And that is the beginning of how our living room sat empty for 6 weeks.
Carri gets to town and joins the butt testing furniture hunt. We sit on so many things. See tons of stuff that is okay, but none that inspires us. My Jewish side comes out and I start feeling all squirrley about paying lots of money for something that I don't love, love, love. So the hunt continues. During one such venture down a rabbit hole, I stumbled upon EUCAS and oh did my heart sing!!!
Inspiration found! Now, to find it in real life. After days of extensive googling we found a shop about an hour south that carries the brand. Fingers crossed and snacks packed we set off! Beautiful store with so many pieces that we loved. But no couches. It did have a very kind shopkeeper who spoke no English. But with Google Translate and the Internet we learned that they could maybe possibly order the couch for us. But between our language barrier and indecisive skills, we we're quite ready to trust a system we didn't really understand (ha! systems we don't understand, daily life in Japan!)
Meanwhile we figure out our shipping address (a whole nother mystery that needed solving) and placed our order. Our vision for the living room is coming together! With that order placed we head to a local shop and procure this lovely chair. Fun thing about Japan (or at least the stores we've been to) is that you buy something and they deliver. A bit bummed that we didn't get to tetris the chair into the back of the Fit, we schedule delivery for a couple weeks and return home to our empty living room just dreaming of what it will look like.
And 24 hours later another cancellation. Like exactly 24 hours later. This time I'm more confused and determined that I WANT THOSE COUCHES!!! More internet research and it's Rakuten or the lovely shopkeeper an hour away who doesn't speak English. Determined to give it one more chance I submit the order again (triple checking for no typos) and email the company trying to figure out why my order was cancelled.
Now remember, they're emailing in Japanese. I'm emailing in English. Both of us using Google Translate to decipher the emails. I try to keep things short and to the point: I need to understand. Why is my order cancelled. I need to buy the couch. And then I got a reply from my newest favorite person ever!!!!
Still not sure why it was cancelled twice, but now I'm talking to a person and we're problem solving this thing! They caught an error I made (not surprising) when I tried to order the cover but not the actual couch lol "there is an order for cloth, but no body. Is this correct" No, no it's not. The order is placed, now we wait 3 weeks to see a) are we getting couches? b) are they what we think we ordered? c) are they just as amazing as we dreamed???
As each hour passed I waited and wondered what would be showing up at our door. Finally 4:00 and the door bell rings. They're here! Our beautiful, beautiful couches are here!
Sidenote: Before we left we took pictures of some of our favorite Art, not wanting to take the risk of bringing the real ones here we made them into canvases. We had been waiting to get our furniture to hang up our art, wanting to hang them relative to our couches. It feels so good to have them up, just another step in making our space feel like our home.