the new 3 sleeps

It's raining out and I don't even own a coat (well, it's on a boat somewhere) or an umbrella anymore. Or a blow dryer. Or an iron. Or a pot. Or a pan. Or a pillow. The list goes on. Bloody hell.

I remember when Kiki and I moved to Japan we gave ourselves seven days to sort ourselves out. We called it The Seven Day Plan and it looked something like this:

Day 1: find somewhere to live
Day 2: figure out subway system
Day 3: find grocery store and open bank account
Day 4: find job
Day 5: find job
Day 6: get job
Day 7: start work

We had booked ourselves into Sukerokunoyado Sadachiyo, a traditional ryokan for the first night. It was divine. We had a lovely hot bath on arrival and slept on firm futons in our six tatami mat room. We met a guy (Australian? NZ? German?) on the first night who gave us great advice on how to get around (find landmarks high up on buildings; don't bother remembering street names or numbers because its more confusing to remember them; always look back when you are walking so that you know what it looks like when you return...) then he tried to get us to a ' love hotel'; we declined. Love hotels are socially and culturally acceptable hotels that couples rent by the hour for the purposes of [whispers] you know. Each room has its own design, too. Dear, do you feel like a log cabin motif tonight? Or would you like to pretend to be on a boat? Or would you prefer to be bent over a Ferrari bed? Ha!

I'm getting off point here... I digress...

Anyway, on the first day there, we had to find somewhere to live because we had only booked ourselves one night at the ryokan. Unfortunately, it was the middle of monsoon season. And by monsoon, I don't mean a pissy little thunderstorm and a bit of wind. I mean non-stop torrential bucketing down exploding fire hydrant pointed at your face pouring rain coupled with gale force tornado-like winds. Naively, we stopped at a 7-11 and bought umbrellas. They lasted about four and a half seconds before the wind turned them inside out then ripped the plastic from the metal. We opted to get soaked. We were literally blown into doors, windows, street lamps, parked cars. Every time we went indoors we had to wring out our coats, hats and shoes. We were frozen solid. Our fingers and toes were pruned. We finally - finally - found somewhere to stay.. a lovely little house in the middle of a park in Edogawabashi. Then we had to go back to the ryokan to get our bags, strap them to our backs and head out into the monsoon again. It was hec-tique. We finally settled into our new home in the park, absolutely soaked to the bone, windblown to all hell.

Then, we had to conquer the shower. The shower was coin operated, located outside and had a four-way mirror located at crotch-level. Ahhhh.... we managed in the end. I miss those days. Those were the wide-eyed, wet-behind-the-ears, green-thumbed, soaked by the rain travel days when everything you owned could be strapped to your back was a new and exciting adventure. Now, I'm sitting here, 13 years later, still soaked but without the wide eyed, wet eared innocence of Japan. Now I'm just a grumpy ol' gal, waiting for a passport and a plane.