Packing up

The movers have finished 1 of 3 days packing and our house is more than half empty. Dining table and chairs, books, most big furniture and all of my clothes and shoes are gone. Today: children's rooms, rugs, odds and ends.

But there's always something new to learn: the US doesn't allow us to "import" foods unless we personally carry them in -- which means we have to leave jars of Bonne Maman strawberry jam and Costco peanut butter that I bought in Japan and several boxes of American cereal (our only direct Tokyo import, from Expat Express) or fill a suitcase. Kinda weird. I mean, these are US products, so why can't I return with them?

The moving process in Japan is different than in the US. Because Tokyo has small streets, the company fills a series of smaller trucks outside our house and empties them elsewhere into a shipping container. Also, the workers take off/put on their slip-on shoes in the entry hall every time they walk thru the front door, which is quite a trick when they're also carrying a piano or a dresser! When we moved in, they did this in heavy rain, an added degree of difficulty.

And during scheduled rests, a few workers take cat naps in the shade of our garage. In Tokyo, people grab sleep wherever they can: commuters on trains and buses, taxi drivers on their reclined seats by the side of the road, customers sitting at Starbucks tables and, it seems, workers on flat packing boxes on top of concrete.