My Life in Tokyo

When I woke up this morning, the day ahead seemed relatively simple and manageable. The plan was this: in the morning, the furniture rental company would come to pick up our rental furniture; in the afternoon, our new furniture would be delivered. As I had already braved Ikea on my own last week, and had all of that furniture safely delivered yesterday (well, all I was able to buy–but that’s still a story for another time), I thought this would be very easy.

I had asked Noriko to come at 9:00 so that I could be sure she would be here when the rental guys came. Once she arrived, I finished up the task of stripping the beds and cleaning off the tables. The guys finally arrived around 10:00. The removal took a little longer than I had anticipated but went smoothly. They were helpful and accommodating when I asked them to move the TV from the living room into the den (it’s their TV, but we’re keeping it for awhile longer). At 11:30 they were gone. The furniture delivery was supposed to come between 1:00 and 3:00, so I decided to go out for lunch and do some errands. As Isabella’s birthday is coming up, I had to buy cake making ingredients and supplies (cupcakes to bring to school tomorrow, and a cake for the family celebration). After a quick sushi lunch, I managed to find everything I needed for the cake. Granted, the cake pans cost $9 each, but I was happy to find them. I had better luck with the plastic boxes in which to transport the cupcakes, which I found at the 100 yen store–which means they cost 100 yen apiece, around 85 cents. I got home right at 1:00. The furniture delivery team from IDC arrived at around 2:00. Consistent with the high level of service in Japan generally, and with this rather upscale store in particular, the salesman who had helped us came along to oversee the delivery. It seemed like overkill at the time, but I soon found out that it was a very good thing.

After they rang the doorbell and I let them into the building, it took quite some time before they came up to the door. I wondered if they were moving the truck or something. When they finally arrived, the salesman told me that they were here to deliver the furniture but that there was a problem. Apparently, they were greeted at the front door by the superintendent who informed them that they would have to put up protection on all of the walls, including the stairwell and elevator, before they could move any furniture. And, apparently, this was very unusual and they were not prepared for it. The super had told them that if they could not do it, they would have to come back another day. Now if you’ve been following the story carefully, you’ll realize that we had no furniture at all in the apartment at this point.

Our helpful salesman told me that he would do everything possible to deliver the furniture and suggested that I come with him to the building office to talk to the super. What followed was about 45 minutes of me listening to people talk to each other very politely and with strained smiles on their faces, after which I would be informed by Mr. Salesman that they still said no. The main office was called. The man authorized to make the decision was in a meeting and we were told to wait 20 minutes to speak to him. Mr. Salesman politely said no, they should call him out of the meeting to talk to us (at least that’s what he told me he said). Then Mr. Super decided to come and look at the truck and see the furniture to be moved. The verdict at this point was no, it could not be moved without required protection. At this point I explained that I had a child to pick up from school in an hour and a half, after which I would have to sit them down to dinner somewhere and put them to bed, all of which would be very difficult without furniture! Finally Mr. Guy-in-Charge was out of his meeting and called Mr. Super and everyone spoke to him, except that Mr. Super wouldn’t let me speak to him. This was very frustrating, as Mr. Guy-in-Charge turned out to be the real estate agent who had showed us the apartment and who has been our main contact on all apartment issues. In short, he’s the one person I could have actually asked for help. But finally, for a reason that was never clear to me, Mr. Super decided that they could move the furniture if they were very careful and if he supervised to make sure they didn’t scratch the walls.

At this point, I came back up to the apartment to see how Noriko and Juliet were doing. Juliet was in bed, and Noriko had decided to help out by starting to put together Isabella’s new dresser from Ikea. A truly kind and thoughtful gesture, really, but now this meant that we were committed to finishing the project today. Now Ikea furniture is relatively straightforward to assemble, but it is not trivial. You really need to have 2 people (thanks for the tip, Caryl!) to fit some of the pieces together. It went fairly smoothly until we got to the point where you were supposed to put the back on. Step 1, nail in top left corner of back piece. Step 2, nail in top right. Step 3, nail in bottom left and right. Step 4, nail in the rest of the 30 nails provided.

In spite of the 30 nails (and managing to only poke one through to the inside of the drawer), we were nearly finished by 4:00, time to leave and pick up Isabella. I asked Noriko to go and stayed to finish the dresser. Juliet, thankfully, continued to sleep. The lovely furniture from IDC was progressing nicely. Finally, the day was winding down. At around 5:00, all the new furniture was in place, Isabella was home and Juliet up. The only problem at this point was that I had never managed to get anything simple to make for dinner. Then a brilliant idea struck me–why not have Noriko help me order a pizza?

They have Domino’s and Pizza Hut here; the only problem, of course, is that you need to be able to actually communicate to the person on the phone if you want to order a pizza. Therefore, we had not tried this before. I didn’t have any menus, having thrown them all away because I couldn’t read them. So I decided to go on the internet. You can follow along on my journey at http://www.dominos.jp/ . When I saw the website, I got the idea that I could create a web account so that I could order by myself in the future. Okay, if you’re following along with me, you probably see that this is a ridiculous idea. But if you’d had the day I had, you’d understand my desperation! With Noriko’s help, I got as far as entering in all my personal informatin (including, for some reason, my gender and birthdate). But when I tried to click on the button to create the account, I got an error. It seems you have to type your name in Katakana, one of the 3 Japanese scripts. I guess I was getting a wee bit obsessed at this point, because I decided to try to figure out how to do this on my computer. I thought maybe I could enter the text in Word and then cut and paste. I checked Help for Word, which then led me to Microsoft Office help on the web, and on and on. I found that support for Asian languages in installed by default in Windows XP, and even managed to get a little drop-down menu on my toolbar. But even when I set it to Japanese, nothing happened. Alas, I was foiled. No web account today.

In the end, Noriko called in my order. We got a large pizza with sausage and mushrooms, for about $20.50. I guess those stories about the price of pizza in Japan are at least partly true. But on the positive side, you don’t tip here. And the happy ending is that they now have our name and address in their computer and can retrieve it with our phone number. We also learned that there is usually someone there who speaks English and that if we speak slowly, they may be able to take our order. This is a major breakthrough in dining convenience! And the pizza, despite the very strange-looking yellow cheese, was very good. The crust was definitely superior to Domino’s in New York.

Now if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll recall the bit about the cupcakes above. Ah yes, the cupcakes. For tomorrow at school. Once Juliet was in bed, Isabella and I had cupcakes to bake. At least here, I had the sense to take a reasonable shortcut: I bought a Duncan Hines cake mix at National Azabu, the international supermarket down the street. Now, finally, the cupcakes are baked and cooled and merely await topping with the violet-colored buttercream frosting we made. (Yes, they have food coloring here–but it is a powder. We opened the little boxes to take out the little bottles and found tiny spoons. You dip the tiny spoon into the powder and dump it into your food, trying not to get it all over your clothes in the process. Thank goodness Isabella had the idea for us to put on aprons!)

And now at long last, I will put the sheets on my new bed and then sit down for a few minutes on some of our very comfy new furniture. The new day will start too early once again, and I have cupcakes to deliver.