Housing, etc

In addition to more checking in/administrative stuff for me with Charlie and Nathan as my entourage, the last few days has been consumed mainly by housing briefs, visits, etc. Wednesday morning, we attended an off-base housing brief with many more military acronyms and information overload. We were irritated that we had to attend this brief, because although we'd love to live off base and experience more a more authentic Japanese lifestyle, it's just not practical with my hospital call schedule and day care, etc. But we were required to attend this brief in order to then attend an on-base housing brief in the afternoon. We found out that we qualify for a 2 room apartment and that the waiting list times for my rank is less than 1 month. But then we had to wait until the next day, Thursday in order to meet with our specific housing counselor. On Thursday, Alice, our counselor, told us that they'd first have to offer us housing at Negishi, which is a satellite housing annex about 30 miles away. Obviously that wasn't going to work. Next option was either the other housing annex 8 miles away (but still a minimum of 30 min by car in without traffic or an hour by train) at Ikego or on the main base of Yokosuka. The advantages of Ikego are that all they have are 3 bedrooms apartments and they have no waiting list for childcare (compared with a 6-9 month waiting list here on the main base). Even though I'd been told by my sponsor to hold out for on base housing (nights I'm on backup at the hospital I'd likely have to stay there instead of being available by phone at home, but there's no call room for the back up person!), we decided we at least had to check out Ikego before making a decision. So we loaded up the stroller and headed off base to brave the train system for the first time. Luckily the ticket booths had an English option and we already had pretty detailed instructions (from my sponsor who's having a Halloween party at here place in Ikego tonight) on how to get to Ikego by train. The train ride involved one transfer and the ride was gorgeous, although we were still amazed to see how crammed in the houses are that we saw along the train route. The trip did end up taking ~1hr 15 min door to door from hospital to Ikego. The train station stopped literally right at the security gate of the Ikego base. We went to the housing office and got a key to see a sample apartment and it was HUGE by Japanese standards. Very nice. We signed Nathan up for childcare and confirmed that there's no wait list at Ikego (because everyone with kids wants to live in Yokosuka), but with the commute, it just didn't seem feasible. We returned via train and then got keys to a model of the highrises at Yokosuka. The 2 bedrooms are much smaller but still doable. Again, we had to wait until the next day (the housing office is short-staffed due to funding cuts) in order to meet with our counselor again to do the paperwork. So yesterday we meet with our counselor, but now she wanted us to look at specific units that are available. It took 2 trips (and an incident where they gave us a key to a supposedly vacant unit that wasn't vacant, which gave both us and the tenant quite a scare!) but we decided on a unit on the 8th floor with a gorgeous view of Tokyo bay! But, you guessed it, again we have to wait until Monday to do the paperwork and order loaner furniture while we wait for our household goods to arrive. So hopefully we'll be moved into our apartment on Tuesday, which is much earlier than any of us had anticipated. We're definitely getting sick of living on top of each other in the Navy Lodge.

The other wrinkle as I'd mentioned previously is childcare. Charlie has enough paternity leave and vacation that he doesn't have to start at Google Tokyo (and can get paid) until the Monday of Thanksgiving week. We're hoping that he can then work from home a couple days a week and we can use an hourly childcare center (which has a max of 25 hours a week), but he probably won't be able to work from home right off the bat. So we've asked Grandma Jahncke to come to Japan (hopefully via free space-available flight, cross your fingers) to take care of Nathan for a bit for a few weeks while Charlie is getting settled into work.