Craziest Move Ever!
It was October 2014 when we decided to move to Japan. My husband and I received a letter from the management company of the apartment we were living in. It said the apartment building was under a plan to be demolished in the near future, and so all the tenants were asked to make plans to move out by the end of the year. My husband and I loved the apartment and had lived there for almost 5 years. It was located in FiDi (Financial District in Manhattan), right above the Fulton Street Station. The location was so convenient to go anywhere in the city, and we just loved the vibe of the neighborhood.
With our son, who had just turned one, and a 40-pound border collie, we’d probably need a more spacious apartment. This meant the best option was to move out of Manhattan. However, my husband wasn’t the biggest fan of long commutes. He preferred moving across the ocean vs. crossing the East River or Hudson River everyday. If we had to leave Manhattan, we might as well leave the country! Why not?! We were ready to start our new life… in Japan! So we bought one-way flight tickets for January 1, 2015.
Both my husband and I worked until New Year’s Eve. I still remember sitting in my office at 8:00 PM trying to wrap up, which seemed impossible. There were a few other colleagues still working on the floor, too (yes, it was New Year’s Eve and that’s how it was for an office of a Japanese finance institution.) Finally, my boss told me, “OK, it’s time to go now. You are flying to Japan tomorrow, right? Better get out of here right now!” I am not sure many people have had the experience of being kicked out of the office by his/her boss at 8:00 PM on the last day of work. I collected my things, including a bunch of flowers from my colleagues, and rushed out of the office. My office was in the Rockefeller area, so it was filled with tourists. To them, I probably looked like a woman hurrying to a New Year’s Eve party after work.
They were right, sort of. My husband and I had a packing party going on at home. And my boss was right. We really were flying to Japan the next morning, on New Year’s Day. So we packed, packed, and packed with lots of crazy arguments. We must have looked like two funny characters from a comedy show. I am very grateful that my son was a good sleeper. He was sound asleep during the crazy packing party.
The party didn’t stop there though. We had a tradition of going to Central Park to see the fireworks at midnight on New Year’s Eve, and all the empty boxes didn’t stop us to skip one of our favorite annual events. So we put on our heavy jackets and with our one-year-old son sleeping in his stroller peacefully, off we went to Central Park! Some friends were there to enjoy the fireworks with us and to say goodbye. We didn’t forget to take a proof photo to show our son and tell him that we were in Central Park on New Year’s Eve of 2015, the night before we moved to Japan.
Hello 2015! We went straight back home and continued packing. We were fortunate that we had a friendly super who told us that we didn’t have to clean and could leave little stuff in the apartment across the hallway. We were one of the last two tenants left in the entire building. I used to see huge plastic bags in the trash/recycle room on the ground floor of the building and complained “young guys don’t know how to separate recycles!” But now we were the ones who did exactly that. Oh well, we didn’t have time to stop and think at all. We had to finish everything by 7:30 AM, when the movers came to pick up all the 40 boxes to put in a container to ship to Japan.
At 8:30, we closed our apartment door behind. Goodbye to our Manhattan home! It was the weirdest feeling. I was so sad, excited and tired at the same time. With all that mixed, I didn’t even have a chance to get emotional. We got in the limo, just like a family taking a long trip abroad. It seemed so unreal, looking at the Manhattan skyline as we crossed the East River heading to the JFK Airport. So long New York City!
I still don’t know how we organized and crammed everything in such a tight schedule. I had moved many times - I moved back and forth between home and Tokyo, from home to New York, and a few times within Manhattan, but this surely was the craziest of all! Once we arrived at our new home in Japan, time around us slowed down like 90%. Can you imagine? It’s like walking in the Niagara Falls then floating on the quiet surface of Lake Saiko, one of the Mt. Fuji Five Lakes. At least I still had 40 boxes to unpack and a one-year-old boy who kept me going at the same speed as I was in New York City!