First year in Japan retrospective

'Congratulations! You just made the last school bento of the second term!' my husband announced. That means I also won't be making him any bento, while chibbi-chan is off school for Christmas break. I don't think he minds too much. He's been getting a lot of sandwiches recently.

As the year draws to a close, I feel like offering myself another pat on the back. 'Yippee! We survived our first year in Japan!' It's been harder work than when we were in California last year and not just because I don't speak the language well. For one thing, I miss the roasted Cosco chicken I used to pick up - and the bagged salad with cherries and blue cheese, and the rosemary bread. I could put together a meal in minutes.

I had a robot which cleaned the floors. Now, it's me, every other day. We never hung washing before - it went into a huge gas dryer and was bone dry in no time. The dryer here, for an average load of washing, takes three to four hours, so it's more energy efficient but time-eating to hang up the washing outside on the balcony.

I've done my share of shataku cleaning too - on the first Tuesday of the month, I joined the other stay-at-home wives cleaning the yard outside, weeding, picking up litter and moving recyclable papers ready to be picked up by the garbage collectors. I'm on nodding terms with most of them, talking terms with a handful.

Chibbi-chan has settled in at yochien. We've done Sports Day, Field Trips, the Christmas Nativity Service, the fund-raising bazaar, We've had friends over for playdates and been back to their houses (a few). We've had people over for dinner - colleagues of YK's and friends of mine in the shataku. I've run an English course for kids and have another one lined up.

But I still feel isolated and redundant. I'm thinking of joining a networking group - the Association of Foreign Wives in Japan, which has about 40 members locally in Nagoya. I met up with some members for dinner recently at a French restaurant. Many are older, most have kids. Quite a few are teaching at universities. A surprising number have been here twenty-five years or more. I admitted quite readily, I was not going to be joing their ranks. Two or three years is the most I can see myself doing here. I wasn't very flattering about the place they've chosen to call home. One woman told me it will get better, that the first year is always hard.
I'm sure she's right.