Ahh we finally made it to Japan! After something like 22 hours of travel, John, the cats, and I are settling into our apartment and new life, in a total fog.  I started this blog post at 4am this morning and decided that I didn’t make any sense and therefore gave up on it until I had a good nights sleep.  I’m not even sure where to begin about our journey to the other side of the world.  Literally, moments after stepping foot into our apartment I wanted to pass out from exhaustion.  The stress of the day just came crashing down and we were out by 7pm, which is why my friends, I started to blog at 4am because jet lag is a real b*tch.

That brings me to now, it’s like 10am here and I’m feeling that in a few hours I’m going to completely crash into a state of exhaustion.  In the mean time, I’m keeping busy by blogging about my first day, or morning I guess, in Japan.  WHAT?!? We live in Japan now, which at this moment in time still feels like a vacation.  Even though we have our two cats,  four very large suitcases of stuff, an air and sea shipment on the way, and an apartment, it still doesn’t feel real.

I had goals of taking photos to document the moving process, however, my anxiety was so out of control, this is all I got:

Our journey started two days ago now (weird to process).  My dad so graciously took us to the airport with all of our stuff and our two cats.  The anxiety and anticipation could be cut with a knife for John and I.  Seriously! We were pretty much numb to the whole fact that we were in process of moving to the other side of the world! Did I mention we moved to the other side of the world? lol

Check-in at the airport was quick and painless and thankfully Sarg and Gen made it through security unscathed.  However, Sarg managed to get himself out of his harness but was so scared he clinged/clawed into John.  We made it to the Delta sky lounge where our phone numbers were ported to google voice, we said our last goodbyes to our family, and had a cocktail before making our way to the plane where we would enter 14 long hours of hell.  The nice thing is Toyota will pay for us to fly business class for this move, however, being the silly cat lovers that we are, we declined and took economy comfort seats so we could take the cats on the plane with us.  Crazy, I know! Honestly, it was worth it, despite crying for the first three hours of the flight (worst three hours of my life), the cats eventually settled down and managed to make it through the other 11 hours relatively well.  The people seated around us were really friendly and no one seemed to be bothered by them.  Although, I’m fairly certain that a gentleman two rows up was allergic to cats because he sneezed throughout the entire flight…sorry dude!

14 hours later, and a birthday in the sky (yup celebrated 28 in the air and I didn’t even have a cocktail) we made it to Japan.  Of course, it’s the end of Golden week here and there was a huge line at immigration, on top of having to go through an even longer line to get our resident cards, we finally made it through to baggage claim and animal quarantine.  This brings me to the subject of why Americans can learn something from the Japanese, it’s called hospitality.  I’m not saying Americans are hospitable, but literally our luggage was on a cart waiting for us once we got our resident cards.  If that wasn’t good enough, the quarantine veterinarian was waiting for us.  She legit came running (I’m serious about the running part) up to us saying, “I’ve been waiting for you, I’m ready”.  What is said to take up to 12 hours online took all of ten minutes to have the cats certified as rabies free and considered eligible to enter the country of Japan.  WHAT A RELIEF!!! At this point we are about 20 hours into travel time, hungry, dehydrated, and just plain ready for this to be over with, but the fun didn’t end there… We still had to go through customs and also bonded baggage (apparently we have to claim our air and sea shipments prior to it’s arrival).  Once this was FINALLY all done we loaded ourselves into a van and drove an hour to our apartment.  And that my friends is when you finally break down, take a deep sigh of relief, and collapse of exhaustion…after a shower and a 7/11 sandwich because I was way too tired to do anything else.

We arrived in Japan on my 28th birthday and was partially celebrated as John coordinated with our relocation coordinator to have dessert waiting for me, but it just didn’t feel like my birthday this year.  That’s ok though, because the start of 28 is the start of this exciting adventure! Konpai!!!

Here are the cute little cakes that were waiting for me, the Japanese are so fancy!  These were amazingly delicious by the way!

This is where I will leave you.  We are settling in quite well, our cats took to the apartment better then I thought.  They are eating, drinking, and doing all their normal cat like activities without any issue.  It’s like they didn’t spend 22 hours, in the carrier from hell.  Day one in Japan has only just begun and we have many more to enjoy, as soon as I can wrap my mind around the fact that I live here.  Cheers!