Sometimes being indecisive helps..

Today was another of those 'why did this day have to end?' days. Finally bought a bicycle, spending too much money (Cannondale Bad Boy Disc), and had only little time to play with it before it got dark (about 18:20 or so).

Marked feature of the day: decision paralysis. First I spent 3 hours wondering if I should buy the bicycle (obviously, yes - my body cannot otherwise most likely stay in shape here anyway), and then having finally bought it, I bicycled back home and had a long nice bath. After the bath (which took bit over 1 hour), I read a book a bit and then walked to the shopping neighbourhood to buy some towels. After that, second instance of decision paralysis - I spent maybe one hour walking around, looking for restaurant that fit my criteria (undefined), and that looked a) reasonably priced and b) interesting.

After the first one month of ramen mania (maybe 20-30 cups of different noodles eaten in the shops nearby), I went through Indian food stage (quite many nice Indian restaurants both in Shinjuku and Shibuya), but despite the temptation of Indian restaurants, I had already eaten Indian twice this week.

So, I wandered on. Finally in the (ill-reputed) Kabukichou district of Shinjuku, I found reasonable-looking set menu in yakiniku (korean-ish barbeque) place. So, wondering about the quality of the food I went there.

And, much to my surprise, the food was good _and_ there was more than enough of it. Contents of the set I ate (roughly)

- kimchi (korean vegetable dish)
- some salad
- onions, mushrooms and some other vegetables fried over the fire
- some pieces of chicken (not quite sure which)
- pork ribs (nice chunks too, maybe 200-300g)
- some you-do-not-really-want-to-know bits of ox/cow
- french fries
- bowl of rice
- nice soup
- ice-cream dessert

- glass of orange juice.. and lots of water..

When the course was nearing it's end, I really wondered if I had understood the scheme correctly - was this really all for one person? (I could barely eat it all)

In the end, yes,　it was.. and grand total cost was 3037 yen (about 22 euros). Talk about cheap 2-hour quality dining experience!

Tired, I wandered home and now proceed with the anime-watching maraton - although I am already looking forward to getting my desk on monday so I can finally buy a larger monitor than my laptop's 10.8" screen :)

Now featuring: Huge(tm) apartment in Shinjuku ;)

View of the western Shinjuku scyscrapers from my balcony door:



Contents of the huge(tm) apartment, in 4 pictures (contains about everything except wardrobe ,)).




Amenities, such as they are.

Settled down?

Haven't been writing much recently as not much to tell; the setting up of my apartment is almost complete - table, chairs, curtains coming next Monday and I'm going to shop for monitor on Monday - the new Acer 24" widescreen is very cheap here, 750 euros or so. Fridge I am still missing, but not a huge priority right now. Washing machine arrived today, microwave oven I'm unlikely to buy as I don't see much I'd care to heat in the stores anyway.

Then only thing I _really_ lack is network access (I have wireless network access that costs all of 4 euros/month but it's bit unreliable and works only from near window of my apartment :->), my fiber-based 100mbps line is coming in week or two.. *sigh*

I have had all sorts of interesting episodes in the last 10 days, but nothing particularly dramatic - few quite long walks, lots of anime-watching/manga-reading, some Go in local Go place (Shinjuku) as well as the main Ichigaya place, interesting encounters with local bureaucracy - the number of times I have filled in my details for foreigner registration, various bank accounts and credit cards [3 so far, at least one more pending], rental contract, two different kinds of network address, water, electricity, gas, and so forth - is downright amazing. At least I can write the address fairly fluently now :-)

On positive note though, the money transfer from Finland to Japan took only 3 days, which was impressive. So now I have enough $ to fund the rest of my shopping needs - I spent today hour or two drooling at bicycles (buying one on Saturday or Sunday).

Interestingly enough, almost _every_ conversation with Japanese people goes something along these lines: japanese guy/gal, with pained expression, not really looking forward to speaking english, gets surprised by me being able to speak some japanese. Then, they almost always ask how long I have lived here, and when I answer 'one month', they're like 'ooo...'.. and then I spoil the moment by telling that this is my 8th time visiting Japan :-)

Some pictures coming up fairly soon again.

No longer homeless

Moved in on Wednesday, after getting 'sorry, you have to change room if you want to stay' signal in hotel. Unfortunately, my ordered Muji bed was still three days off (Saturday), so I had really only two options. Buy camping gear + sleep on floor (*ouch*), or move to different room/hotel.

The first option was cheaper and left me with tangible stuff - super lightweight sleeping bag + camping mat. Sleeping on the floor for 3 days wasn't excessively fun (mostly due to forgetting to turn on airconditioning first night -> woke up with 5-10 degrees in the room, and shivering in the cold. the other nights were ok, except airconditioning was bit noisy.

Another bitter disappointment were utilities; I expected I needed only water and electricity (who in their sane mind would want to mess with gas?), but it turns out shower + bath water was warmed by the gas (as well as the oven/plates), so I had to order gas, but it would come only on Saturday => 3 days without shower.

Yesterday finally got the bed (very efficient service), as well as gas, and celebrated the gas with long soak in the bath, and went to enjoy myself in city after that. Shopped for a bicycle (Cannondale Bad Boy Disc or Ultra, not sure which), but couldn't find it in the stores I found then; also, shopped 100mbps (uplink and downlink) fiber-based network connection for my home. 3-week delivery time is a bummer, but 30 euros/month is reasonable I think (FLET's + OCN + NTT providing assorted bits of the service I believe).

Today went for hanami (watching the cherry trees) with 3 other coworkers after finding local supermarket and garbage disposal place; had quite fun, maybe might even post pictures at some point. Interestingly enough, only the women actually drank alcohol, men tea :-)

... You took how many pictures..?

Saturday's all-day walk session (11am - 11pm) involved about 3.9gb of pictures (roughly 400), and the final result was only about 100 that I bothered to keep. Here's two sakura-related pictures.




And one semirandom example from the Tokyo International Anime Fair.

Finally.. an apartment?

The apartment saga is fairly interesting (and long) one. Today, I finally got an invoice to pay for the apartment I was interested in. Fees in random order:

- 2 months rent (april, may)
- 1 month's thank-you-for-the-opportunity money to the landlord
- 1 month's fee to the real estate agent
- 2 month's guarantee (of which most likely 1 month goes to cleaning once I leave)

.. and scale the 6 months involved with the 113k yen/month (about 800 eur?) and you realize that moving to places in japan is not exactly cheap.

My next problem was, how to get the money. Alternatives: visa (no go, some sort of stupid 3k eur / week limit on cash withdrawals, even assuming I had the limit to do it). International money transfer? Went to the receiving bank, and they told me that I could get the exact information only from the branch office where the target account was, and I needed to call them. At this stage, I was starting to get REALLY pissed off, as both the delays involved and additional bureaucracy did not appeal to me very much. I was NOT very happy.

Luckily my boss had extra cash on his bank account and graciously loaned me the 5k-ish eur I needed until I can get local bank account of my own. :-) I will most likely get the keys tomorrow, barring something unforeseen (duh). Would be nice, considering I get tossed out of the hotel day after tomorrow as someone has reserved this same room from that point onward (and I'd rather not move).

What happened since last post otherwise? Hmm. Mon-Fri apartment hunting pretty much, Saturday I walked around Tokyo a lot (maybe 30km, at least my feet were killing me afterwards after pounding tarmac so long), going to see the sakura in Asakusa (Sumida park), Ueno (Ueno park), and finally Chidorifuchi near Kudanshita station (north of the emperor's palace), all of that just walking from Asakusa. I crowned the day by walking home from there too.

Not good idea really, was too tired to do much on Sunday except play Go (10 games at Nihon Ki-in, half wins, half losses), and play with computer.. Anime addiction picking up again :)

Some pictures coming up too I suppose, soon.