For here

Am I sitting in a tin can

So after my fabulous haircut last week I was all set for the wedding. Of course we haven’t bothered getting an iron yet (who needs to iron jeans and t-shirts?) so we popped over to the in-laws on Friday evening to iron our fancy wear. We knew the wedding was coming up so I had brought my suit with me (Yes I do own one, and no I don’t remember the last time I wore it) and Nozomi had her skirt and top.

We’d also happened to visit a craft market in Peckham a month or two before we left and I picked up a nice pair of Ziggy cuff-links!

Wedding day bloomed sunny and cold. I definitely mind the cold less when it’s nice and sunny. Nothing more depressing than a cold, grey day. The bride and groom, like many Japanese couples, had opted for a western style wedding. The ceremony was quite short and then it was on to the serious business of eating and drinking. A many course meal later it was back home to relax.

We’re still trying to figure out where we want to live, so Sunday was spent going around a couple of areas in Tokyo to get a feel for the locality and see if we could see ourselves living there. Not quite sure about the two places we saw, but we still have one area to go and see if we can find the time. We are now leaning towards living outside Tokyo but haven’t quite made our minds up yet.

Along with the decision of where to live, I was also trying to decide whether I should join a Japanese language school. Most of the ones I looked at in the Tokyo area were all schools where you had to sign up for a 6-12 month course and I wasn’t sure I really wanted to do that. Amazingly, Nozomi found a school quite close to where we’re living which is run by a group of volunteers, probably with the help of the city council. The volunteers provide 1-to-1 lessons for the princely sum of JPY100 (about 75 pence) per lesson. I’ve been to two lessons so far and it looks promising.

What with the Japanese lessons, and work it’s been a busy week. My mother-in-law had mentioned a week or so ago that they would love to have some Indian food cooked by me. We already had plans for the coming weekend and the one after that, so we decided to cook for them on a week day. I wanted to make a chickpea dish (chana masala) and a paneer and spinach dish (We call it palak paneer, but the Brits would know it as sag paneer). We could chickpeas from one of the shops, but no chance of getting paneer so I decided to make some myself. I wasn’t really sure about how much paneer I could make with the milk from here, so Nozomi picked up some potatoes as well to make a cauliflower and potato dish (aloo gobi).

So, the ambitious plan to cook three dishes was on! It also turns out that Nozomi’s family eat dinner earlier than we’re used to eating, so we had to try and have things ready by 7pm. Fortunately it all took a bit less time that I thought and we had all three dishes done in two hours. I meant to take pictures of the prepared dishes but forgot :-/

Nozomi had asked her mum to cook some rice for dinner, but forgot to tell her that we were brining some naan that she had picked up from the supermarket. So her mum cooked much more rice than we really needed. Not wanting it to go to waste, Nozomi made some rice balls for us to have for lunch the next day. But it was an early start for work, so we got hungry around 11. So out came one of the rice balls with pickled plum and nori for elevenses, Japanese style.

So we’ve been in Japan for just about a month now and we’ve been living on some money that Nozomi had in a savings account here, and a little bit that I had left over from our last trip. Although we managed to open a bank account in our first week here, we couldn’t transfer any money from the UK. The Japanese have a thing called “My Number” which is similar to the NI number in the UK which serves as your tax reference number. You have to associate this number with your bank account before you can transfer money to your account from overseas.

We’d applied for the My Number in our first week as well, but the notification of our number took a couple of weeks to arrive. We then had to send off a paper form to the bank. With the Japanese postal system, that meant another week. We also discovered that the lady at the bank had only given us one form, so we couldn’t both apply. We decided to send my details off, and I was finally able to transfer some cash from the UK.

Despite having some money now the shackles aren’t completely off. We’re definitely planning to try and live on a tight budget while we’re here. It’s a lot different to living in the UK and having easy access to your bank account. We’re only transferring some money, and you get hit with fees every time too. And we’d definitely prefer to spend our money on travelling around Japan rather than things that we don’t really need. So I guess more than a tight budget, it’s just not wasting money on crap :-)