I am so bad at blogging.

I haven't written anything since February. We've been so ungodly busy I honestly didn't think it had been that long since my last post. I really need to do something about my blog habits when we're finally situated.

So, what's kept me so busy that I haven't had time to put my thoughts on my website in five months? A lot.

February and March flew right past us. Between kids' sports, appointments, my brother-in-law's wedding, and visiting my family in New York for a belated holiday celebration with my sisters, Zach and I were constantly on the go. That's also about the time that we were checking off a million items from the to-do list we had going before our big move overseas.

Speaking of which, we were told by many other seasoned FAO's and their spouses that no matter how many times FAO's have done our moves before, we would somehow always be the first household in the history of ever to make that move. And they were right.

We ran into issues with transportation, because we essentially did three movements of our household. The first is known as unaccompanied baggage. That's a 2,000 pound limit of things that would be loaded onto pallets and shipped overseas on a plane. The second is the actual household goods shipment, everything we want with us in Japan that is not coming on the plane, and gets sent over on a boat. The third is long-term storage. Basically all of our things we wanted to keep but not bring with us. Never mind the obscene amount of luggage we would be carrying on our own flights.

We kept hitting walls on the shipments, what was going where and which contracted company would be handling which moves. It was... messy, to say the least. Trying to organize what was essentially four separate categories of movements. And that doesn't include the things I set aside to give to Emma, things we threw away or donated, giving Em my car, or putting the truck in storage.

Even after getting all of that straightened out, we had issues with our flights. We had flights getting us to Tokyo, and we needed to add flights from Tokyo up to Sapporo twelve days later. Somehow, that resulted in our original flight being canceled, a new one being booked, and flights to Sapporo on the same day. Trying to get the woman in charge of all of this to sort if out was like pulling teeth from a seriously ticked off alligator. We were very seriously concerned that we wouldn't be able to fly on time, but eventually that worked out.

As if that wasn't enough, Zach being in a degree program meant he was officially assigned to the Student Detachment. Anyone who has ever been assigned to that detachment and needed to get anything at all accomplished administratively speaking understands that is a nearly impossible endeavor. They deliberately make it hard to locate any contact information for the people you would need to speak with in order to correct the smallest or largest problem. As a result, we've been in Japan for the better part of a month now and there are still some pay issues Zach is fighting to have corrected by them.

The rest of the spring was taken up with various out of town trips, more sports, my personal training sessions at a private gym, Zach having to spend a week in Hokkaido, and the loss of his grandfather at the end of May.

All of that brings me to the interesting part. We made it. We are in Japan. We spent a week and a half outside of the Tokyo area, more specifically, Hon-Atsugi and Zama. We had several days of exploring and living in two extremely tiny hotel rooms crammed with some seventeen suitcases and backpacks full of our stuff. Lesson learned there, one suitcase and one carryon per person, everything else goes with the unaccompanied baggage shipment because trying to transport all of us and all the luggage, and then fit it all into the hotel rooms, was a nightmare. We managed, but even remembering it makes my head throb.

But we are here! We made it to Sapporo, the city we will be calling home for the next two years. As of the time I'm writing this, we are still in a hotel room. Unfortunately, we didn't book it for more than two weeks, and we still don't have an apartment, so we tried to extend the stay. It is, however, one of the two busiest times of the year in our new city, so the hotel doesn't have the room for us to stay put. We pulled the trigger on booking a three bedroom AirBNB apartment, so we'll be relocating there on Saturday, and we will theoretically (hopefully!) be there until we have keys to a new home.

Speaking of headaches, the Japanese system of renting and apartment is absolutely screwy to an American. In the States, if Zach and I want to rent a place, it is (at the most) a two or three business day situation before we have keys and are hooking up utilities and scheduling a move-in of our household goods. That's after viewing several options in person, without anyone holding our hands, and we can apply for multiple properties if we need to in order to ensure we have keys ASAP.

Not here. Nope. Here, you have to hire a real estate agent. Your agent will take your must-haves and make a list of properties. They may or may not encourage you to view the listings in person, they may want you to apply for a place sight unseen. As foreigners, there are a good number of places unwilling to rent to us to begin with. But the Japanese don't state that in their listings, and they will sort of hedge around the issue without being very forthright about it. Outside of that, to rent a place, you need to have a guarantor. As I understand it, this can occasionally be an individual (must be a local native Japanese citizen), or you can use a guarantor company. They run a bunch of screenings, you have to have a local emergency contact for them to speak with, if you are also asking to use one of the property's parking spaces for your car, there is additional paperwork needed. You also need a local bank account. Which you can't get without an address. Even once you clear those hurdles and have been accepted by a guarantor, you still have to be approved by the landlord. Who may or may not handle it themselves, they may contract yet another third party to deal with you, both upon move in and move out.

So, where are we in all of this? Well, we applied for one apartment and got rejected. So we applied for another, this one actually being the same apartment rented by Zach's predecessor and his family. The hope there being that they rented to an American as their last tenant and as such will be willing to do it again. We've been screened by the guarantor company and they didn't reject us, now we are waiting for the landlord to finish their own screening before we get an answer. We're also navigating the bank account/address circle as best we can, but for now it's a waiting game. Keep your fingers crossed for us, because we are so very ready to be in our own place.

To make things even more challenging, Zach is leaving for a week on Sunday. We don't believe we will have keys before he leaves. Which is fine. Then he's back for a week and then gone for a week again. I suspect our move in date will fall in that second absence, but we'll see. We also know that our unaccompanied baggage shipment finally moved from Virginia. As of this evening, it was at an airfield in Kentucky. Fun fact, we didn't think our California King mattress would fit in the halls and doorways or elevators in Japan, so we left that in storage. The kids' mattresses are coming, but Zach and I don't have a bed here, even if we got keys tomorrow. So we'll have to shop for one and arrange delivery and set-up, as well.

Whew. That was a lot of catching up and I'm confident I forgot things. Oh!! I finished the first draft of my book! I've been super slow on edits and revisions, because life has been so crazy, but I am very slowly (molasses in January) making my way through that. Which I think I'll have an easier time with once we are settled. Especially when I have my home desk and secondary monitor back. But the first draft is done and I've been making notes for book number two!

Sapporo is a fascinating city. Tokyo had me worried. It was all tight places, an insane amount of overstimulation, tons of overhead wires. I honestly wasn't a big fan, but then I've never been a big city girl and few cities in the world come close to the size of Tokyo, both in area and population.

But Sapporo... Sapporo is much more open, the streets and sidewalks are wider. The city is about the size of LA, but it doesn't feel like it's that big of an urban area. Granted, there is a lot of it we haven't seen yet, but so far, it's very much more my pace. I'm far less anxious here than I was in Tokyo, the weather isn't disgustingly humid or hot, and the people here have been so warm and welcoming.

We've visited the shopping district almost daily. Tanuki Koji is like a open air but covered bazaar. More than two hundred shops and restaurants attract tons of people daily, and for good reason. You can find almost anything you want there, and if it isn't there, it's off one of the streets that intersect with it. Or in Pole Town, Sapporo's underground mall, a place I can't wait to explore more of, sans my acquisitive offspring. We've been to Maruyama Park, the zoo, various shrines. I took the kids to a three-story aquarium, which sounds impressive, and is very well-done, but is definitely not on the scale of either Monterey or Atlanta. The city has so much to offer, and we haven't even gotten outside of it to explore Hokkaido as a whole yet, although we are very much looking forward to doing so.

We are inheriting Zach's predecessor's car tomorrow. So we will, as a family, have a bit more independence than relying solely on walking and public transit. (Huge shout out to Google Maps for getting us through some confusing places in the last three weeks.) That said, Zach and I both acquired Japanese driving licenses, and he has driven the car a couple of times, but I have not. I'm not overly eager to learn to drive on the left side of the road. I'm sure I will get there eventually, but for now, I'm happy sticking to my role as a passenger princess.

Through all of it, I miss Emma. Leaving her in the States hurt. And as always, I miss Hannah. There are so many amazing things she would have loved about the places we've been since we lost her. Having these adventures without my first two girls beside me is something I'm not sure I will ever get used to.

Oh, and while I still see the world through Hannah's lens, I'm using my own camera now. Zach bought me a new camera for my birthday, and it is amazing. But Hannah's will always be special, and I will keep it with me through our travels.