Living on Nanikore

Domesticity is Window Cleaning

Sun, 05 Jun 2005 13:09:09 +0000

You know when you’ve had a domestic weekend when you cook, clean the windows, re-pot your plants, vacuum and do some DIY in 48 hours. Unbelievable. Not five years ago I was involved in rioting in Central America, and here I am keeping house.

OK, smirking aside, the windows look great and plants have probably got a good twelve months of growing space in there, and seeing as they account for thirty percent of Tokyo’s oxygen producing plant life, it’s best not to mock them. The DIY was a rather tasteful TV stand from Muji, and points indeed to the folk who delivered it - they called in advance at 9am to make sure I was up and was greeted with my ‘is it war?’ voice which I use by default until my first cup of tea on a weekend morning. The 5 blocks of wood, casters and misc. bolts and alan keys turned up exactly sixty minutes later. I hear IKEA is coming to Japan, but who cares with Tokyu Hands, Loft and Muji? Hey, this thing turned up with all its parts, tools to put it together and instructions even I could follow.

Cleaning windows I admit is something of an perverse obsession. Not because I like doing George Formby impressions, or because of a humorous line of 1970’s British soft porn films, but purely because really dirty windows annoy me. It’s one of those things. Anyway, warm water, some soap and a little vinegar, and they look crystal clear now. Now I can enjoy my grey smog skyline with clarity.

It should also be stated that in the same 48 hours I levelled my main character in City of Heroes, earned my cape (yeah!) and got onto some new areas. I just wanted to put that into perspective.

Errant Posts

Mon, 03 Jan 2005 23:26:41 +0000

Actually, just as I was reading this blog, I realised all the things I don’t put on it. Of course, that’s mainly because they’re mundane and dull morsels of info that no-one is interested in.

For example, just before Xmas, we got our new dining table from Harumi Design in ‘Toriton Square’, and it’s great. It feels great to have a dining table back after 5 years of food off a low table in front of the TV. I think in part this is because when I was growing up, our kitchen dinner table was a community focus point for long conversations before, during and after the meal, so it feels good to have that back, and I’m very happy with the solid oak one we chose. It easily makes my ‘Best of 2004’ purchase list, which will be another post, maybe later this week.

Example 2; I went back to work today to have an Amazon package waiting for me! This is great, I now have the last series of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, but more importantly, Series 1 and 3 of ‘Black Books’ a hilarious comedy from the UK’s Channel 4. (If you’re wondering, I got series 2 as a gift, which is what got us into it).

Oh yes, and it snowed very heavily in Tokyo on New Year’s Eve, and I got caught out on my scooter going through 4 inches of snow - not fun on a 50cc! Still, the Zoomer’s chunky tyres were great - I definitely had sympathy for the Udon delivery chap on his old scooter with bald tyres.

OK, pointless post has finished. Please move along. Nothing to read here … for a while.

Darth Vader works for NTT

Sat, 27 Nov 2004 02:07:23 +0000

As I’m in my new apartment, a few days ago I got my phone line cut over from my old place.

Now, whenever you do this (or pretty much anything else with NTT), they tell you that you should be in the building in case they need to do wiring work. Of course this is a safety net for them, and I’ve never had anyone turn up, but this time an NTT engineer did turn up. He was a nice guy too, chatty but polite (usually they’re a bit miserable), had a photo on his business card for security and generally seemed keen on the job.

He also had a tool belt with a hammer, screwdriver and a few other bits and pieces and generally looked the part. However, he then asked me for my phone unit, which I’d cleverly left in a packing box, but which I then managed to fish out. Of course I’d packed the handset in a different box as you do because they’re so bulky, so it took me another five minutes to find that too.

I asked if he could test it with his test rig (the phone/line tester/handset most telecoms people I know usually have with them) and he breathed in through his teeth and hit the familiar ’ chotto’, which is usually followed by a ’ muzukashii’ for ‘it’s a difficult [situation]’, but this was left in a hanging ‘chotto’ which I took to mean ‘I forgot it’, but rather than leave it at that, whilst I was checking the corners of the few remaining unpacked boxes for my errant handset, he continued to breathe through his teeth and breathe out heavily, so there I am looking at him doing a Darth Vader impression, and I can’t help thinking that hammer on his tool belt looks a bit like a light saber … or maybe I need some sleep.

Before anyone questions that hammer by the way, I see no problem with *any* technician carrying a hammer. If you can’t fix a problem, hit it with a hammer, if that doesn’t fix it, get a *bigger* hammer. Or a light saber maybe in this case.

So there it is, NTT employ the Sith because they’re good with telecommunications which is probably a good sideline to have in these uncertain times. If they employed Jedi they’d have to send two people to each job, because we all know how the Jedi only attack in pairs, (like women going to the ‘rest room’ at a nightclub) with the honourable exception of Yoda-chan. I’m thinking of changing my line to ADSL again (not needed here as the building has Hikari Fiber) to see if a guy turns up with suspicious horns claiming ‘soon we will have more bandwidth than cable TV, soon we will have our revenge’.

Move over!

Wed, 24 Nov 2004 02:21:47 +0000

Well, we’ve now completely moved in our new place.

We spent yesterday cleaning the old place a bit and handing the keys back. I have a lot of fond memories of my 2 years in Komazawa, but as a couple now we needed a bit more space, so here we are.

Komazawa is a great place - the park is fabulous and the local eateries are great. Unfortunately, we couldn’t really find anything we liked in the area which was bigger than our old place, but which was in our budget range, or maybe it had the kitchen in the main room or something else we didn’t like. However, as soon as we saw our now ’new’ place we knew that if we stretched the budget a little it would be worth it (if only because there’s a gomi room on every floor with no ‘different days for different rubbish’ limitations).

Back to the move. After finishing the packing on Monday afternoon, our movers - Mammy Removals - came in and did their thing. This is the second time I’ve used them, and I can’t believe the value you get with them. We got quotes from four companies - 3 of which were between 80-110,000yen and Mammy came in at 30,000, and they aren’t at all sloppy - they were fast and polite both packing the stuff up, and getting it in the new place. Hell, I was so impressed I gave them some beer money…and it takes a lot for me to part with beer money.

We’d already got all the utilities working in the new place from Saturday, so all we had to do on Monday night was dig out the lights, plug them in and start to unpack - next was a look for the kettle/pot for some hot water, and the building’s own hikari-fiber internet access mean’t that tea and broadband were mine! You mean there was something else to do? OK, maybe we are still proud owners of a few cardboard boxes, but it should all be finished by tonight.

Another nice thing for me about the new building is that the cycle and motorbike areas are both inside, in monitored areas, so they’re clean and dry. My little Zoomer is loving it’s own parking space in the basement, and I must admit that it’s an underrated feature IMHO. Interestingly, when we were in the basement car park on Saturday some residents were racing RC cars around (it’s a large carpark), which I’m hoping is a fixture because it’s something that interests me.

The last time I moved apartment (from Kameari to Komazawa) I used my old laptop (an Apple G3 Powerbook) to listen to some internet radio, and this time was now different; as I unpacked books, computers and CDs last night, I hunted down the archives of an old favourite - " Does Humour Belong in Technology" - it’s not great radio, but it sounds better than most pro shows and is kind of fun to listen to in the background.

Now that my computer equipment, and all the books, CDs and DVDs are in one room, along with my partner’s yoga mat and some other bits and pieces, and we have a real living room again I feel like I’m back in a real apartment. (I missed that!) Who knows…maybe even a dining table.

Sorry - must go and finish the unpacking and take all the boxes o the basement recycle area.

Moving again

Sat, 09 Oct 2004 12:28:20 +0000

This is kind of a heads-up post. One of the reasons why I’ve been a little erratic (i.e. slow as hell) on posts of late is that the contract on my apartment is almost up for renewal and we’ve decided to move into something a little bigger. I love this apartment, but when I moved in in late 2002 it was just intended as a cool crash pad for just one, but now, with the two of us, we’re a little pushed for space. Thus, we’ve spent an increasing amount of time over the last two months looking at hundreds of floor plans and rejecting a good 99.5% of them for one reason or another - I hate having the cooking range in the living room (pretty common in many Japanese apartments) and my partner prefers south facing places, short commutes and places which have ‘wa’ (just joking there!). We’ve so far burned a few weekend days running around Tokyo taking a look at them.

For a flashback of the last time I moved, check out the November section of my 2002 notes. All the usual things have occurred - floor plans which had ‘misprints’ as to the direction of the balcony, buildings which claimed to be 6 years old which looked pre-war and estate agents who were unhappy with my racial origins. What can I say, I’m pale.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

dr Dave — 2004-10-09

Nice new abode (the virtual one)… as for the physical one, in the cold streets of Tokyo… All I can say is mucho gambatte kudasai… I probably won’t be telling you anything new by pointing out how much of an issue your lack of nippon ancestry will be, with most landlords. I went through that not a year ago and this wasn’t much fun. Actually, if I may even bicker with words, this is not even a matter of skin color… as one of the real estate agent, presumably trying to make us feel better about the 95% rejection rate told us: “Gaijins are difficult, but as long as you are not chinese or korean, there’s a chance…” ahem. Anyway, having at least half the prospective tenants Japanese should make your search a bit easier, but expect a lot of “ahhh, chotto muzukashii desu nehh”. And btw, I think usually agents absolutely do not care about that (they’d be happy to make their commission no matter what), the problem is usually with the owners, who are most often much older, much more prejudiced and much more afraid to deal with gaijins…

graham — 2004-10-12

Thanks for the post dr.Dave. I agree completely. Most agents don’t want to deal with me, especially as my partner is Japanese, but it makes it a bit stressful for her. Yesterday one rep from Livable didn’t even bother doing an aisatsu with me or distributing meishi. However, she still paid for a taxi to show us a place and so is interested in making commission.

As for Oya-san (the actual owners), some have turned me down flat, some has paused and hoped I went away. For my current place, the OYa-san was not sure at first but felt better when I had a chat with her in Japanese, mainly about gomi… I also gave her some brochures about my company and I think that helped too.

I also agree that of all us disgusting gaijin, caucasians such as myself don’t get the brunt of it. A Philipino friend of mine said she had a hell of a lot of problems finding a place to live. It’s a shame it seems to be so tolerated. People wanting to be racist is a fact of life anywhere; letting that get in the way of business is something I just don’t understand.

Death to key money!!