Goodbye Mie, Hello Hyogo

Huge going away party in Nagoya

About a week after coming back to Japan this March, we decided to take a job working at an international kindergarten in the Kansai area. This meant that we would finish work at ECC on a Wednesday night, and come to start our new job the next morning in Osaka. It also meant traveling several times back and forth between Yokkaichi and Osaka for work (a 3 1/2 hour commute one way). It also meant living out of a hotel for several days and trying to find an apartment every day after work. Not to mention getting used to a new job and working on closing our Yokkaichi apartment.

Chad's last futsal game in Suzuka

You can imagine we had more than one stressful moment where we were screaming at asking ourselves what we had been thinking leaving so quickly. However, after finding an apartment and getting settled, we're feeling very glad.

Here's a glimpse of our new place, located in Kobe!

We really like the layout of our new apartment, and also its location! It's so near to Sannomiya (a huge city with awesome shopping), to Kobe port, to Kobe China town, and more. Check out the awesome view from our balcony:

At night you can see the city lights and watch trains passing through, and during the day you can see Kobe port and listen to the boat horns in the distance!

We feel like there's not enough time in a day for all of the fun things we can see and do near our new home in Japan. Chad's already found several places to play futsal, and our to-do list keeps growing.

One thing I must mention is the inoshishi situation. And by that I mean wild boar. You would think that living in Mie, which is considered to be the countryside, we would've seen all kinds of interesting wildlife (well, I guess we did see suzumebachi). But we never expected that after moving to the big city we'd encounter wild boar! Our first week in our new apartment we saw two of them, and learned that it's a normal occurrence (especially at night--yikes!). There are even warning signs placed around garbage areas telling us not to put our trash out at night so the inoshishi don't get into it.

I get a little scared walking home at night by myself. Can you blame me?

Guess we'll have to be careful. Thanks for your patience over our lack of posting over the last couple of crazy months. Mom Dykehouse and Quint are coming to visit next week, and we're super excited. We'll try and keep you updated, and close with a lovely picture of the cherry blossoms in Ashiya.