four

Today was the hiki-watashi day. We gathered at the house at 10:00am with (from left) Yamada-san, the sales rep, Yoshimura-san, the site foreman, and Takahashi-san, the architect. We sat down in the tatami room and did the formalities--including receiving the keys--that made the house officially ours.

I got kind of emotional. There's still a few things that have to be done: fixing the handrails of the second floor windows, etc., but the house is in our hands, and coming a day after my birthday, it's a rare present.

They said they were all kind of sad to leave this location--that everyone who'd worked here had a hard time finishing the job and walking away.  Suzuki-san, the master carpenter who built the house, raved about the location so much that all the carpenters of the company held their annual summer barbecue on the beach in front of the house, and they've decided to come back every year. Yoshimura-san told us he'll be bringing his kids here in the summer, and Yamada-san lives only a few minutes away, so we hope we'll see him fairly often. We've become friends with them all in a very short time.

Back in Tokyo now, packing up a storm. Four days to the move.