Embedded Files
A view of Roppongi Hills
Been a while since the last update. We had fallen into a pretty consistent routine for the past couple weeks. School, Work, Homework, Recover, Repeat. There were a couple fun outings though!
Akihabara
A shopping district in Japan known for it's electronics, video games, anime figurines, and arcades. Perfect for a couple nerds!
I had a goal in mind when coming to Akihabara... Find a portable monitor for my laptop. Turns out that going from 3 monitors to one makes work a bit difficult. While we were looking for the monitors, we also took some time to enter any interesting looking shops.
We went into store after store filled with Manga/Anime goods, just to look around. The amount of verticality in this area is crazy! Each store was pretty skinny, but would usually have 3-6 floors with a tiny staircase or escalator. It was a lot of fun to travel up the another floor and see what sort of surprises awaited us.
Another fun thing about Akihabara is the amount of arcades they have, and how popular they are! There were a bunch of games that we didn't recognize; a lot of them were rhythm games we had never seen before. The people playing on them would have special gloves, and their hands were moving faster than my eyes could track. I can only imagine how many hours they've invested.
Tech store on the left, Anime related places on the right. These places are multiple floors, the verticality is crazy!
I tried out one of these screen rhythm games. Kinda like playing a piano! Tough on the fingers though, gloves recommended.
Some of the merch was ridiculously priced
What Marlena ended up buying, from her favorite Manga (Haikyuu!)
Domino's
One day for supper, we didn't really know what to eat. There was a Domino's nearby, so we decided to finally try that! t was our go-to back in Canada, so wanted to see how it compared in Japan.
Overall, it was pretty tasty, but everything was sweeter than the pizza back home (and obviously a bit smaller). Left is a pretty normal Pepperoni, Green Pepper, and Spinach pizza. Right was one of their specials: A fried chicken, bbq sauce, and ham pizza.
This meal was surprisingly expensive, around $40. Much more expensive than back at home. We did get delivery, which had a slightly higher fee.
Moving!
By this point, we were at about 4 weeks in the Share House. Both Marlena and I had had enough. There were a variety of things we didn't like:
People coming and going throughout the night, disrupting sleep.
People shining bright lights around the room in the middle of the night (presumably looking for their stuff).
Before bed, some people in our room would douse themselves in Axe, smelling up the room.
The floors were disgusting. Walking around in socks would leave the bottom of your socks almost black.
The kitchen was rarely clean, which made it unpleasant to cook in.
It would often smell like Bleach, because the cleaners came in 3 times a week and their form of "cleaning" was just spraying stuff with Bleach and wiping it away.
So in the past week, Marlena and I had been hard at work preparing a list of places that we would be interested in. This involved a lot of web browsing and Google Translate. We eventually decided to go with primarily English sites, as they often offered short-term leases and had places that were furnished. These places often had lower fees, and didn't have the famous "key money" which is offered to the landlord as a gift for allowing you to rent from them.
We eventually shortlisted to about 15 of the top places, mostly from one company that seemed to have higher quality offerings. Unfortunately, as we started sending off emails, we kept getting back messages along the lines of "That place is no longer available". This was a bummer, because they showed up as available online, and meant a lot of our research was for naught.
At the end of the day, we went with one of our last options, a small-looking Studio that was a bit more expensive than other options. It was relatively simple to get though... Fill out a few forms, send pictures of our IDs, and then pay the invoice. Then voila! We had a place!
Our spreadsheet of all the places that were "Acceptable"
Our New Apartment!
Our Entryway. Take shoes off inside and leave them on the tile.
Right of the Entryway has a convenient storage area. Great place for suitcases.
Also in the front entryway is our Toilet (far door on the right in first image). Complete with a fancy Bidet.
A view of our living area! Kitchen on the left, with some shelving beside.
AC is at the top of the shelving, and the door to the bathroom is on the right.
Looking the other direction from the bed. Slightly more space than we expected from the photos on the web.
Our small kitchen. A half sized fridge, mini microwave, single induction burner, and surprisingly wide sink. No counterspace though, making food prep a bit annoying.
Our bathroom area is pretty nice!
I like the shower too, looks fancy
A little bit short though. I'm almost touching the ceiling in there...
The Area
We are living in Roppongi, which turns out to be a somewhat rich area. That means there are a lot of fancy restaurants near here, and the malls all have super expensive stores (Gucci, Louis Vuitton, etc...). The tiny parking lot in our building has a lot of BMWs, Mercedes, and other fancy cars.
The one advantage though is that there are many co-working spaces nearby. For working, I prefer to get out of the house. Especially in a small apartment, it is nice to go somewhere else. So far, I've been the 5 different places, and I think I've settled on my favourite! A nice place called "Blink" that has plenty of positive reviews, a good "vibe", and an on-site cafe.
Also, super hilly in this area. Our last area (Koto-ku) was super flat, because it was pretty much a port area that was built-up land. Our building specifically is in a small valley, so no matter which direction we go, we have to climb some pretty steep hills.
Overall, we like the area. It'll take some getting used to though as we find out where everything is nearby. Need to find some more "affordable" places to eat, can't keep paying these expensive restaurant prices 😅
Google Sites
Report abuse