New Town: Saku City

  In the last post I mentioned that we were moving again. Well, we did. We are all moved in to the new place. I somehow managed to unpack the whole house AND take care of an almost 3 month old in just about 2 days. I was quite proud of that!

The town (or city technically) that we moved to is called "Saku." It's much more countryside than where we were before, and much farther from Tokyo. It's not a bad little place. There are a lot of trees and parks, the sky is blue and clean, and I think we can see stars at night though I haven't checked. It doesn't get unbearably muggy like Tokyo and surrounding areas and it cools down most nights. The only bad points are that there are tons of bugs, especially dragonflies, there's not much to do, and they have very very strict and elaborate garbage separation rules...I'll talk about that later.

Living Room

Kitchen

As for our house, it's a cute little "tri-plex." Instead of a duplex, there are 3 houses connected. We're stuck in the middle. It's just a small 2 bedroom, 1 bath, kitchen, Living Room house, but it'll do. The two stories makes it feel more like a home than apartments do. The location is very convenient. It's within walking distance to a big park, a small park, convenience stores, and two shopping plaza/department stores. There are also quite a few restaurant nearby. Jacet and I have been taking nice morning walks with the stroller to explore the area. It's very relaxing.

But then there are the garbage rules. So so many, as you can see by this picture on the right. Practically everything
except food and papers get recycled. Plastic wrap, ramen containers, take-out containers, plastic wrappings and bags, milk cartons, aluminum foil etc. Oh but if its too dirty it goes with the trash. We have to use special garbage bags and I can't put garbage that's in a plastic shopping bag into the garbage...it has to be emptied from that plastic bag into the special garbage bag, and that plastic bag is then recycled. For example, the supermarket plastic bag that I put dirty diapers in cannot be thrown away, I have to empty the diapers into the trash bag and recycle the shopping bag. Does that make sense to everyone? It's just so much work and so many rules and exceptions, I don't know how I'll ever get it down. 

I wouldn't worry about it so much if not for the fact that if it looks wrong, they check the garbage. They then find out who's garbage it is and make them correct it. I know this because they've already made us re-do all of our garbage from before I knew about the rules completely...not a very pleasant experience.

But, all in all not a bad place to live for the next 6 months!

On a random final note: Tomo bought me a very nice and sharp ceramic knife! So excited to use it!