Planning Update for Japan
I haven’t posted anything since early April about our upcoming 6-month stay in Japan. So it’s time for an update:
- Maria’s position with JBIC is now finalized (it’s not a common destination for CFR Fellows, so there was some bureaucratic legwork to do). She’ll also get to spend some time at JICA, which was where she originally thought she might go.
- We’re looking into an apartment that’s the first one to catch our eye so far. Here are some pictures of it. It’s very nice, small (1 bedroom, about 500 sq. ft.), and fairly expensive (the rent is about the same as the mortgage we pay for our 5 bedroom house). The location – Shinagawa – is part of Tokyo’s equivalent to Manhattan. We’ve been trying to decide between paying less and living further away from where Maria will work, vs. paying more and living closer. Maria will be working Japanese salaryman hours, which means if she has a long commute, she’d leave before the boys are up in the morning and often not get home until after they’re in bed. So we’re thinking it’s worth it to pay more to have a place where her commute will be short.
This apartment also has some nice perks: a washing machine (which Maria tells me is a rare thing to find in a Japanese rental), paid utilities (also uncommon, which means the rent isn’t quite as bad as it seems), an elevator, a fiber-optic internet connection (fairly important since I’ll be working remotely), and no key money required (a legal form of bribery in Japan, where you pay an extra, non-refundable fee to the landlord for the privilege of renting). We also like it because it’s much less dark and dreary than a lot of Tokyo apartments.
If we end up in this place, or another place like it, we’ll probably put the boys together in the bedroom and Maria and I would use a convertible futon in the living room (or just sleep on tatami mats). Since we’re travelling half-way around the world, we’re not bringing much stuff, so I don’t think we’ll need a lot of storage room.
Here’s a map where you can get the lay of the land. The apartment is near the Shinagawa subway station, near the bottom center of the map (and near lots of hotels if you want to visit
). The JBIC office is near the Tokyo station, just to the right of the center of the map (near the Imperial Palace). That’s only 5 stops on the subway, so it would be a short commute. Note this map only covers a slice of Tokyo – it is an unbelievably enormous city (Wikipedia lists it as the world’s largest megacity – New York is number 4). - A good friend of Maria’s has agreed to stay in our house while we’re away. We’re hoping to find one more person to stay in the house – that way we’ll get enough rent to cover the mortgage (as we can’t afford our mortgage and Tokyo rent at the same time!).
- We’re leaning towards putting Kai in a Japanese public school. This is partly because the private, international schools are more expensive than we first thought (almost twice the cost of private schools here), and because we’ve seen a lot of positive feedback from other Americans who’ve stayed in Japan and put their kids in Japanese public schools (unlike here, Japanese public schools are uniformly excellent). Apparently, the teachers usually have a smattering of English, which helps ease the immersion into Japanese, and Kai is still in that age range where kids can absorb language like a sponge. Also, kindergarten in Japan is more like pre-school here, so Kai won’t be academically stressed
. I saw one post in a discussion forum (which I can’t seem to find again) where someone was worried that her American kid might be bullied in a Japanese school. The response was that Americans are usually so good at pumping up their kids’ self-esteem, that if any bullying goes on when they arrive in a Japanese school, it’s the other way around. One thing we haven’t figured out is how to deal with the Japanese school calendar – their school year starts in March, not September. So Kai may actually end up in 1st grade for the last half of our time there (or he could probably repeat kindergarten if he ends up having any difficulty). - One thing I’m looking forward to is taking the boys on a tour of the really impressive, crazy Japanese playgrounds.
