1st Japanniversary: Part 1 - A year in numbers

26 January 2019 was our 1 year Japanniversary - you know that was too good a pun not to use. I had a few ideas for a blog to mark that we’d been living in Japan for 1 year, so I am going to do a series of Japanniversary posts to give you a insight into our year here from a few different angles. For part 1, I am summing up our year in numbers.

Travel

• Number of days outside of Tokyo on holidays in Japan and our trip home:

  Wil: 47

  Qiraat: 64
  These are the total days for trips where we stayed away from Tokyo for at least one night. My total is higher because I was back in the UK for longer and went on a bonus trip in Japan with a friend, which you can read about it here.

• Number of additional day trips outside of Tokyo: 17

• Number of Japanese states visited: 25 out of 47

• Journeys on bullet trains:
  Wil: 3
  Qiraat: 5
  For those of you that know Wil, this will seem shockingly low but a lot of our travel ended up being by plane and car. Wil intends to remedy this situation in year 2.

• Number of guidebooks we own on Tokyo or Japan: 7

Life

• Number of visitors from the UK who came to stay with us in Tokyo: 2

• Number of additional visitors from the UK that we met up with during their visit to Tokyo: 5

• Number of hours spent in Japanese lessons:
  Wil: 45
  Qiraat: 107

• Number of visits to the police station: 3
  1 for Wil when he lost his cardholder (it was found and returned to him) and 2 for me when I thought I had lost my ID card (but it turned out it had been in Wil’s wallet the entire time).

• Number of weddings we could not attend in the UK; 3, including Harry and Meghan’s

• Number of weddings we attended in the UK: 1

• Number of weddings we spied on in Japan: a handful
  Wedding ceremonies take place at public temples or shrines and we have happened to be in the vicinity to watch a few wedding processions and glimpse the ceremonies too.

• Number of visits to the doctor: 1
  The single trip to the doctor was for me when I had an ear infection that made me super dizzy and nauseous. I’m not counting the mandatory annual health check that we both have to do through Wil’s work.

• Number of average steps walked daily:
  Qiraat: 9,242
  Wil: 11,279
  Interestingly, this is about the same as it was for us in London.
  I think my number has been pulled down by my month back in the UK where I was travelling less, and even then mainly by car.

Our home

• Number of dinner knives: 3
  We are going to have to get at least one more before we have visitors come to stay. I have 4 egg cups here so you know where my priorities lie.

• Number of square metres in which we are living and hoarding Japanese objects: about 50m²

• Number of kokeshi dolls: 10
  Kokeshi are traditional wooden Japanese dolls, originating from the Tohuku region in Japan.

• Number of darumas: 19
  A daruma is a roundish traditional Japanese doll that is associated with perseverance. The dolls usually come with two blank eyes; you colour in the first when you set a goal and the second once the goal has been accomplished. We’re yet to colour in any eyes.

• Number of lamps: 4, including 2 novelty lamps

• Number of times we have had to order porridge on Amazon: 1
  It was a very large box.

• Number of TVs: 0
  We are “making do” with using our computer instead.

• Number of photos on display in our flat: 10
  5 are from our time in Japan. 0 photos of family. 3 photos of us in fancy dress costumes.

• Number of different waste and recycling days we have to remember: 7 Over the course of a month for four different categories.

• Number of overt displays of Britishness in the form of inflatable T-rex with Union Jack design: 1

Miscellaneous

• Number of photos taken: over 30,000

• Number of Instagram posts:
  Wil: 274
  Qiraat: 521

• Number of blog posts: 18

• Number of volcanoes visited: at least 3

Setting the scene for as I wrote this blog:

• Location: at home at our dining table.

• Weather: Another freaky weather day, it is the start of February but it is 18°C . Mental. It averaged around 10°C  for the rest of the week.

• Soundtrack: A new podcast Wil discovered call Strong Songs.

• Bonus fact: In the post I said we had been to 25 out of 47 Japanese states, but we have actually been to 32 out of 47 but only 25 were during the course of our first year in Japan. The other seven are from our honeymoon and since we hit the one year mark on 26 Jan 2019.