The Hole

Moving Day: October 1st started out well. Winston and I had our lease signed by 9:30, the sun was shining, and we had ourselves a little cleaning party.

Winston and I at the station bright and early, on our way to sign the lease!

A typical morning at the station

Pre-game shrimp burger

cleaning....

After we finished packing and cleaning, Winston and I were pretty excited, mainly due to the fact that our new apartment has old school skeleton keys. Clearly we're easily excitable.

Then the movers arrived. Let it be known that these guys loaded our entire apartment into their truck IN 15 MINUTES! I timed them, for lack of anything better to do. I just stared at them in awe. I tried to take pictures of them in action, but they were seriously too fast for the shutter on my camera. They were the Olympians of moving. They were the Cat's Pajamas.

mover in action

moving van

teamwork

Then we got to our new apartment...and I cried... literally. We live above a grocery store and a karaoke club. This is not as wonderful as it sounds. The stairwell smells like salty peanut farts. THE WHOLE FLOOR shares a bathroom AND A SHOWER. No "little girls' room" or "little boys' room"... it's all co-ed, like the bathroom fro Ally McBeal, only dodgy. REALLY DODGY.


the urinal that's neighbors with the western style toilet and the squatter....yay

the peanut fart stairs.

here's the one shower on our floor....

here's the shower... I wear flip flops.

Upon seeing my reaction, Winston agreed completely that the place is a dump. So we named our new apartment "the hole." Why? Well...

it's not a black hole

it's not a pot hole

it's not a Hobbit hole (man, I wish it was)

it's a different kind of hole, the kind that is prefaced by a word worthy of a good soap rinse of the mouth that begins with an "S".... Get imaginative and you'll get the idea.

Now, The Hole does have it's strong points.

1. It has ample closet space (a hard thing to find)

2. It fits all our furniture and other stuff comfortably

3. There's hot water in the kitchen and Internet.

4. Once I organized, it was kinda cute (as long as your willing to ignore the fact that the wood looks rotten, the walls are stained, the screens on our windows mysteriously disappeared, the movers broke our desk, and the kitchen is a dark cave-like hallway).

this is what our futon looks like all folded up. it makes more space this way.

our bedroom

half of my closet.

the other half

our main room.

Our actual apartment isn't half bad now that we're about 3/4 of the way moved in, but the worst part is that we live right on a major highway. It's really loud, I think I got about 3 hours of sleep last night. Arg.

the view from our window.

Highway 2. the reason I get NO SLEEP here at our new apartment.

So, while the new apartment isn't 100% bad, it's definitely a hole. Since we have a month-to-month lease Winston and I are on the apartment hunt once again. We're going to take it slow, and make sure we work together to find the right place to live out the rest of our time here in Tokyo. We're both a little tired of all the moving around.

Until then, I'm going to ask my lovely and artistic cousin Julia to send me load of her artwork to decorate my bland walls. That way I can transform this hole into an art gallery.

Julia and her equally lovely sister Jenny made me this cute sign when I was home this summer. I think some artwork is just what the decorator doctor ordered.

I'm hoping the apartment grows on me, and the more we get settled in the less I want to cry. Then I take a shower in my flip flops in lukewarm water with zero water pressure and my will to move becomes ever stronger. I'll keep you posted...literally. I guess this is what I get for assuming any building with skeleton keys is cool. Lesson learned.