Pictures of the Apartment

I took some pictures of my apartment a few days ago, to let the world know what I live like. Most readers of this blog have probably already seen them, but I may as well give you a link, just in case. This is where my pictures may be found. Enjoy.

A Summary of Past Events

Okay, so it's been a while since my last update. Quite a while. Not a single post in all of November or this half of December. That's very bad of me, I know. From now on, I promise to try to be more diligent.

Since my last post... too many things have happened for me to actually be able to write about them all. So please allow this post to mostly be an attempt at summarizing what have happened since my last post. And so, in the manner of "first things first", let's begin with the grand event of the month! Last month, I mean. I moved to Ikebukuro-honcho!!

The new apartment is great. A few of you have seen it already, at the moving in party. The rest of you should really come to see it soon, because it's really nice. A bit too cold now in winter, perhaps, and the power overloads much too easily, but other than that it is very nice indeed. It is the largest apartment I have ever had, even if you divide the total area by three to take into account the fact that I am sharing it with my two friends Legato and Linus.

I love the location this close to central Tokyo.  The gas stove is also very much to my liking (as are most of the other furniture and appliances that came with the place), but I do miss  a proper oven where I could bake cakes and cookies and gingerbread and ... and so on. The bedroom tatami floors are also great, if perhaps a bit cold this time of year, and our collection of plants have now grown to a total of five - including a palmtree. Should soon be time for number six. Our walls are now, to Linus' great regret, adorned by posters advertising various musicals such as Wicked and The Phantom of the Opera. But what did he expect when moving in with two musical loving people?

Alexandra had her leaving party sometime early November. It was a very small and cozy event taking place in Matsudo guesthouse, with only her closest of friends attending. Though normally guests are not allowed to stay after six, I had managed to get special permission to do, allowing me to be there and say my proper goodbyes before she left us all for the cold reaches of Sweden. Before she left she was really looking forward to coming home, but once she got there it didn't take many days before she really wanted to go back, so fortunately I expect to see her back in these parts of the world before long.

The next person to leave was Malin, around the end of that same month. Her goodbye party was considerably more extravagant, with a whole bunch of people, including two of our teachers, going to eat and drink in Shinjuku Kabukichou. That was followed by a night of karaoke - which of course is the thing to do in Japan. When you're not shopping, out clubbing, or otherwise spending your money on any of the varieties of kickass entertainment available here - the best to be found anywhere in the world.

In November was also Claudias birthday party, as well as the moving in party I briefly mentioned before. Other than these two events though, not much at all has happened in the way of partying or going out meeting new people lately.  The falling Swedish krona has made sure of that. Seriously, whenever has there been a more worthless currency? Sure, the Euro has fallen against the yen as well, as have the Korean won and most other currencies in the world, but none of them has fallen anywhere as much as the Swedish krona, I believe.

There is something rotten lurking just beneath the surface of the Swedish economy, I tell you. It has been lurking there for decades, making sure the country never rise to greatness. And now, in the midst of this global economical crisis, that rotten thing is quickly strangling the Swedish economy, dragging it down like a giant rock tied to a sinking ship. What this rotten thing is called is socialism, and if the Swedish people ever want to be a nation with anything but the most rudimentary kind of status in the world, they'd better heed my word and get rid of it as soon as they can.

In truth, I do not care about what they do. I am done with Sweden, never intending to go back as long as I have any kind of choice in the matter. Asia is my home, now and forever. I may spend a few years in New York or London or wherever my heart will take me for a while, but I doubt that I will ever leave the Asian continent permanently.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Where was I? Oh, yes, parties. And clubbing, going shopping with friends, hanging out in coffee shops, or just generally hanging out downtown. As all of that tend to cost more money than I currently have at my disposal, I haven't really had the opportunity to do very much of it this last month or two, unfortunately enough.

What I have done, on the other hand, is registering with a few more modelling agencies. I think I am registered with seven of them now. Nothing has come from it so far - but I have an audition for a TV commercial coming up this Saturday, followed by a small job as an extra in a Japanese TV drama on Sunday. Hopefully things will start rolling on from there. I do know I could really use the money.

I got notice from CSN a week or so ago, that apparently I will only be able to borrow about half of the money needed for tuition fees to the University of Hong Kong. Which means eather my modelling career really takes of from here on, allowing me to earn the money needed that way, or I stay in Japan for couple more years, working my way to sufficient amounts of cash the old fashioned way. Needless to say I would prefer the former, even though the idea of staying in Tokyo for a while does have its own kind of charm.

A week or two ago my computer suddenly decided to break down. Got it back today, to my great relief. And to the great relief of Legato as well, whose computer I have been occupying more than he would have preferred. What really makes me happy is the fact that all my pictures and the rest of the stuff on my hard drive was still there! I hadn't expected that, as they told me they might have had to restore the whole thing to scratch. But apparently that wasn't necessary. :D

I wrote the JLPT last weekend, by the way. The Japanese Language Proficiency Test. Level 3, to be precise. Sarah and I have a bet worth a thousand yen in effect about who gets the better result on that test. And to Sarah's great misfurtune, though of course she wont admit it until we get the actual results, those thousand yen will be mine. She knows more kanji than me, admittedly, and has a larger vocablulary as well. But I have my strong points in the grammar, and I did score really well on the other parts as well - I am sure of that. The next great challange is the level 2 test next year. It's supposedly considerably harder - but I am intent on passing it the first chance I get.

Now I can't actually come up with anything more to write about... except that I will soon need to open that Japanese bank account I have been planning to open for some time now. So with that said, I suppose I will now take my leave, get some dinner, and start studying. Cause I still haven't done that today. Should I remember anything else of interest that happened last month, I will let you know. And I do promise to be more active from now on in letting you know of my future advetures in this beautiful city. I wish you all a continued good day.

A Look at the Apartment

Once again I find myself too slow to update the blog. Things happen, and a week later I still haven't written even the slightest thing about them. Like the time last week when I called my soon to be landlord company asking for a viewing of the apartment that I and my two friends had already payed the deposition for more than two weeks earlier. Because people were still living in the apartment halfway through October, there had been no posibility to actually see it before signing up for it. So it had been a bit of a gamble. The apartment seemed nice in theory, but who knew what it would actually turn out to be like?

I wanted to know. When I called the company though, I was told that they usually couldn't offer a viewing to people who had already paid the deposition.  That to me seems a bit backwards. Either way, using my intense charm, I managed to convince them to show me the apartment later that day. So I went there, bringing one of my soon to be cotenants with me.

As it turned out, the apartment was better than we could ever have wished for.  Fully furnished, with all the furniture feeling very fresh, it really put all of our potential fears at rest - not that we really had that many. There was even a TV at around 24" standing in the central dining room, as well as a wireless router, something we had definitely expected to having to buy ourselves. The only thing I felt was missing was a real oven. So I wont be able to start baking after all. (Sorry guys, but it seems there'll be no home baked ginger bread for Christmas.) On the other hand, the kitchen did have a gas stove - but most apartments here seem to have that, so that was pretty much expected. I wish the same would have been the case back home. Gas stoves are extremely rare in Sweden outside of restaurants, which is a shame given how much better they are than their electricity-using cousins.

All three bedrooms had real tatami floors - even though it for some reason was covered up by large, ugly mats in two of the rooms.  Apparently it was because they had been marketing those two rooms as somewhat more western or something like that, which I really can't understand the point of doing. Especially as the underlying tatami mats were considerably more attractive to look at, something which the guys showing us the apartment definitely agreed with. They then gave us full permisson to remove the "western" cover mats, as long as we returned them before moving out. So it was all good there as well.

Only one of the rooms actually have a bed. Neither me or Mikael - who was the one that was with me - picked that room. The problem with a bed is that it takes up way too much of a room's total area. Sleeping on a Japanese style futon that you can fold away during the day frees up a whole lot of space. It may be harder than sleeping in a bed - the beds at my current guesthouse being the large exception, as they are hard as stone, even with the double set of futons I am using - so I acually expect it will prove to be more comfortable sleeping on tatami floors.

Another problem with the room with the bed was the western style desk taking up even more of the precious area. The other two rooms had desks of the more traditional Japanese style, low things by which you have to sit on a cushion on the floor. And they looked much more exclusive than the western desk as well. To further help along my decision for the room I chose, I just got a very good feeling in that room. Maybe the feng shui of the room just felt good, maybe it was something else. Either way, I knew that I would have to be the one living in that room.

Linus, who still haven't seen the actual apartment, had originally set his mind on the same room after looking at the floor plan. But he didn't prove to hard to convince. When I mentioned that the bed was still not taken, the remaining resistance flew away pretty quickly.

The Ace of Clubs and a River of Yoghurt

It has been too long since my last post. Too much has come in the way of me updating this blog. I will try to be more dilligent in the future.

Truth be told, I am not really sure of what this post will contain. Several things of interest have happened since the 18th, when my last post was made, but will I remember more than a few of them before I finally give up and click on Publish Post? We'll just have to wait and see.

Almost a week ago now a friend of mine found an apartment near Ikebukuro, one of the larger centers of Tokyo. Merely five stations from school, and much closer to everything else of importance than where both my friend and I currently resides, the location was obviously as good as any we could ever realistically expect to find. And the apartment itself seemed great too. Three rooms, each one six tatami mats large (that's just under 10 sqr meters) with a kitchen and dining area in the middle.

It stood clear to both of us that this apartment would be perfect. However, as expensive as it is to live in Japan, we couldn't afford it on out own. Or at least, we didn't want to afford it on our own. We needed a third person. And so the hunt began. The next morning I immediately called Sakura House (henceforth known as "the company") asking about the apartment. I told them we were very interested, not mentioning the fact that we still hadn't found out third person. 

It wasn't until later, when we were on the train on our way to Shibuya to do some shopping, that I realized I already knew a person looking to share an apartment with someone. A classmate of mine - and yet another swede. (I swear, Tokyo is crawling with them.) Though I would probably have preferred someone not of north european origin, the fact was that the clock was ticking. If we wanted this apartment, we had to act as soon as possible. There was no time to be picky.

So I called my classmate and asked him if he was interested. Getting a positive answer, I called the company back as soon as I could.  A third call would prove necessary for formality later that evening, after I'd gotten home and filled in an online form at their website, but after that second call, the apartment was indeed ours for the taking. And during the third call, I could swear the person I was talking to was flirting with me. All in all, it was a good day. I even did get some shopping done.

The next day we went to Sakura House's main office in Shinjuku to really make it official. The final contract has yet to be signed,  but the deposit has been paid, and the apartment is ours from the last of october. So that's when I'll leave Matsudo City in Chiba Prefecture for the (metaforically speaking) much greener pastures of Tokyo proper.

Speaking of pastures, I discovered something quite unexpected a few days ago. Until that time, I hadn't really been any further away from the center of Matsudo than the location of my guesthouse. I had seen no reason to. The city had enough of that small-town feeling I usually dislike so much as it was, without me having to seek out its even more outlying parts. But then one day when I was up on the roof, getting some clothes I had hung to dry there, I looked out over the parts of Matsudo where I hadn't yet set foot, and I got a real urge to go out and explore them. This might not have been so unexpected - I am nothing if not adventurous.

So out I went, out on my quest to find something new - somewhere along the way buying a Coke in one of the several thousands of vending machines spread throughout Tokyo with surroundings. After something like ten minutes my jaw completely dropped, and I stopped in admiration.  I had found a river, bordered by the most wild-looking greenery I had seen since coming to Tokyo one month before. Walking down toward the river, the place really started to feel like a scene out of some roleplaying game, like the serene little village you always run across at one time or the other throughout the adventure.

In truth I had known that the river would be there. It had been part of what I had set out to find. But seeing as I'm this close to central Tokyo, I had kind of expected it to be bordered by ... well, stone or concrete or ... anything but wilderness, actually. Instead I had found (if only just a little bit of it) true nature.

I stayed there for more than half an hour, letting all of it flow through my senses. The urge to learn how to ride that has surfaced within me this past year really struck me with full force. It was like I could even feel the horse standing before me.

But let's not linger any longer at that subject. I still have much to talk about. Like yoghurt.

When I realized a few days ago that I didn't have any breakfast for the morning after, it was already to late to go to a real department store to do anything about it. So I improvised, thinking surely they must have some kind of yoghurt in one of the convenience stores bordering the way I was walking from the station to my home. And they had. Sure, it was dringking yoghurt, but surely it can't be that liquid, I though. Surely I would be able to eat it with my cereals. I was wrong. Utterly and severely mistaken. This thing was as liquid as milk. And while I do love the taste of milk to my cereals (be it something I haven't had since I came here), there is something quite disturbing about "milk" with a strong taste of yoghurt.

The next time I have forgotten to buy my regular kind of breakfast (like today...), I will not be quite so adventurous when it comes to finding a replacement. So tomorrow I'll just buy a couple good old onigiri instead.

Food brings me to drinks, which brings me to the next subject at hand. Clubbing. Tokyo is of course the clubbing capital of the east, featuring a great many night clubs of different varieties. With that in mind, it would obviously have been next to impossible for me to have tried out everything on offer so far. But I do feel I am at least on the right way.

This weekend I went to three clubs all in all. All of them in Shibuya. One may not really count though, as I left it after merely 15 minutes. That one was Gas Panic - which is a chain owning several clubs in Tokyo, mostly in Roppongi. I've been to two of them before, and now this third one. The thing is, I hate Gas Panic. Really truly hate it. This Shibuya branch was even worse than the ones I had visited before.

It's hard to put my finger on exactly what it is I so dislike about the place(s), but it probably has something to do with the horrible interior design, the crappy DJs, the chaotic feel of the place, as well as the fact that almost everyone inside are gaijin (and most of them probably tourists). Further, there're usually so much people you can hardly move - let alone dance - and they have a rule saying you have to have a drink in your hand at all times or be kicked out. I suppose the main reason why people go there is because there is no entrance fee. As if that would ever make it worth it.

Considerably better were the two other clubs I paid a visit to this weekend. First of them was Atom. With three dance floors - playing R&B and two kinds of trance respectively - it was definitely a club in which I enjoyed spending my time. While it may not be the club with the most exclusive air - the guards were all big, black guys wearing red t-shirts, jeans and sneakers - but the place definitely had style. The entrance fee was 3000 yen, with one drink included, and the price of most of their standard drinks was 500 yen.

The other club, the one to which I went saturday, was called Womb. Somewhat hard to find, tucked into an extremely soundproof old warehouse or something on a backstreet in the middle of Shibuya, with no sign at all of its existance other than the three guards and the few other people standing outside, it really looked like the kind of place you needed five different invitations to get into. Which was the reason we walked right past it the first time around, not expecting it was really the place we were looking for.

Once we got in - which was not as easy as it would have been had we not had a girl in our company who weren't quite as old as she were supposed to be (clubs in Japan apparently require you to be 20 years of age to enter, unlike the 18 that's standard in Europe) - we were unfortunately told that the main dance floor would not be open until 4 am. I don't know if that's the way they usually do it or if it was just a one-time thing due to some problem. Either way, it did mean the smaller dance floor, the one on the bottom floor, was pretty cramped for most of the night.

The interior design of the place was really interesting. Falling somewhere in between the look of a warehouse and the place of worship for some spiritual cult, it really spoke to me, despite my usual preference for more luxurious surroundings. The music they played was unfortunately limited to techno, a genre for which I hold no particular love (I prefer R&B and house when clubbing), but dispite that I managed to have quite a good time. It was just unfortunate that we lost half of our group to some other club before the night had hardly even started.

Entrance at Womb was 2000 yen, with most drinks landing at between 500 and 800 yen a piece.