebody ought to thank us for this…<\/p>\n In the old friend department, I got a message from Yasu yesterday asking if it would be OK to invite me (us?) to his wedding. Turns out he is going to get married to his ex-girlfriend, who somewhere along the way became his girlfriend again. It was great news, and I’m looking forward to June and his wedding in Sannomiya. We even had a chance to drop by Ito Yokado to congratulate him in person.<\/p>\n This week is looking to be an expensive but fun one. I’ve got a full social schedule – Tuesday night is my last class with the Mitsuboshi gang and so they want to have a farewell party. Thursday is Kuniko’s birthday, and we’ve got a lunch planned in Sannomiya, with some more furniture shopping in the afternoon. Friday I’ll be meeting Antoine for drinks in Kobe, and next Saturday will be dinner with Inoguchi sensei and his wife at Sigassiga. Busy, busy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This weekend we got a lot more information about the timeline for the new house, we started to put together a list of things we need to do to get ready, and we got some surprise news from an old friend. As for the house, it looks like we’ll pick up the key to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-p9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}