My Woes

So It's 8:15 in the morning for me and Sam's still asleep. So to amuse myself quietly I thought I'd explain why I'm still looking for an apartment.

I did have an apartment in Hamamatsu-chou, as earlier posted, but apparently that was just a big scam. The day before I was supposed to get on a plane to Japan, so last Friday, I found myself yelling choice words as some guy in London for something like 20 min straight, and then scrambling to find a place to stay last minute in Japan for Sam and I. That was a fun day.

What happened was that we signed the contract, I sent him the deposit and first month's rent, and two days later he was supposed to get me the keys. That was what was written in the contract. Then he tells me that he's not going to give me the keys until I pay him more money. When I said, hell no not until I get the keys, he just kept arguing with me. We did that for almost a week until Friday came along and I finally said there is no way I'm sending you more money before I get the keys and try them in the lock of the apartment so you can either get me the keys by today, give me back my money, or I can report you to the FTC and IC3 run by the FBI. Then he abruptly stopped answering my calls, emails, or IMs.

I ended up finding a temporary room in Koenji for only $20 a night each. Sam and I have bunk beds in a tiny room about the size of my single dorm room at UVM and we share the kitchen, bathroom, shower, and living area with three other guys right now, all of whom are really nice.

I actually went out to dinner with the guy from San Francisco, John, and his girlfriend (?) Yuri last night. We spoke Japanese pretty much the whole dinner because Yuri doesn't really speak English. So hard, so fun! Actually, I was kinda surprised how easy it was. It wasn't easy, but it was a lot easier to communicate than I thought it would be. We went to an outdoor cheapo cheapo yakitori place. It was so cool! It was nice and breezy and just seedy enough to make me feel kinda bohemian or something. haha. I don't know. Yuri was saying how many Japanese people don't like liver yakitori so of course that meant I had to try it. Looks like normal yakitori, right?

But it tasted kinda dry. It had a very funky texture. Kinda chalky. I liked it, probably because it was smothered in sauce, but I liked the other stuff we got better. We also ordered quail eggs and regular yakitori. The liver actually went really well with my drink. It was calpis and gin. The chalky with the sweet and wet was pretty nice. I plan to tell people it was premeditated.

Then we met up with the two other guys living with us. They are both from Sweden and go to grad school together. They're here doing architecture internships for a year. We tried to go to this bar with penguins everywhere to hear some live music, but when we got there the musicians were packing up so instead we found this new place that had just opened where we could sit outside and talk. I don't drink ever, so I asked the waiter for a recommendation IN JAPANESE (you guys annoyed by my random burst of "IN JAPANESE" yet?)

Ended up ordering this:



Pretty right? Look at the cool little thing they did with the orange! I believe it is a mix of some sort of peach juice and gin. 'Twas tasty. The best part of the bar though was that you could sit outside. That's the one thing I hate about Tokyo, you can never sit outside! So yesterday was a good day. I got to sit outside and eat twice. (*^-^*) me happs.

So to sum up, my woes are: got cheated out of some money, almost got stuck in Japan with no place to stay, living in a seedy area (but loving it!), and Tokyo doesn't let you eat outside. The last one is by far the worst.