My Room

Once I arrived a nice lady called Masako gave me a room, a small guided tour and then charged me 60,000 yen. This is a month’s rent and is about £260 - frankly a bargain. This is my room.

So going clockwise I have a small desk and a wheely chair. There’s an internet port at the end of that blue wire. Then we have the window, which looks out onto some kind of playground for a massive block of flats opposite. Then there is the bed and below it a small fridge. Also note the slippers which come with the room (I’m not joking) I also have a tray in the kitchen to put my things and a shoe cupboard near the front door.

Here is my room from the other side.

Yep, a big blurry wardrobe. You might have thought it was just my camera but no it actually looks like that. Thinking about it now it’s an alarmingly similar wardrobe to the scary one in The Grudge which was set somewhere in Japan. God that’s my wardrobe and the return of Godzilla to worry about.

Also on the tour, though no pictures because I am too scared to leave my room, there is the bathroom. It contains two cubicles, two urinals, one sink and is unisex. In Japan it seems they have this set up; women are supposed to walk past men using the urinals pretending they don’t notice, which is coincidentally the same as how men are supposed to react to other men using urinals.

Up next is the room with two washing machines (not free), a dryer, 2 sinks and 3 showers. Then there is a communal area with sofas, a kitchen and a rather nice television.

On arrival in my room I unpacked what I could, then braved a shower. I have marks from my rucksack strap on my shoulders, I would take a picture to illustrate but I don’t want mum to worry (Hi mum if you are reading this, weldone on finding my blog, hope you had a nice time in Athens and the pheasants are ok, could you check my post please I should be expecting something from the bank, thanks.)

Fooling my tiredness I took a short nap, then went out into the night (7pm) looking for food, kitchen utensils and shaving foam. Right opposite where I am living is a 7/11 convenience store where I nearly bought a box of tissues with a cat on but then thought I might be able to survive on free tissues if I kept using the subway. A long way down the street I found a place called Shop 99 and I can’t actually believe how long it took me to realise that everything in the shop cost 99yen. I have long been a fan of the 99p shop but this was like a 43p shop! Can you imagine? So what did I buy, well here is my receipt.

Yep, so a set of 5 coathangers, 6 chopsticks, a plate, a glass and some water. Next I went to a pharmacy and got some shaving foam and that’s about it. I got home and went to sleep around 9pm. I woke up at 3AM looking at an orangey condom that had been pushed into the blanket and had escaped my vision before I went to bed. Turned out not to exist though, it was just the big flower pattern on the material.

With David Mitchell in hand I went back to sleep and woke up at 10:30 to the sound of my alarm clock and a bird outside that I’ve never heard before. The sun was shining, it was 22C and I had to go to Shinjuku, but that is another story.