Aaaaaaand exhale. Now starts the bulk of our travels. Now starts the less exciting posts, the calmer schedule and the regular days. It was one heck of an amazing holiday until now, and now we start our “life” in Japan. It’ll be 2.5 months here in Osaka, and so far so good!
Joe had propped my bed up with a couple of pillows, which helped, but weren’t ideal. We’ll try again differently tonight. Maylin had a nightmare, so I had crawled onto her mattress at one point, so even though much narrower, it’s so much softer.
The day started early, I was on the computer around 6am, and by 7am, we were all in the kitchen. After breakfast we headed out to the grocery store, Joe’s first visit. It was much calmer at 9am on a Saturday than 6pm on a Thursday! We discovered even our grocery store has a robot, a floor washer that very politely informs you of it’s presence and intention (or at least so we think, it speaks Japanese, after all).
I could spend days and days exploring grocery stores abroad, I find it fascinating what they sell, in which quantities, and how much of a store is dedicated to which sections. The amounts, shapes, preparations and intentions of fish in this grocery store is simply mind blowing, and this is so far my only proper grocery store! By the way, the main mode of transportation to our local store is bike, I think the parking lot is on the roof? There’s fully packed bike parking on two sides of the store, at least as far as we have discovered so far.
We go to town buying all the things we’ll need to make dinners, finally stock up on fruits and vegetables, filling up the fridge and our tiny table in the corner of the living room (our shelf for the kitchen is supposed to arrive tomorrow). There are only so many things we can fit into our tiny kitchen, our two shopping bags, and carry home around the corner (6 minutes away), so many a “ooh, look at that” is left behind at the store. At the very last moment I pick up a baked chocolate thing, just to have a morning treat.
We get home, chop up an apple and my last minute treat, and we were all pleasantly surprised at how delicious it was! It was actually much tastier than it looked, and we will definitely try that one again! By now it’s 10.30am our time, and 9.30pm Windsor time, so we made some phone calls to people back home.
Téa and I head back to the store, as we had forgotten both Kleenex and paper towels. On our way into the store, we realize it’s almost lunchtime, and decide to also get some sandwiches. Of course, there’s also the frozen dessert section that got voted down when our cart got too full earlier…
I pick up what looks like a short baguette with ham and cheese (which was actually ham and egg salad), Téa picks a pain d’epis with ham and cheese, we picked a hot dog and mayonnaise bun for Maylin, and an egg in curry bun for Joe. We had a hard time deciding between all the new and exciting ice cream options, but managed in the end, and brought a surprise home for the others.
After lunch, Joe and I get to fixing this blog up. The look changed all of a sudden, you are now able to leave comments, and I can see how many times a post has been clicked on (but only from today onwards). The only thing we haven’t figured out yet, is how I can get notifications when someone leaves a comment! That’s almost the most important part, because what’s the point of commenting if nobody reads it? Until we figure it out, I’ll continue to check daily!
By 3pm, I was restless, and the girls had been playing inside all day (nicely, I might add!). We decided to go for a walk, and let Joe have some peace and quiet to work on his videos. (Have you seen his videos, by the way? He has his own angle on our trip, and I have mine!) The girls and I brought sunglasses for the sun, umbrellas for the promised rain and thunderstorms, water bottles because today is HOTTTT again and the air is thick with humidity, and we set off to explore.
Five blocks away we find the playground we’ve been wanting to test out. It has a climbing wall and a climbing frame, and Maylin LOVES to climb! The girls play and climb and climb and play for about half an hour, until they’ve tried everything at least once, and made their own game, and nobody got hurt, and only stopped for rocks in sandals about eight times.
Then we walk on, taking a left here, another left there, and a left here, to end up by the grocery store! I’m sorely tempted to go in a third time, but we opt to explore the convenience store called Lawson across the street instead. We pick up a fun beverage each, Téa her staple orange juice, Maylin some funky vitamin juice mix, I grab Joe a cold espresso latte and a cold hojicha latte for myself. The girls spy a pizza bun in the steamer at the counter, so we have to get one of those. I take a peek in the fried foods shelf, and see “Fried Horse Mackerel”, which I’ve never seen or tried before, so we get one of those as well. Snacks and refreshments in hand, we head home for an afternoon break with Joe. The fish was good, the pizza bun disappeared in about three seconds, and everyone enjoyed their drinks.
Very uneventful afternoon, quick phone call to Oslo as it’s now daytime there, the girls played more games, and Joe made a delicious pasta dish, even without our regular spice cupboard and a million cooking gadgets. Our kitchen here is sparsely outfitted, and there is zero counter space (but the widest kitchen sink?), so we have to get creative. The girls enjoyed having food they recognized from home for once, and Joe and I enjoyed the slower pace of today.
We hope to get our kitchen shelf tomorrow, and we have a little shopping list of things we want to pick up to make ourselves more comfortable (suction cup hooks for bathroom and kitchen, dish rack of some sort, etc). But for tonight, we’re just relaxing and leaning into a much slower pace moving forward.