Moving IN

WEEKEND!!!!!!!!!! Finally.... I have been in Japan for about 2 weeks now, and life is starting to catch up to me. This month has gone by pretty fast, going to Beijing, waiting for my visa, starting work, blah blah blah- I have finally settled into my room in OOMORI Tokyo, and have began my internship working for Hartford life insurance doing data mining. So many things have happened in the past two weeks that I don't know where to begin... well.... lets start from day one...

I arrived at the Tokyo international airport on the 20th of july at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. It is called the Tokyo international but it is situated in the prefecture next to Tokyo lol. It takes about 1 hour to get the city by train or about 2.30 hours to get there by bus. Since I've been to Tokyo before a couple of times, I knew exactly where to go and what to do, so there aren't any adventure stories about getting to the city. So I got through customs, got my HUGEASS suitcase that weight about 20? Kilos (multiple that by 2.2-2.3 to get pounds for you American folks), got a ticket and hopped on to the bus bound for Shinjuku. Shinjuku in the heart of Tokyo and it is also has the famous crossing that is often shown with any TV program talking about Japan. The train station handles about 3 million peeps a day, and works like a giant maze (trapping another quarter million). Anyways, this place was nowhere near where I lived but I had to go and get my keys and sign my apartment contract.

After I got my apartment stuff settled I jumped on to a taxi and headed straight for my shared apartment... which was directly across the city from where I had been. The ride took like 5000 yen which is about $50 USD..... but not even god was gonna make me hail my heavy suitcase to the train station and go there by train.

My room is pretty nice, probably the biggest in the whole apartment, and has a huge window with a great street view. I was quite satisfied with everything, except they didn't give me anything that I needed to live with.... no blankets, no covers, no pillow... basically all i had was a frame and a mattress. Mission 1: get crap. The building itself is quite well situated and there are quite a few department stores and dollar shops... so i cruised around there to pick up the things that I needed.

Funny things happened while i was trying to find everything. I mispronounced the Japanese word for 'pillow (makura)' as the word for 'tuna (maguro)'... should of seen the guys face when i was trying to animated the action of sleeping on a pillow but actually saying tuna tuna at the same time. In the end, pillow purchased.

Everything else was okay. I couldn't find a blanket, so I ended up getting a very large towel instead, didn't quite understand what i was thinking... Anyways, I got most of the basic stuff that i need for the night and I headed back to my den.

Later, I found out that my pillow case was actually a size smaller then my pillow... so my solution: try and stuff the pillow into the smaller case.

Result: didn't work... a quarter couldn't fit into the case and it was so stuffed that I felt like I was sleeping on a book-

Since I had been up since 7 am, I was ready to catch up with some Zs. So I said goodnight to some hallmates that I met and retreated back to my room. As I started to change to go to bed, I noticed something odd.... My room has a huge window facing the streetings... with buildings across from me. The view was great and all BUT they didn't give me any curtains. Whoops... *was about to take off my pants*... couldn't do anything now, it's 11 and all the stores are closed =( So I put my shirt back on and got some shorts, turned off the light and pasted out.

I have managed to steal a double mattress from the hallway and mount it on my single bed and the ledge by the giant window- it worked out fine except I can't sleep with just my boxers on until i get some curtains. I didn't want to scare the old people living across the street from me or the people that are walking on the street and happened to look up at my building-