And here it is.
It was a nice room. I had made it my own by decorating it with an XBOX 360, a 22-inch wide screen computer monitor and other, less important things, like curtains and a bed spread too.
Maybe my affection was at its peak because I knew that after that day my room would just be the outside of a door to me. My evil-past-self had set my current-self a hard schedule: Monday quit job; Tuesday leave home and fly to Hokkaido.
That evil self had also been the one to fill out the Moving Out form and given it to Kizuna, the manager of the guesthouse and my friend. She looked at what I’d written and said, ‘You need to fill in what time you will move out, but I will be checking you out so it’s ok to be late.’ With this in mind I wrote 11AM.
I was packing all night, except for a short nap around 2AM. You never quite realise how much stuff you own until you need to put it in boxes. I’d already sent one box back to the UK, but that was just scratching the surface. I have a bad habit of leaving packing for holidays until the morning I leave, and this had extended dangerously into moving out packing too.
By the time the sun came up I had filled several bags of rubbish and organised piles of things to send back home, take on holiday or store while I was away. Yoko came to my rescue. She gave me the key to her room saying that I could store things under her bed. She went off to work and I started shoving things under her bed.
At 9AM I had just started cleaning my room when my phone rang. It was someone from the guesthouse company and he sounded very friendly, but only at first.
“What time will you be ready to move out?” he asked.
“Between eleven’ o’clock and half past I think, I still have a lot to do.”
“Ok, I’ll be there before eleven,” he said.
I grimaced and he hung up.
I went to tell Kizuna about this but she was out. I suddenly felt alone and got scrubbing twice as fast.
Some of my belongings, like my lamp, curtains and bookshelf had been easy to give away to other people. However, coat hangers, plastic trays and odd bits of stationary are surprisingly hard to give to people. We had a table where people sometimes left things with a sign saying FREE, and eventually they would disappear. So this was where I stacked the last of my unwanted goods, then noticed that most of them I had myself received from previous tenants. Maybe they had been handed down between tenants for generations and would be until they finally became antiques.
Walking back to my room there was a strange man in the corridor. He was wearing a suit but it wasn’t doing anything for him, he looked incredibly nervous.
“Nick?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I said and continued into my room,
I wasn’t in a very good mood. It was the first day of July so it was hot and I had been awake nearly all night after a hard yesterday. This nervous man was not who I was expecting to spend my last moments in the guesthouse with.
“So, how is it?” I asked him gesturing around my room.
“Not good,” he said and pointed to my bed where my futon looked like it was cowering into a corner, “it’s a mess. How would you feel if you saw this?” He wasn’t happy.
“But they throw these away,” I argued, “Every tenant gets a new one.”
It was then that I realised this must be his first time checking someone out and that his training must have concentrated on being mean, and not futons. To prove my point I showed him the cupboard where the stack of fresh futons was kept for future tenants.
Back in my room I gestured to the one remaining object of mine, the unsealed box I was going to post that day.
“I just need to seal this up, is that ok?”
“No,” he said, “you will be charged.”
I looked at my watch, 11:01AM. It was pointless to argue so I pushed the box out of the room, gave him my key and closed the door forever.
Actually I left some things in my room, they were glow in the dark sheep that I had stuck to the ceiling. They were positioned right above the pillow, all spread out except for two who were copulating. I can only wonder what the next tenant thought when they turned out the light on their first night in the guesthouse and looked upwards.
Mr Angry Nervous came out of my room armed with a clipboard and frown.
“Where is your other key?” he demanded.
“I don’t have another key.”
“Oh, did you lose a key.”
“Yes.”
“Did you pay for it already?”
“Yes, it was over a year ago.”
He scribbled something and then went back into my room.
I had been expecting friendly Kizuna to check me out, and afterwards we’d take lunch together and discuss Godzilla. Instead I was faced with a man out to get me; maybe he wanted to prove something for his first time, like my head on a wall.
When he came out of my room again we sat down and went through some forms. I was able to answer honestly to all of the questions, apart from one:
“Has all your garbage been disposed of properly?”
“Yes,” I answered thinking about the three bags cluttering up Yoko’s room.
“OK,” he said relaxing slightly, “do you have your deposit receipt?”
Deposit! I had forgotten about that, and the receipt was either in the rubbish in Yoko’s room or already lying in a landfill somewhere.
“One moment please,” I said politely and excused myself.
I closed the door of the communal area so that he wouldn’t be able to see me scampering upstairs, which I thought might appear rather suspicious.
In the sanctuary of Yoko’s room I dug through the Burnable rubbish bag. I had kept every one of my rent receipts, but I’d thrown all of them away at some point. I searched through old wrapping paper, used tissues and eventually found the small piece of paper worth £100. I went back downstairs and asked, “Is this it?”
He confirmed that it was and I deliberately said, “Wonderful!” in such an over the top way that I hoped it would stop him wondering where on Earth I had been to get the receipt.
My deposit was £100 but he would only give me £95 because I had been late.
“By just one minute,” I protested.
“We are very strict,” he explained.
It became clear that it wasn’t my head on a wall that he wanted; it was my deposit. Getting back to the office with some of my deposit, that is what would earn him his wings. Maybe the first time he could take a whole deposit back there would be an initiation ceremony: he’d be branded by company stationary and start receiving his salary.
When it came to giving me what was left of my deposit it got a bit complicated. Translating from Yen for a moment, he needed to pay me £95 but only had two £50 notes. I had £45 in my wallet.
“Well maybe you can come to a bank with me later today,” he said.
Then I realised that if I gave him £5 and he gave me £100 then it would work out. I suggested this and he thought about it, and I mean really thought about it. “Just a moment,” he said. It was simple Maths but he was nervous, or trying to find a way around it. He even did hand gestures to himself to simulate the flow of money but eventually agreed.
After I had signed a few forms it was finally over.
“I used to teach Japanese,” he said, suddenly opening up to me, “and I’m interested in foreigners. Why did you came to Japan?”
I gave him my usual speech about Japan being an interesting country with its culture and traditions, and that like Britain it is an island with a rich history. He liked this answer and gave me my £5 back.
“Oh thank you,” I exclaimed, genuinely surprised.
“What....oh yes...yes,” he seemed to be confused about what he had just done, it was like the Angel Of Mercy had just taken control of his arm. My hand hovered over putting the money in my wallet until he said, “Take it.”
Just then Kizuna returned, saw us and remarked, “Eh?” They started jabbering in Japanese and all I could tell was that she was apologising to him. I took the moment to creep back to Yoko’s room.
My bags didn’t fit under her bed, in fact one of the slats from the bed fell out and it took me some time to put it back. I was in her room for about an hour trying to make everything nice, but arranging bags of rubbish in a neat way is surprisingly hard (Note that in Japan you can only throw certain types of rubbish away on certain days of the week). At 12PM I picked up my backpack and parcel, locked her door and put the key in her shoe cupboard.
With a box in my hand and my home on my back, the walk to the Post Office was a slow one. The lady behind the counter was staggeringly friendly and my box quickly disappeared behind her desk to start its six-week journey home.
I continued on my way to the airport, the day was only half done.
And so began my last adventure in Japan.
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