Adrift in Japan

We're Going!

Packing is in "The Final Packdown" and we're ready to put our Airport in our suitcase and start staging our things for departure. Yes, I said staging. We have so much stuff we have to take a full load to Matt's office of the things we are leaving behind for others to pick through. Then we have another extremely full load which we are taking to the airport with us. We stay at the airport tonight and fly off early tomorrow. Wish us luck!

Wrapping Up

Well, it's hard to believe it's been a year already. Posting has been light-to-non-existent here over the past few months so people aren't really coming by any more but I thought it was important to try to wrap things up a little.

We're going home on Friday (moving out Thursday) which is exactly a year from when we arrived. Today we took care of most of the "official stuff" we have to do to leave, and it's surprising considering how much trouble everything was to set up that it was so easy to undo it all. We went to my bank and deposited all of our small change, which they used the automatic counter to tally up (for a small fee). Then we paid the bills we had with us, and closed that account. Next we headed off to NTT DoCoMo where we cancelled our contracts, had our phones erased and turned them in, and paid off our bills plus our early cancellation fee for the contract. Finally, we went to Citibank where we managed to get them to give us yen for paying bills and settling up we have yet to do plus the rest in dollar value traveler's checks. Apparently if you want dollar cash instead you have to pay a handling fee, and who needs that?

Closing up is apparently easy. It was the ramping up that was hard.

Of course, there's still the packing and the cleaning and the search for a new apartment once we're back in California...

What Not to Buy

"Why you shouldn't buy a T-shirt in a language you don't understand."

which translates as "I'm a stupid American."

This same idea works nicely for other related things like "why you shouldn't get a tattoo in a language you don't understand."

I guess it would be funny to wear it if you do speak the language, but I'm not sure anyone would get the irony.

Paul Frank: a cool designer you shouldn't trust to not make you look really, really stupid.