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Nine years ago, when Jem and I came to Japan for our honeymoon, we (of course) went to Disneyland. Jem bought a new Disney hat, and it promptly blew off on a ride. We went to lost and found, figuring, what the heck, we may as well see if anyone finds it. They didn’t find it that day, but we filled out all the forms with our address and phone number and figured oh well, it was just a hat. A few days after returning from Japan, Jem’s phone began ringing. It was Tokyo Disneyland, they had found his hat. We had a lot of difficulty understanding them over the phone, but we figured it didn’t really matter, there was no way they would ship a hat back to the U.S. Well, a few days later a DHL international package package arrived with his hat in it.

Since that moment, we knew Japan was a place where your belongings go out of their way to find their way home to you. A couple of times this summer, we got separated from the kids, at a park, in a store. Instead of panicking, we remembered that if Japan went to those lengths to return Jem’s hat, they would find our children and make sure they are returned to us. Of all the countries in the world, this is the one where we did not need to worry about where our kids were. They would find their way back to us.

We had two incidents this trip were we saw the Art of Finding Lost Objects unfold before us. The first was on our way to Okinawa from Tokyo when Amalia left her backpack full of her toys on the train to the airport. We realized it within a couple of minutes of getting off the train, and went back into the train to see where it was. It was not there. As we were debating when the last time was we saw it, a nice man came out of the train to tell us that it had been left in the train car and another passenger had taken it to the station master. Sure enough, when we got up to the station master, he had the stuffed animals and dresses for said stuffed animals out on his counter. I immediately pointed at it and us and Amalia and said “ours” … he spoke no English but understood. He handed me a form to fill out with a companion card in English spelling out what I was supposed to fill out where, asked for my passport and after the appropriate forms were completed, we had the backpack back with all the toys. That was on the early side of our trip.

Toward the end of the trip (our last night to be exact), I, silly distracted me, set my phone down on the seat next to me on the evening Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto. The train was on its way to Shin-Osaka, so the Kyoto stop was one stop before, and quite brief, about 1 minute to get everyone off the train. In all the scurrying, I left my phone on the seat. I realized it once we were on our way to the hotel. I went back to the station and asked the station attendant and he told me to go to Shin-Osaka in the morning (a city about 30 minutes away) and go to lost and found there.

So, the next morning, I got up hours before we needed to check out of the hotel. Our flight out of Kansai Airport was at 6 pm, so I had some time, but it was either the Shin-Osaka lost and found or bust. If they hadn’t found it, or maybe they found it later, there would be no time to get the phone delivered to me before we left Japan. And unlike Disney, Japan Rail was clear they did not send packages outside of Japan.

I set out from the hotel at 730 am. I caught an 8 am train to Shin-Osaka. At Shin-Osaka, I wandered across the entire station before finding this tiny office of Lost and Found. I was certain my phone would never be found again. I explained in very few English words “left phone on train” and showed my ticket with the train number, seat number and date. He told me to wait a moment and vanished in the back. And…yes, indeed, he returned 2 minutes later with my phone!! I had to put in the passcode in front of him, and fill out all the forms with my passport number, but I had my phone! Japan works exactly as it is supposed to. I had had a restless night worrying about it, but I did keep saying to Jem, “this is Japan. I am annoyed that I have to go to another city to get my phone, but I know that I have a 98% chance of getting it back.” I had my phone back by 8:35 am. In a weird way, finding my phone made me even sadder to be leaving Japan later that day.

So, we spent a couple of weeks in an apartment in Sapporo trying to get a sense of what “Living in Japan” might be like. But we also spent a couple of days taking in the key sights of Sapporo, and there were plenty.

Famous clock tower

TV Tower, modeled after the Eiffel Tower,

To die for views

We were fortunate to catch part of the Flower festival

We made it to Mt Moira Ropeway, with its cute mascots and great views (mascots are a thing in Japan, many famous tourist sites have unique mascots. We ended up with lots of little stuffed animals from many different places.)

Susukino (which has the advantage of my being able to read the 4 Japanese hiragana that make up that word) was great. Big lights, big city. Classic Japan (like Shinjuku or Shibuya in Tokyo)

God, hot dog and rocks indeed. Sapporo is awesome. Can’t wait to come back.

Well, as is no surprise to anyone who knows us, we have too much luggage. Way too much luggage. We started out with three max capacity suitcases for the four of us and three max capacity carry-ons. We are now up to 5 suitcases. For about a week, our trip became about the suitcases. Which ones could we leave for a couple of days behind in luggage storage. Which ones could we ship to our next destination, knowing that if we sent it to a post office (common in Japan), we might find no one speaking English there at time of retrieval.

Well, we finally amassed all 5 suitcases on the evening of our Okinawa departure, and in big American cliche form (big Americans, with big voices, and big suitcases and lots of big suitcases), we made it to our flight from Okinawa to Sapporo. I am officially a cliche. I really dislike being a cliche, I am a “when in Rome” type tourist and I was the opposite of when in Rome this time.

What is in 5 suitcases you might ask? Well, everyone in the family easily rattled off multiple items that were brought “just in case” and “just for comfort.” We have a pair, and 2 spares of everything, and then a few more. I think it is time to go down to 1 pair, and 1 spare. That will shave about 1/3 off our items.

In addition, Japan is the land of gifts. We get cute little gifts everywhere we go. We got a cute little toiletry bags for the kids at two hotels = four more little bags of stuff to carry. We are given cute kid slippers to wear indoors.

We also received nice (though not as cute) adult slippers too that are great for getting out of the shower. We love the Japanese toiletries. I didnt bring much in way of toiletries so I could pick up the ones in hotels and just use those. But there are so many, now I am carrying around bags of toiletries.

And then, of course, the Chandus. You might remember this from our earlier post?

The Disney purchases that are almost half a suitcase themselves. They are soft, cute and totally unnecessary.

So then of course, we had to buy this:

We are definitely taking lessons here about how not to be cliches next time, but in the meantime, we had a real problem. So, we took care of it by shipping home three boxes of household goods/purchases. We were very lucky, and with the help of some pointing, Google Translate, and general context (e.g. walking into a Japanese Post Office with two suitcases), we were able to get the three boxes shipped home. By boat, so we will see those items in September. No problem…which in and of itself should have shown us we really didn’t really need most of that stuff in Japan.

One of our goals for the summer was to actually “live” in Japan. By which I meant get an apartment, find a grocery store, learn to get around by train or bus and just go about daily life and see what it was like. For June, since it starts getting hot elsewhere in Japan, we chose to go north to Sapporo in Hokkaido. Yes, where they make the beer. Asahi is brewed there too. It was nice and temperate there as this fancy thermometer on the side of the building told us. (The other time we saw it, it read 18. That day, we needed socks and jackets)

Our apartment was some distance from downtown Sapporo with the touristy sights (like the building with the thermometer) but that worked out very well for us. We found a condo-tel airbnb with two bedrooms, kitchen and nice bathroom. On the third floor of this building.

Northeast of the apartment about 12 minutes walking distance was a regional JR station; in the direct opposite direction (southwest), was a subway, but for convenience, we also took the bus in front of our building; it took about 20 minutes to downtown Sapporo. The apartment was excellent for the goal of “living” in Japan — it was located where people actually live, and shop, and work, and as far as we could tell, we were the only tourists for about a mile around. The place was within walking distance of not one, but two, Daiso (which are found in LA, and are like high end dollar stores). We also found two very nice grocery stores, a “Coop” and a “Big House.” It is very helpful that grocery stores use Latin/English characters for the names of their stores.

On the ground floor of the building next door to ours was a Ramen joint with a very friendly owner. We ate several meals there.

The suburban location of the apartment was a good 30 minutes away from the main sights, but well in line with what I wanted in terms of living in Japan. I even found a children’s library, with assistance from the Sapporo City English line. It was on the sixth floor of the Shiroishi ward city hall, at the exit of the Shiroishi subway stop. I never would have found it if I had not been able to call the City of Sapporo and ask about child friendly city services in English. They had plenty of English language books and a small play area. Great for a rainy day.

There were several, and I mean several — like half a dozen — children’s parks within five minutes walking distance from our house. The girls got daily park outings, even once in the rain wearing their swimsuits.

There were other restaurants, that were not used to seeing tourists, We had a lot of really nice experiences, with super friendly owners, like eating surprisingly good paella in this Spanish restaurant 3 blocks from the apartment. (The Sangria was not good, on the other hand)

With all the other travel, we ended up not allowing enough weeks to just “live” there, which was a regret since we really enjoyed “living” in Japan. We lived the life of the immigrant, trying to make our way around the requirements of daily life without understanding the language or the culture. We were 99% illiterate and unfamiliar with the norms. It was disconcerting. Yet, for me, familiar, as I still remember my first year in the U.S. and then my year in France and summer in Germany where it was similar. And now, my goal for the coming year is to actually learn Japanese and come back next summer to perfect it! I am not sure if my almost 50-year-old brain can handle it.