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Early June 1997 We got the call, my husband and I, when we were visiting with my Mother and my family in Louisiana.  We had only been back from Saudi Arabia for a short time and we were really enjoying being back in the real world.  Our plans were to visit with family and friends on an extended vacation trip through the South and the Midwest. The call put an end to those plans.  My husband was being offered a job in Japan and the company wanted us to leave last week, if you know what I mean.  Japan!!!!  Oh, wow!  Somehow I had never thought that we might get to Japan, of all places.  We had lived in St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Aruba, Panama, Thailand and Saudi Arabia in our overseas work but Japan!  The exotic land of the Far East!  Pictures flashed into my mind of Buddha statues and Oriental castles and cherry blossoms and the things that you see on the screen in the movie theaters.  A grand new adventure!  Let’s go, honey! Things began to get hectic.  We rushed through the rest of our trip.  We were determined to see our family.  I had not seen my family in a year and it had been two years since my husband had seen his family.  We knew that it would be at least another year before we had another chance to see them.  Finally, exhausted, we arrived back home in Nevada. Mid June 1997 Throw that stuff into the suitcases.  Come on moving company and pack that stuff up in boxes and get it on the plane to Japan.  We have a deadline to meet and a plane to catch!  Call those friends and let them know we’re going to be leaving in a couple of days for Japan!   You’re going where?  Oh, can you put me in a suitcase and take me with you?  Called my friend Sandy to tell her the good news.  Sandy, is that you?  No, it’s an answering machine.  Oh well, leave a message, I’m going to Japan, Sandy!  I’ll write to you with a phone number when I know what it is, OK?  We’ve got to go! Rush, rush, rush, no time to think!  We’ve got to go! What do you mean we’ve got to fly to the office for two days of meetings before leaving for Japan?  That means we will have to fly all the way across the United States from Las Vegas to the East coast and then turn right around and fly back to the West coast for departure from San Francisco to Japan!  Oh well, I guess that’s why they make planes. Hurry, hurry!  We’re going to miss the plane to Boston! Brain overload!  Lots of information to cover in two days.  Sign this form, sign that form!  Wait, honey, I’ve got to call my Mama and daughter one last time.

Kristie Leigh Maguire and her husband have lived all over the United States and many foreign countries while following his career. While living in Japan, she found it very difficult to find books to read that were written in English. Ms. Maguire began writing her own books just to have something to read. She discovered a new passion in writing. She has published several novels. Her first entry into Mainstream Fiction is her novel Emails from the Edge (The Life of an Expatriate Wife). Ms. Maguire is the founder of NUW (Not the Usual Way) Independent Authors Community, an online international community. Ms. Maguire is also the Romance Editor at MyShelf.com and Staff Reviewer for Bridges Magazine. Although Ms. Maguire is originally from the South and will always remain Southern at heart, she now resides in a small town in Nevada in between international assignments with her husband. During her expatriate years, she has lived in St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Aruba, Thailand, Japan and three times in Saudi Arabia. Kristie Leigh Maguire is the pseudonym for Margie K. Tovrea. . Additional Resources Living Overseas  Unique Lifestyles  Expatriate Resources  Resources on Japan  Contact Kristie Leigh Maguire  Buy the Book .

Finally!  The plane is leaving San Francisco.  Wave bye to the Pacific coast of the United States, honey!  See you next year, good old U.S. of A!  I am exhausted, how about you, honey?  I would kill for a cigarette!! Business class is good.  Room to stretch out.  Think I’ll go to sleep.  Can’t think.  Wake me up in 14 hours, dear, or when they bring food, whichever comes first!
 

The plane is coming in to Narita International in Tokyo, Japan.  Can’t tell from the air what our new country looks like.  We’re on the ground.  Another maze of immigrations and customs and a new language and each country is different we know, so lets not panic.  Can you speak English?  No.  Can you speak English?  No!  OK, so we missed the bus to the hotel in Yokohama.  We’ll catch the next one.  When is the next one?  Two hours!?  I’m tired!  I’m hungry!  Well, lets go see if we can at least find a sandwich somewhere and maybe a cup of coffee.  I would die for a cup of coffee.  What do you mean, no sandwich?  Do you want some sushi?  No?  How about a delicious bowl of noodles?  OK, then we’ll wait till we get to the hotel and see if we can find something Western.  Lets just get a cup of coffee for now.  NO, I do not want TEA!  I WANT COFFEE!!!

Honey, do you think all the people in Japan are here at the airport?  I have never seen so many people in one place in my life!  We sit on our suitcases in front of the airport trying not to get run over in the crush.  Here comes the bus!  No, wrong bus I think.  I can’t read Japanese.  Wait, it is the bus!  OK, lets get on.  Won’t be long now till we get to the hotel.  We ride and ride and God, look at those crazy drivers!  We are on the wrong side of the road; we’re going to be killed!  What!  They drive on the wrong side of the road over here?!  Well, it is the wrong side of the road to me, honey, I don’t care if they do think it’s the right way to drive.  It’s been hours, are we almost to the hotel?  It’s only been two hours?  Are you sure?

It’s now dark and all I can see is lights.  Still can’t tell much about my new country.

Finally!  The hotel.  We pile off the bus and they throw our luggage out at us.  We go in.  Do you speak English!?  Yes!  Oh, good, we have reservations.  They say something to us.  I thought you said you could speak English!  You said that was English?  Could have fooled me!  OK, we’ll say it again real slow.  We have reservations!

Finally, we get to our room.  We are overwhelmed at this point but we are still hungry so lets go see if we can find the restaurant and some FOOD.  I am almost in tears.  I DO NOT WANT NOODLES!  I WANT SOMETHING WESTERN!  OK, do you have coffee?  I said COFFEE!

Maybe tomorrow will be better, honey.  Let’s get some sleep.

It’s daylight at last.  I look out the hotel window at the scene laid out before me.  Our hotel seems to be on a mountain and we are on the 17th floor.  Way down below I see high rise buildings and cars and buses and people and more people.  The people are walking.  No, they aren’t walking, they are practically running.  Wonder where they all are going in such a hurry?  The tall buildings seem to close in on one another and there are other little buildings thrown in amongst them like children’s play houses.  I see big signs on some of the buildings.  Can’t read a word of it.  Funny looking Japanese picture letters.  Looks like little drawings instead of writing to me.  People are scurrying around like little ants carrying all different colors of umbrellas.  It’s raining.  The gray fog swirls around and I can barely see the harbor and the big ships in the distance.  My husband’s new place of work is there on the waterfront somewhere.
Lets go see if we can find some kind of recognizable food for breakfast, honey, and some coffee.

We go out into the hall and hunt the elevator.  I look out the window on the opposite side of the hotel.  All right!  That’s more like it!  A Japanese type building at last down there.  The type that you see on picture post cards of Japan.  Wonder what that is?
 

We find the restaurant.  We have a breakfast coupon.  Good for the buffet, is that what you said?  OK with me, maybe we can find something on the breakfast buffet, honey.  I see croissants, I like that.  Maybe a little butter and some strawberry jam to go with it.  Good, I see that.  Things are looking up.  Scrambled eggs, a little runny but definitely scrambled eggs.  Sausage.  Good.   Wonder what’s under that cover?  Oh, my God, what is that?  Never mind, I don’t want any.  I don’t think I’ll lift any more covers.  Lets see if they have coffee now.  There’s a coffee urn.  Nope, that’s tea.  Don’t want any tea!  Oh, here it is, coffee at last!  Maybe I should get two cups now in case it’s all gone later.  No, don’t want to appear the crazy American.  Now just how is one supposed to eat sausage and scrambled eggs with chopsticks?  Waiter!  Waiter!  Could I have a fork?  I said could I have a FORK!  OK, I’ll try to eat with chopsticks then.  Hell, maybe I’ll just pick it up with my fingers!

Are you sure you have to go to work now, honey?  Please don’t leave me here alone just yet.  OK then, if you have to go.  I’ll just wait right here in the hotel lobby so I’ll be sure I see you when you come back if it’s only going to be for an hour or so.  Then they are coming to get us and take us to see what our apartment looks like, right?  From the way they described it to us, it sounds really nice.  Set on the side of a mountain with a fantastic view of the harbor.  Oh, I can’t wait to see it!  I’m so excited!  A new country to explore!  We’ll get used to everything soon.  We’ve lived abroad before and it just takes a little time.  It’ll be all right.  Right, honey?

Surely it’s been an hour already.  What if something happened to him and he don’t come back?  What would I do?  I can’t speak Japanese, they can’t speak English, and I don’t even have a phone number to call him and what was the office phone number back in the States?  Do I have that written down anywhere?  No, I don’t.  I think I’m going to cry.  I think I’ll go back up to the room.

A knock on the door.  I peek out.  I open the door.  Where have you been?!  I thought something had happened to you!!  Don’t tell me to calm down!  Oh, are they waiting on us down in the lobby?  Well, why didn’t you say so?  Let’s go then.
I have never seen such crooked little twisting streets in my life.  Are you sure this isn’t a one way street?  It can’t be a two way street!  It’s not wide enough.  Everybody in Japan must have at least three cars per family.  No?  Then there must be a lot of Japanese families!

That’s our apartment complex?!  Well, maybe it will be better inside then.  I can’t wait to see that view of the harbor.  Where’s my view?!  I told them that a view was very important to me.  No, I do NOT consider the side of the building next door a good view!!  You have to stand sideways on the patio it’s so small!  Where will I put a patio chair?  Oh, all right then.  Maybe I can find a small patio chair.  Can we just go look at something else?  Maybe we can find something somewhere else with a view and a patio big enough to go out on.  What do you mean, we’re locked into this?  Says who?!  Oh, OK.  I’ll just have to make the best of it, I guess, if there is nothing we can do about it now.

This is the third bank we’ve been to, honey, why won’t they let us open up an account?  We have travelers checks.  Aren’t they supposed to be as good as cash?  What alien registration number are they talking about?  The Company has us in here on 90 day tourist visas and we don’t have to get an alien registration number, do we?  I wish the Company had an office here that we could turn to for help.  They just threw us over here with no one to turn to.  We are totally alone here, aren’t we, honey?

Four Days Later
The furniture is in the apartment.  We are in the apartment.  What we have in our suitcases is in the apartment.  Our stuff shipped from the States is NOT in the apartment.  No problem.  I can make do till it gets here.  I would wash the clothes we have if I could figure out the writing on the washer.  But I’m hungry and there is no food in the house.  Stan caught the train to work this morning.  That’s going to be a trip, having to ride that train.  I’ve never done that before.  Wonder if I can find the grocery store?  I have no idea where it is.  I know we walked down that way when they showed us the apartment but I can’t remember where it is.  Think I’ll go see if I can find it.

I’m back inside.  I’m scared.  I couldn’t find the store and I got lost.  The store is down the mountain somewhere but there are too many little paths down the mountain and I can’t remember the way down to it.  I thought I wasn’t going to find the way back to the apartment.  I walked and walked and got turned around.  No one to ask.  Finally found my way back to the apartment.  I’m still hungry.  Maybe I have some peanuts in my purse from the plane.  Wonder what time Stan will get back from work?  I think I’m going to cry again.  I’m scared to go back out by myself.

I’m so glad to see you, honey!  Lets go see if we can find the grocery store.  I’m hungry!  Maybe we can find a little restaurant down the mountain and get something to EAT before we go to the grocery store.  I’m starved!!  Don’t ask me why I didn’t go to the grocery store today!  I DID try to find it and I got LOST and I was SCARED! 
 

There’s a little restaurant, lets go in.  Even noodles sound good to me now, I’m starved!  Can you figure out this menu, honey?  It’s got those little picture characters on it and I can’t figure out a thing on it!  Do you see any pictures of food? We can at least point at the pictures, right?  No pictures.  Get out the Japanese phrase book.  What’s the word for FOOD!  OK, narrow that down a bit.  SANDWICH!  There’s that word, no I don’t care what kind as long as its not raw fish!  Why can’t they understand us?  Maybe we aren’t pronouncing it right.  Let them look at the phrase book.  Wonder why they can’t read it?  It’s not the little picture words but it’s Japanese, right?  Evidently not.  Finally they understand salad and finally make them understand water.  Good.  Lets try for some soup then.  I don’t care what kind of soup. OK, I think they got the meaning of soup.  Lets wait and see what we get.  They bring us the salad. OK, we eat the salad.  They bring us some soup.  I still don’t know what kind of soup but I’m going to eat it anyway.  Water tastes good.

Wish they understood the word coffee.  Oh well, water’s not bad.  Well, that wasn’t so bad.  I think I’ll live now.  Here’s the check.  Three thousand yen?!!  For soup and salad and water for two?!  That’s about US$30 isn’t it, honey?  Lets get out of here and go to the grocery store.

I can’t figure out what any of the food is.  Nothing written in English.  I’ll have to go by the pictures on the items and hope for the best.  I wonder is that dishwashing liquid or some type of floor cleaner?  These people are so rude!  I was standing here looking at whatever that is on the shelf and they just have to come stand in front of me till I walk on.  That looks like it may be a carton of milk, I’ll grab that.  These aisles are sure narrow.  There’s bread, I recognize that.  Honey, what is that?  It looks like a bag of dried minnows like what we use for fish bait back home.  Do they eat that?  I am totally overwhelmed.  Sensory overload.  I am standing in the aisle in the middle of the store and tears are rolling down my face.  Let’s get out of here.  I will starve.  I can’t take it any more right now. 

We start walking back up the mountain.  We might as well get used to this walking and climbing.  It seems to be the way to get around.  It’s raining again.  We don’t have our umbrellas with us.  I haven’t seen a Westerner in days now.  My blonde hair and blue eyes stick out like a sore thumb.  We look like giants among all the little short people.
I want somebody to talk to!  I want to go home! No, I mean home not the apartment. 

Next Day
OK, I will try the grocery store again today.  Let’s see, Stan said to walk 2 blocks down the street and turn left at the building that has pictures of seagulls on it. Walk down that alley, cross the street and turn right. Walk about half a block and then go down the steps to the bottom of the mountain.  OK, I see the steps.  Think I’ll count them as I go down, 1, 2, 3 -----274, 275.  Can’t count any more, not enough breath left.  I just know it’s a lot of steps.  Not really that bad going down though.  Here I am at the bottom of the mountain, now what did he say do?  Don’t remember.  I think I’ll go this way.  Back track, must be the wrong way.  Go the other way then.  OK, here is the train station, I recognize that.  Turn right.  There’s the store!  Made it!  Now the fun begins.

I see washing powder, I guess that’s what it is; I’ll buy it anyway.  Now just have to figure out how to use the washing machine.  Worry about that later.  Got to get some type of food.  There are some cups of instant noodles; I can just add hot water to that.  Can’t read directions on how to prepare anything even if I could tell what it was.  That picture looks good on that.  I’ll buy that.  There, that’s chicken, I’ll get two packages of that.  Is that hamburger meat or horse meat?  One of the Japanese guys at work told Stan they eat horse over here.  Think I’ll pass on that, don’t eat horse myself.  Wonder what that is?  Enough, that’s all I can carry back up the mountain.  OK, to the cash register then.  What?!  It’s 8,592 yen?!  Wonder how much that is in US dollars?  All right then, here’s some of the bills that have 1000 written in the corner. How many of these coins that have the hole in the middle, how many that are the little coins and how many that are the big coins?  Here, just take what you need!   I have to bag my own groceries?  Right.

Back up the mountain now.  Man, those steps look a lot steeper going up.  These bags sure are heavy.  I think I’m going to die.  I’ve got to stop and sit down.  Just go around me!  Can’t you see I’m dying here!  Whew!  I’m home again.  Well, not exactly home but back to the apartment anyway.  What a trip!  Sure is a bitch!!  Are you sure you have to eat, honey?
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