Transition time again

Waiting for the water to boil
Originally uploaded by Shanti, shanti.

After a long hot summer it's almost time to go back to work. I've been trying to take it easy so I can lower myself in gently but I can feel the stress mounting already. The good thing is that I know time will pass more quickly while I'm working. That means we'll be back in New Zealand in no time at all, I hope.

We went shopping in "Kitchen town" in Tokyo where restauranteers shop for bits and bobs and it was lots of fun. We've bought a whole set of (8) blue Japanese pottery plates to take back home and also some gorgeous ramen bowls and a few other things. In the 15 years we've been together we've only ever had $2 shop types things so it's lots of fun to get a few nice things that we'll actually want to keep. before it was always, "Oh just get something that looks OK but we can bear to part with when we move on". Hopefully in a couple of years we can buy a house to put this stuff in so that we can keep it all when we go off travelling or working abroad. I guess living in this tiny space has left me craving "stuff" and "places to put stuff".

It often feels like we are camping here. We roll out our futons and bedding every night and pack them away in the morning, we use a little two burner camping type cooker (Thankfully we don't have to pump it like the old camping cookers!), the lack of insulation so the gales blow freezing wind through in winter and it's oven-like in summer, we have to chop one ingredient at a time for lack of cooking space, and we actually have a real foldable camping table set up in the kitchen in an attempt to make more surface area, lastly, we mostly sit on the floor. It's really fun for a while, but three years is a bit much and we're ready to have a real, full-sized sofa, chairs, and a bed. Oh, and I'd love to do sun salutations without having to work around the ceiling lamp!