Japan: June 4 - ,2007

Most folks already know, via email messages, how we came to be in Japan. For those who did not get that message, I will recap how we ended up in Tokyo.

On about the 27th of April, during a short visit to Minnesota by Kjirsten and new granddaughter, Olivia Cate, I received a phone call from a former colleague currently residing Tokyo. I was aware that the call would be coming (from a previously received email), and knew it would be about a project in Asia, but had no idea what the topic might be. I actually thought it might be something in China where Cat is very active these days.

Turns out Cat is building a 500,000 ft2, two-level warehouse on the campus of our Japanese partner, Shin Caterpillar Mitsubishi, and there was a need for some "grey hair" to work with newly-hired staff. In a nutshell, we agreed to come over and left for Tokyo on the 3rd of June. The flight was as comfortable as the economy section of Northwest Airlines could be. A couple meals, a good book, several strolls around the cabin and, late afternoon Monday, the 4th, we arrived. Tokyo is 14 hours ahead of central US time.

The weather that afternoon was beautiful. We caught the TCAT (Tokyo something Airline Terminal - I think!), bus from Narita to the ANA Hotel where we spent the next 18 days waiting for our apartment to become available. (The picture in my first posting from Tokyo was from our room on the 22nd floor.)

We found our apartment on Tuesday, and as you probaly deduced from the reference above, we had to wait for the current renter to vacate. This is Joan outside the entrance.

And here are a couple shots of the living room.



After we finished with the apartment search, we wandered around the area and passed by the Homat Commodore apartments, where we lived when we were in Tokyo in 1996.

Since we were done looking for a place to live on Tuesday, I went in to work Wednesday and Joan went sightseeing. It takes about 40 minutes by subway from both the hotel and our apartment to Yoga, the area of Tokyo where the office is located. Travel time seems to go by pretty quickly, because I have to change trains once, and there is a lot of hustle and bustle as a few million folks head to and from work. I spend the majority of my 12 - 16 hour days there, although I occasionally have to go to Sagamihara, the sight of the new facility. This is about an hour and a half by train from the apartment and usually means an arrival home sometime between 10pm and midnight (after heading for the train in the morning at about 7am). Needless to say, at these times I remember vividly why I retired!!

One of the "neat" things we find here - although our apartment does not have one :( is the Japanese toilet. You can change the temperature of the seat, and the thing has more buttons than one wants to push. Needless to say, one can wash areas of interest and others too fierce to mention! And of course, the water pressure can be adjusted. Here is a pic of the "control panel" of the toilet in our hotel: The picture below was taken in the women't restroom at a very fancy new shopping center:

From my book "Japan Handbook," there is a whole page about toilets. A bit: "Japanese toilets can also be modern-day marvels. Some in swanky hotels flush automatically, spray deodorant, and will even take your vital life signs! .... Japanese women have a penchant for repeated toilet flushings to mask any embarrassing bodily sounds that might be wafting through the paper-thin doors. As a water-conservation scheme, some toilets were equipped with automatic 'water-flushing sounds' so that women would not repeatedly flush the toilets!"

In future installments, we will talk about some of the touring Joan has done.