Over six months after Geoff signed his contract for a job in Japan, we have finally arrived and moved into home number 6. Although temporary, we are not moving again until mid January so thankfully there won’t be a home number 7 this year!

Fortunately, because we flew from one of the small group of countries within Japan’s bubble of ‘safe’ countries, we didn’t have to have a Covid test before leaving or on arrival in Japan. However we do have to do another two weeks quarantine; rules seem to be implicit rather than Hong Kong’s explicit directions but we are being very cautious. After all this time it would be dreadful to be expelled because we have broken some (unwritten) rule.

Home number 6 is much larger than homes numbers 4 & 5, is flooded with natural light and has a long balcony. However although many times larger than our most recent abode, it has a tiny fraction of the storage space. Apart from the kitchen which has copious cupboards but only one power point. Still, you can’t have everything!

We are living in a serviced apartment, with no service, of course, during quarantine. After that we have agreed that cleaning etc will take place on Friday mornings, when I was informed that I was ordered out. I presume the lovely guy at reception desk was trying to tell me that the cleaners would prefer that I wasn’t present.

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We are living in Omori, to the south of Tokyo but plan to move closer to central Tokyo when we are looking for our next and more permanent home.

My chief enjoyment & occupation during quarantine is trying to work the various appliances in the apartment. With google translate and a long struggle we managed to figure out the coffee machine this morning.

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My first washing attempt was a cycle lasting less than 30 minutes, so I felt that I had cracked it when the second was well over 2 hours. But ….

It appears I selected a wash/dry cycle …. and I can tell you that a top loading dryer should not be a thing!

Our immediate problem was sorting out groceries & we had to resort to some convenience meals on the first two days. Stupidly, I overlooked my problems with all forms of tomatoes which I have managed to avoid for a number of years now. Consequently I have suffered a mega four day migraine, so bad that I couldn’t move for two of those days. I am fully recovered now so no sympathy needed. But it does mean that I will need to carefully check food ingredients