It's official...

We are Tokyo-ites. As we explained before, most of the houses here in Tokyo have a ceramic name plaque on the metal gate in front of their door. In Sapporo we could get away with our name written on a piece of paper and taped in the window over the door where houses didn't have so many metal gates and ceramic walls. But, wanting to fit in as much as possible we splurged last week to have our tile nameplate made (costing about $45 - we picked the cheapest one they had...some were priced as high as $200!!). We stuck in on the metal gate with thick double sided tape, in hopes it will stay through the rain, yet we can peal it off when we move...someday.
Having a name plate not only helps us to fit in to the neighborhood a bit more, but we declare that we'll be here for awhile and it lets the postman know who lives inside. The whole first week we didn't get any mail deliverd since we didn't have our name posted. We went through several papers covered in plastic with our name written out to realize we needed something to withstand the weather.

It also helps our neighbors understand our name, which of course is as foreign as we are. Often when we indroduce ourselves they ask us several times looking puzzled to repeat it. On the sign our name is written in Katakana which is the Japanese alphabet of 46 characters which is used just for foreign words (there are 2 other Japanese alphabets too don't forget!). Driscoll pronounced in Japanese is DO - RI- SU - KO- RU.

The other day when I returned home and walked up to the gate eyeing our fancy new sign, I said to Tim, "Hey, it looks like we really live here!"