It is a widely held belief that living in Japan is very expensive and I was a little intimidated by that when told I was headed to Japan the first time. I claim to be cheap but my husband is kind and says that I am frugal. Merriam Webster defines cheap as obtaining […]

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To visit a garden in Japan is to take a step away from reality for a moment and step back in time. Many of these gardens are an oasis in the center of a very vibrant and bustling country. Once you step foot within their walls it’s really hard to imagine all of […]

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Learning Japanese can be a tough proposition, trust me, I know, but life in Japan when you can’t speak the language is fraught with uncertainty and some pretty amusing experiences (looking back that is!). Here is a portion of a comic strip from the Japan Times that illustrates the challenges well (click on the […]

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Eating out in Japan is a neat experience. There are stand alone restaurants and also food courts on the top floor of most department stores with a variety of different restaurants to choose from. Most have plastic models of the food they serve in the front window or menus with photos. Believe it […]

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About a week in to our stay, I thought that it was time to get out and do some exploring. My first trip on the Japanese train system was very intimidating. Just to give you an idea of the systems complexity here is a map from Japan Corner. (If you zoom in […]

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I didn’t go to Japan thinking that grocery shopping would be easy – in fact I didn’t give it much thought at all!
On my first trip to a Japanese grocery store I found that I could identify the general sections of the store but from there it went downhill. My initial discovery was […]

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It’s been almost a month since we found out that we will be spending the better part of the next two years in Japan. This isn’t our first time being part-time residents of Japan. Back in 1994 we had the privilege of starting a four year adventure in Japan. We enjoyed daily life in […]

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