Our Apartment

I know that this blog is keeping you on the edge of your seats waiting for an update...so here it is!

After a whirlwind two days in Tokyo, which I spent recovering from international travel, enjoying our luxury hotel and lamenting the distance to the Gundam and the complicated Tokyo subway, we finally arrived in Sapporo and were brought to our apartment- number 401 in building 2-15 on North 24 West 6 street. (now you know our street address- presents are welcome and expected; especially monetary donations and anything with chocolate and PB; also pizza)

We had our bags brought up to the apartment (yikes, I had a 50 pound box AND bag...), gas range and heater delivered, utilities turned on, and then our Japanese mother took us to the supermarket (aptly named SuperArcs) for rice, eggs, juice, tofu, miso soup base and nori. Then everyone left and we dragged our futon into a random room and passed out.

Now for some pictures:

Behold!
Our first breakfast in Sapporo
...eggs, oatmeal with cinnamon and honey and juice! Please note the mess.

Fast forward weeks later and here's our apartment:

View from the kitchen of the dining room:

This is the angle from the entry way:

The living room:

The bedroom (or futon room)

Coming out of our room;
Looking towards the kitchen:

That thing covered in plastic is our heater;
which I hope by the time I get back is hooked up and ready to heat.

This is our spare room.
I am determined to turn it into a study/office.

You all only get to see a dark picture of it because it's actually where we throw all our crap.
It's probably the coldest room in the apartment so I don't think it'll house any guests.

Here's our plants that we inherited from Ryan's predecessor:

And that's it! More on the way soon...I am currently in NYC and it's almost 1AM. Oh no, I'm not jet-lagged. Heh.

-Jane

Tokyo Part II

Now that we’ve gotten the introductory posts out of the way, we can start getting into a regular posting routine. Let’s start by finishing up with our short stint in Tokyo.

So, my time spent there was primarily comprised of the following things:

1. Sitting through lectures and trying not to pass out

2. Eating/searching for food and trying not to pass out

3. Passing out

Needless to say, the jet lag was pretty devastating for me. Coupled with sitting in uncomfortable chairs listening to lectures for 6+ hours a day in a full suit, made Tokyo not a very pleasant experience. However, it wasn’t all bad, and it didn’t diminish my excitement for my forthcoming life in Japan in the least.

For instance, look how genki* I am during my first morning.

Jane managed to catch a little peace and tranquility in the bustling beehive of central Tokyo.

Hello Tatsushi (and Sharley, sp?)!!!

Japan's own "City of Lights".

Next time we'll start showing you Sapporo. Promise!

-Ryan

*Note: For all you non-Japanese speakers out there, the term genki is a widely used term in Japan. It can be utilized in many different ways, but as far as I know, it refers to one's state of being/health. For instance, someone who is happy or in a general state of well-being is referred to as being genki. Alternatively, the phrase O-genki desu ka?, is usually used as a greeting to someone you have not seen for some time, inquiring as to their life status.

What's in a name?

Some of you may be wondering what exactly the title of our blog is meant to convey. Allow me to explain.

Shortly after Jane and I knew that we would be moving overseas, we quickly came to the decision that the easiest way to communicate to everyone back in our homeland would be through some sort of internet media. E-mail, Skype, and Instant Messaging are all useful but carry some innate drawbacks that made them unrealistic considering the vast and varied friends and family that we have. The only logical solution was to create a blog that we could update easily and everyone could follow at their leisure.

But, what would we call our blog?

Surely, this was not a decision to be made lightly. It needed to be both clever and encompass what exactly this blog was going to be about.

We mulled over several names but they all had their own problems:

“We Are Godzilla, You Are Japan” - Too obscure a reference for most people to get

“Ninja Gaijin” - Far too nerdy and slightly un-PC

“Big In Japan” - Was already taken by every blogging network we attempted to join

Luckily, “ALTernative Lifestyle” occurred to me a short time later. And when I told Jane and she nearly spiked her cell phone in disgust, I knew that I had found the perfect title.

But what does it actually mean?

Well, the phrase carries some basic connotations. Typically, an “alternative lifestyle” refers to a way of life veering from the societal norm e.g. the counter-culture hippe movement of the 60’s. Now, we definitely aren’t espousing anything of the sort on this site. However, we certainly are living an alternative to our usual lives back in the United States. Just how different our way of life in the Land of the Rising Sun is will be elucidated in later posts.

But, the crux of our moniker is the capitalization of the first three letters.

If you are a foreigner working in Japan, chances are that your job title is that of Assistant Language Teacher, or ALT for short (alternatively, the term Assistant English Teacher is sometimes used, but AET doesn’t really work so let’s just ignore that). So, by combining the term “Alternative Lifestyle” and the acronym of the aforementioned occupation we come up with “ALTernative Lifestyle”.

As you can see, the title is both incredibly clever and sickeningly corny, and thus PERFECT.

-Ryan

Welcome!

We’ve been in Japan for a little over a month now and so far, everything’s been great! We know everyone has been incredibly curious as to our happenings, but rather than writing a lengthy first post that attempts to cover everything that’s happened until now, we thought it might be better to just give you the details of this blog quickly and simply. That way, we can just jump into the interesting stuff as soon as possible.

Who?: Obviously, everything written here will be done by Jane and I. Though, you will more than likely see some other regulars in our lives from here in Japan popping up now and again.

What?: The topics will generally just be whatever interesting events have occurred in recent memory. Don’t expect too much outside of travel photos and descriptions to fill in the blanks. We can’t envision anything we post here to be not safe for work.

Where?: Japan obviously. Though we’ve been mulling over plans to visit the Philippines, India, New Zealand, and Korea while we’re here.

Why?: Mainly because we want all of our friends to be incredibly jealous of our adventures and we need a way to constantly remind them. Also, partly because we love our families a little bit.

When?: Right Now!

-Ryan