the little travelers * travel blog

Settling in

After a five hour cleaning fury, we were ready to move in. It's hard to imagine a place so tiny could have so much dust. We are renting a house from a friend of a friend of a friend. The kind owner has stored many old boxes of boxes (my mother has this same fixation- pretty empty boxes that maybe one day will come in handy) on the top shelf of the only closet. Cardboard boxes are a dust mite's haven- particularly the old ones. After removing all of these and double bagging them I got to business with my dust mite dander neutralizing spray and a tiny powerhouse of a Japanese vacuum cleaner. I don't understand how our US versions are twice as big with half the suction. I wrapped all the futons in dust impermeable casings and placed them into the closet, put our clothes into the closet, squeezed in the girls' toys and flattened our duffle bags into the very same closet. This is where previous travel to a country comes in handy. I knew we would never have the storage to store empty suitcases so we used all duffle bags that could be stored flat at the tippy top of a closet. If I didn't mention it before, I lived in Japan for 3 years teaching English in my early 20's.

We arrive in Kyoto

After much planning we arrive on a snowy morning in March. The strangest part of travel for me this time with kids is the amount of luggage! I've always prided myself in packing light, but I never had a child with a dust and mold allergy before. One HUGE duffle bag was full of bedding only. We have NASA designed pillows that are dust impermeable, mattress encasings (that will become futon encasings), dust mite neutralizing sprays for the tatami mats, our own laundry detergent from the allergy store and then a whole pharmacy of nasty pharmaceuticals that are 'just in case' and then the whole arsenal of the 'natural' stuff we use until emergency status arises. Hopefully all will go well, but I have to say I was rather mortified when we hailed our mini bus from the airport and our luggage outnumbered us by more than two to one. I felt ashamed and wanted to explain that I am actually the lightest traveler I know. I once spent a month in south east Asia with a book size Jansport. We were moving into 300 sq ft with 150 sq ft worth of baggage. uh oh.