Anthony woke up at 5:15 again, getting only half the sleep he should have. He was monumentally fussy during the morning. Luckily, once Fumie got up at around 7:30, I was able to pass out for a couple of hours, getting some much-needed extra sleep.

Mom watched Anthony again so Fumie and I could drive up to the apartment to deliver a load of stuff, such as the light we'd bought the other day. We brought our new cell phones with us, although we didn't really know how to use them. This was the third time for me to go the apartment (the first having been Apr 10th when Mom drove, and the 2nd by train the other day). I was happy that I could make the hour-plus drive directly — my years of tooling around Kyoto on my motorcycle were not for naught.

I installed the light, and we did other putzing-around stuff. Fumie had a moment of doubt about the fridge color, but in the end decided to keep it as is, and in doing so, firmed up her decision on the microwave oven.

I also got the forms for applying for the in-apartment internet service. All the advertisements I've seen so far have said one gets 10MBit service for free, but it turns out that it's 100MBit service for 30 bucks a month, with five IP addresses. Although infinitely more expensive than what I thought, it's still a fantastic deal. I'll submit the paperwork tomorrow.

On the way home, we stopped by a different electronics store (Midori-denki) to compare prices, and more importantly, selection. We looked for a nice simple Japanese-style light for the one Japanese-style room in the apartment, and found some nice ones (Yamada-denki had nothing appropriate). I bought one for $130.

We visited a futon shop as well. They had a massage chair that we partook of, but at $6,500, we decided not to buy :-). They showed us some special futons that help relieve an aching back. At 3.5x the price of a normal futon ($700ish rather than $200ish), the new lightness of one's wallet may be enough to relieve the backache!

On the way back from there, we once again stopped by Yamada-denki, this time to buy a washer/dryer and microwave oven. She choose the Toshiba TW80TA, a top-of-the-line washer/dryer combo (in one unit with one drum). As a bonus, it was on sale at a hundred or so dollars off, and so was only $1,600. Yeah.

(It didn't take us long to find out that this washer/dryer is horrible. It takes four or five hours to do a small load, and once the drying has started, your clothes are held hostage because nothing short of a reciprocating saw will get your clothes out until it decides to let you have them. Not long into the drying cycle, the time-left readout might indicate 47 minutes left, but when you look again in an hour, it indicates 34 minutes left. We hate this Toshiba washer/dryer.

She also got a microwave oven. I think she got a Toshiba ERB6, which is a combo convection oven and microwave oven. A bargain(?) at $650. They'll both be delivered on Friday, along with the fridge.

We stopped by the bento shop for dinner, and came home at 9:30ish to find Anthony, yet again, sleeping in the stroller. When he starts to get tired, Mom brings him for a stroll to let him sleep. I ate dinner, and brought him up to bed (futon), where he's sleeping beside me now, as I type. Time for me to join him.

Anthony mercifully slept until 5:15. By 6:00 I was walking to the train station on my way to the apartment. I got there exactly an hour later. The fridge we'd ordered had a width of 75cm, and I'd measured that we had 75cm of space, so I wanted to make sure that the space really was 75cm, and not 74.9cm. Also, I wanted to make sure that there was clear passage from the street to the kitchen, so I measured the elevator door and all the passage ways. It should just fit everything, although it won't hurt to have a screw driver on hand to take off the occasional doorknob that sticks out too far. We'll see. It's slated to be delivered on Friday.

I also measured the various places where the four air conditioners might go — both the in-room unit, and the outside compressor. The way air conditioners work in Japan is that the main compressor (the size of a large suitcase) sits outside somewhere – usually in a conspicuously inconvenient place to achieve maximum ugliness – and inside on the wall is a heater/blower unit that's maybe a yard wide by 8" tall by 8" deep. The two are connected by some coolant pipes “hidden” in plastic conduit that snakes from the wall unit, up down and all around to a hole in the wall where it passes to the outside, where it then snakes again to wherever the compressor unit is. This method of snaking conduit does an impressive job of achieving maximum ugliness, both inside and out.

On the way from Sanjou Keihan train station to the apartment, I'd stopped by a convenience store (convenience stores are, appropriately named, everywhere) to get some breakfast. Between measurings, I'd sat on the floor eating, enjoying the view of the tree-covered hills that I had out the back windows. That view will eventually go away when the next stage of the apartments are built (in about a year), but for now it was nice to enjoy. I was surprised to see that the construction site was quite — I'd expected it to be a noisy hustle and bustle by 7am, if not earlier. It was still quiet when I left at 8:30.

After arriving home, I then set out to get a prepaid cell phone. We don't have the time nor energy to figure out all the different plans and phone and features and such, so just want to get something that's easy and will work for a few months, until we have that time and energy. Unfortunately, it turns out that they're neither easy nor cheap, at least not at Docomo, the largest cell provider. They'd have to order them, and each one would cost something like $300 to start. (We want three — one for each Fumie, me, and her mom.)

So, I thought to just get the cheapest plan and figure it out later, but since I'm a foreigner and I don't have my alien registration card (getting it is high on the priority list), I can't enter into contracts. So, I need to go back with Fumie.

Fumie wanted to go to Yamada-denki (the electronics shop) again, to take care of the air conditioners, so we headed off there while Mom watched Anthony. While she sat in one massage chair with pamphlets looking over the features of the various makes and models, I sat in another trying to read the long and complex descriptions of plans for the cellular carrier Au (pronounced 'ey you').

Their cheapest plan, on the surface, is something like $40/month, but when you get into discounts like a yearly contract and a multi-phone family plan, it comes down to about $25/month. But then you need to add $3 for access to text messaging (hugely popular here, as it's cheaper than calling). There are a variety of other fees, too. But choosing the plan is the most confusing. This particular company has two classes of plan, and within each class they have many different plans. One class allows for unlimited text messaging and internet, for $50/month extra, but the other allows for a cheaper base cost. After spending quite a while trying to understand the plans, I put that on hold to look at the phones.

Japan has four big cellular providers, but I was limiting myself to just one (“Au”), since they support a feature that Fumie wants — a “car navigation unit” type feature (that you can use while walking as well, of course). Phones that support this have GPS built in, and so you can download maps that will lead you to your destination. It turns out to be quite expensive (about $2.50/mile), but would be useful in a pinch, and, the price would come down considerably if we get a special (for a fee) usage plan.

Anyway, they had three phones that supported that feature, and many that didn't. I didn't need it, so didn't want to limit myself to only those three phones, so started looking over all of them. When in The States, I had a Sony/Erricson T616, which has a camera built in. I was extremely disappointed in it, though, as the postage-sized pictures it took were of the worst quality — essentially, worthless. I never really used that feature. There was one phone in the Au lineup, though, which had a two-megapixel camera — its quality should be very good. It caught my eye.

Fumie had eventually decided on the air conditioners, so we went over to make the purchase. We needed four of varying sizes: rooms sizes in Japan are measured in how many tatami mats fit (or would fit). A tatami mat in this part of the country is one meter by two meters (they're a bit smaller in the Tokyo area). A six-mat room is sort of the standard bedroom, with smaller 4.5-mat rooms often for kids or college students. Air conditioner and heating units are then measured in what kind of rooms they're for. For example, a unit might be rated for an 8-10 mat room (with the eight being for a wood-constructed building, and 10 for a modern concrete house/apartment, as ours is).

So, we got at 14-mat unit for the Living room, a 10-mat unit for the dining room, and two 6-mat units for the bedrooms. The total came to about $7,000. We tried to pay with our credit card (the same one we'd used the previous day to buy the $1,700 fridge), but there were “issues”. The credit card company wanted to verify who we were (a good thing), but someone at the intermediate bank in Japan screwed things up by asking us our address instead of a former address, which the US credit card company was asking us for. In the end, I called the number on the back of the card and (amazingly?) ended up talking to the same person who had talked to the Japanese intermediate. I verified my identity to her satisfaction (upon getting my birthday right, she wished me a happy birthday — it was still Apr 12th in The States) and then found out that the charge had indeed been authorized (the address screwup wasn't enough to nix it, especially considering that the US agent could tell that the Japanese agent just didn't know what was going on). But, the transaction, if it went through, would put us over our credit limit. Sigh. For the last 15 years I'd had a debit card, that debited from my brokerage account (and margined me if I didn't have the cash), so I never had to care about credit limits (nor paying bills every month).

In the end, we got the transaction canceled, went to a bank and withdrew $8,000 from an ATM (no “$300/day withdrawal limits” here), and paid in cash. The whole payment ordeal wasted more than an hour, but in the end, we were happy to have the air conditioners taken care of. They'll be installed next Monday, hopefully.

We then went to talk to the cell phone people. It was an ordeal in and of itself on many levels, but made much more bearable by Ms. Mori, who was kind, patient, and very knowledgeable. With my previous research while in the massage chair, I'd tentatively picked out a plan and phones, but it turns out that the one plan wasn't compatible with the phone — I'd apparently missed that most basic tidbit of information. In the end, we picked a cheap plan and some phones. I got the two-megapixel phone, and Fumie got one that supports the navigation feature. We decided to get the same phone for Mom as for Fumie, so that Fumie can explain the workings (or vice-versa — Mom is pretty savvy, although she pretends she's not).

The main ordeal here was getting the family-plan discount. For that, you must prove that all are related, and although they provide for a variety of ways to do so (all have the same last name, and same address on driver's license, etc.), none applied to us. I mostly left that to Fumie, and in the end, after much wailing and grinding of teeth, it was figured out. The paperwork would take an hour to do, so Fumie and I went home to check on Mom and Anthony. (We'd left at about 11am, and it was now getting towards 6pm).

We arrived to find Anthony sleeping in the stroller just inside the front door, where we'd left him seven hours earlier. He'd been up and active during the day, but apparently had slept often after strolls with Mom.

After a while, we drove back and picked up the phones. I paid with my point card — when you buys stuff there, you generally get points (from 2 - 15%) that you can use for future purchases. The fridge and air conditioners had left us with about $600 worth of free stuff, and the phones themselves took about $400 of it.

We stopped by a bento (“boxed lunch”) place on the way home to pick up dinner. By this time, we were ragged tired. Anthony, having slept so much during the day, was wide awake and genki, and didn't sleep (nor let me sleep) until about 11.

Continued here...

After waking up sporadically every few hours throughout the night, Anthony woke up for good on his jetlag-induced 2:45 schedule. Around 8am, Fumie and I took Anthony for a walk about town (Kuzuha, where we're staying with her folks), keeping an eye out for cars that look interesting.

(The next few paragraphs apparently formed the basis for my first blog post, Choosing a car to buy in Japan, when I created a blog a year later.)

We'll be buying a car sooner or later, and it's a daunting task just to come to grips with the sheer number of makes and models. There must be well over an order of magnitude more to choose from, relative to The States. Considering only domestic cars, there are nine major makers (Itsuzsu, Daihatsu, Honda, Suzui, Toyota, Mazda, Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Subaru) representing an incredible 217 models (a stunning 69 from Toyota alone). Then there are about 15 major foreign makers, representing another 120 different makes.

To go along with all those models are a lot of different classifications. In addition to the normal sedan, SUV, wagon, minivan, and sports/specialty classifications are super-mini and “2BOX”. It turns out that the cars we're interested in are in the “2BOX” class (although I have no idea what "2BOX' means).

With so many models, names are, uh, “creative”. Some of the ones we're considering at the moment (after our one walk about town) include the Honda FIT, Toyota Corolla SPACiO, Toyota RAUM, and the Toyota Corolla RUNX. I saw one this evening that also bares investigation, the Mitsubishi Colt (unrelated to the Dodge vehicle by the same name). Other names I see on the Toyota web site, which I happen to be looking at now, include a litany of names that would bring the best spell-checker to its knees, including the Toyota ist, Toyota WISH, Toyota Opa, Toyota bB, Toyota Brevis, Toyota Crown Majesta, Toyota WiLL CYPHA, and the Toyota Cami. The starting price tag of these Toyota cars (before options, etc.) range from under $9k (Toyota Vitz) to $100k (the Toyota Century). The ones we're thinking of at the moment are in the $17k-$21k range.

At around 2pm Fumie and I left for Yamada-denki, an electronics shop, with the hope of making progress on a refrigerator, air conditioners (we need four), a microwave oven, some light fixtures, a phone, and a washer-dryer.

Fumie didn't have a lot of energy, so it was decided that she'll wait in the area that sells massage chairs while I did reconnaissance on the fridge, our primary target for the day. There were probably 45-50 different refrigerators to choose from, but we were looking for a rather large and nice one, so that brought the selection down to (a more manageable?) 30-40.

One maker's refrigerators are distinguished by their doors having two handles, one on either side of the door. You can open from either. The action of opening from one side engages the hinge on the other, and vice-versa. A very nice feature. Unfortunately, all their models had very small freezers... a trend that all Japanese refrigerators seem to have, but this particular company's were even smaller than normal. Fumie likes to freeze leftovers, so we wanted something larger.

One reason the freezers are so small is because they all have a separate section for vegetables, which is slightly warmer than the refrigerator (about 40F rather than 34F). These sections are often larger than the freezer, hence squeezing them out. Combine that with the other sections (there's usually a separate drawer that is the ice maker/storage), and other separate drawers for other things, e.g. half of the refrigerator space is accessed via normal side-opening doors, and half is via a pull-out drawer.

Anyway, I quickly learned that just about any of them would be fine with me, but that they all had special features that Fumie would care about, so I had to pull her away from the massage chairs. One had a feature whereby one of the smaller drawers could have its temperature set to as low as -30F. One had a feature where one of the drawers could have its temperature set so that it acted as a freezer, fridge, or veggie drawer. Convenient.

After some discussion among Fumie, me, and the sales man that was helping me, Fumie decided that the sales man and I were more of a distraction than anything else, so she sent us away to make her own decision. I went to look at some light fixtures and air conditioners.

Eventually, she decided to get the Toshiba GR-NF505CK, a 495 liter model (which happens to be the biggest Toshiba sells) for $1,800 or so. (Having used it for almost four years now, I'll note that it's an excellent fridge.) Together, we moved on to light fixtures.

When you buy/rent a place in Japan, it generally does not come with light fixtures. Rather, there are brackets in the ceiling into which you can easily clip fixtures (all sold with the same universal mating collar). That way, you can bring them from place to place, I suppose. We didn't have any, and needed five. They can be expensive ($300 for a nice one), so we thought to get just one sort of cheap one, to give us some light. It turned out to be a bigger deal than we expected, but after much hemming and hawing, she picked a $70 simple one, although one with a remote control. Home light fixtures in Japan almost universally have four modes: off, on full, on half, nightlight. In the old days, there was a string that one pulled to cycle among the modes, but they almost all now have a remote control. To me, that's just one more thing to get lost, and I much prefer the old variety. But, one doesn't have much selection with those, so oh well.

Heater/air conditioners are looking to be a major expense. We need four, and they're looking to be upwards of $2k each. There's a wide variety of features, most of which we probably don't care about, but we have to sort through them.

Fumie then wanted to look at microwave ovens by herself, so I went off to look at computers (we'll get a Windows box for Fumie). When I got back, she was thinking to change the color of the fridge. You see, matching the fridge is the most important feature of the microwave oven (so that her kitchen has a “total coordinate” image), and there were no good microwaves that matched. So, off to the massage chairs to think about it. In the end, she decided to change the color — we placed our order, paid our $1,800 for the fridge and the light, and went home.

In the evening I went to the muscle/joint specialist who had done such wonders for me during my last trip to Japan. I'm not sure why (perhaps the plane trip over), but my back is killing me again. (It's not nearly as bad as last summer, but bad enough to want to go see him.). After waiting an hour and a half (there are no appointments — you just get in line), he worked on me for an hour. It was painful, but working out the knots helps in the long run. The cost was a shockingly low $30. (Would have been $3 had I had insurance, I think.)

Continued here...