Seven things to note from our first seven days in Tokyo
I wrote this post at the start of February but I am posting it now as it took a few weeks to get our lives and tech set up in Tokyo!
We’ve been in Tokyo for just over a week but even after a few days we felt that we had been here for ages. Somehow it seemed perfectly normal and natural that we now lived in Tokyo. We thought this was surprising and odd, but I guess it reflects how long we had wanted and had been working towards the move and essentially that we were ready to be here. Anyway, we concluded that this was a good feeling to have at end of week one and hopefully we’ll continue to feel the same.
So, moving swiftly on to those seven things to note from our first seven days, our first week mainly consisted of:
1. Walking around the areas we’d shortlisted as places to live and saying “noice” every time we saw something we liked. We saw a lot of things we liked.
2. Napping and sleeping at times we shouldn’t have been. We are generally quite good at getting over jet lag but this time it was hard. But hey, we just moved across the world to literally live our dream so I'll stop complaining about feeling groggy for a few days.
3. Embracing Instagram! Follow us on “qintokyo” and “wdcintokyo”. Go on, do it now, you know you want to see the strange and beautiful things we'll post.
And to take us up to that magic seven here are some wins from week one:
4. Friday 26 Jan: Seeing Mt Fuji within 5 minutes of leaving Tokyo Haneda Airport - there was no denying that we were now in Japan! It was a sunny morning with not a cloud in sight and we had clear views of Mt Fuji and it was the perfect welcome to the country.
5. Saturday 27 Jan: Having brunch with my awesome cousin who happened to be visiting Tokyo for work! We couldn’t believe our luck that my cousin’s trip happened to overlap with our arrival and it was fantastic (albeit a bit surreal) to see him and hang out with a friendly face a day after we arrived.
6. Wednesday 31 Jan: Putting in an application to rent a flat we adore in our dream location after viewing some flats the day before. All will be revealed when we hopefully move in.
7. Thursday 1 Feb: WIL SUCCESSFULLY STARTED WORK!!! #proudwife. His first two days have involved induction and intro meetings, and his immediate team seem great and easy to get along with. We had dinner with some of them on Thursday night so it was nice for me to meet them too. Wil is happy, relaxed and armed with business cards!
It sounds like we had a pretty good first week. But is there anything we'd change?! Yes! We arrived in the coldest week Tokyo has had in 48 years! Given our main purpose was to walk around and explore the areas we wanted to live in this was hard at times. Ok, this seems like another "but hey, we just moved across the world to literally live our dream so I'll stop complaining" moment. So on the upside, the clear blue skies and sunshine made the freezing temperatures a bit more bearable. And the cold weather gave me a chance to wear my extensive winter hat collection that I had rightly insisted on bringing with me.
To finish here's seven photos from our first week!
Setting the scene for as I wrote this blog:
Location: Our room on the 31st floor of the Tokyo Dome Hotel with a good view over the city.
Weather: It is now a warm 7°C and not far from sunset.
Soundtrack: The quiet of our hotel room.
Bonus fact: The Tokyo Dome Hotel is located near the Tokyo Dome which is the home stadium for the Yomiuri Giants, one of Tokyo's baseball teams. Watch this space for a post about baseball!
