All boxed up

It's midnight and the moving company will pick up our stuff tomorrow. We've finally finished packing. Our home has turned into a sea of boxes.

Boxes, boxes everywhere.

At least we have the good fortune to keep the apartment here in Osaka. We don't need to pack everything, and we'll still have some pots and pans, furniture, fridge and washing machine around when the moving company leaves. And a good thing it is, since we don't actually leave for Okinawa ourselves until the 24th.

We've been making a schedule of things to do during the move. Changing your residence is fairly easy, but there's a fair amount of paperwork involved. The crucial step is actually submitting the moving-in notification (転入届) at the city office and getting an official address. Everything else — get electricity and gas, register your name stamp, open a local bank account, buy a car, get internet — really depends on this one step.

It's not difficult; you just need a corresponding moving-out notification from your previous place, and a signed contract for a place to live. But there's a pile of things to do right after the submission, and the new appliances, our things from Osaka, and various company people will arrive in the middle of it; we had to draw a flowchart to make sure we could be at all the places we need to at the same time.