OUR NEW LIFE
We arrived in Japan and moved into our new house. It is the smallest one on the block but just right for us. The next day we went around and introduced ourselves to the neigbors on all sides of us. In Japan everyone has a sort of intercomm at their gate, so at one of the houses we visited, the lady of the house left the intercomm on. I could hear her husband say, "who is it?" to her and not knowing the intercomm was still on, she said "It's that new foreigner who moved into the neighborhood." Soon enough she came out to greet us and then her highschool age son came out too. She said they were all excited to see the new foreigner who was moving in and looked forward to meeting me. The son was shy and kept his head down but I could tell by the way he was pacing he wanted to say something, so at the very end of the conversation he said "Nice to meet you!" I can imagine how nervous he must have been.
After that we still had a lot to do. We went to the ward office and I had to register as a foreign alien living abroad. They gave me a alien certificate which we took to the public health office and registered us in a group insurance program (every resident has to be in one I guess) and then we went to Ami's first appointment at her new clinic. The doctors were all surprised I was only 23, and were ofcourse curious about this huge guy and tiny girl having a baby together. The doctor was a really warm guy though, who said he had only been to America once, and it was San Jose. He said he went into a MacDonald's and was afraid of three black guys who were sitting inside, so he left! Haha. I recently got a job teaching english at one of the big english schools here, so I guess we are ready to begin our new life.