Jenfifi's travel blogs:
- Peru: Trekking the Salkantay Trail to Machu... 2008
- Tour de Europa 2007-BAR TRIP! 2007
- Hawaii! 2007
- Korea! 2007
- Spring Break 2007- Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 2007
- Spring Break 2007 - Singapore, Singapore 2007
- Spring Break 2007- Tanjung Pinang and Palau... 2007
- Spring Break 2007- Bangkok, Thailand 2007
- A semester abroad... 2007
- 10 days in China for business and... 2006
- Cleveland, July 2006 2006
- 4th of July 2006 in Chicago, IL 2006
- Summer of 2006 in New York City... 2006
- Mom, Aunt Sandy, and I do Paris. 2006
- Carnival Cruise through to Colon Panama, Belize... 2006
- New Years trip 2005-2006, Quebec City, Quebec 2005
- Couples Ocho Rios, Jamaica: December of 2005 2005
- An SA trip to remember! 2002
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Day Three - Shibuya and apartment
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Following our adventures at the karaoke bar on Wednesday night, we came back to school on Thursday for some more orientation regarding permanent hosing, cell phones, and getting to know Japan. The cell phone thing is quite a debachcle and after much confusion we are entered into a lottery to see if we can get a very cheap phone or not. If not we will have other options to pursue next week. A real estate agent came in with a list of apartments and we quickly arranged to see the closest one to our campus last evening. He (a British man) and his Japanese colleague drove us to the property which is only about a 20 minute walk to school door to door. While it isn't exactly pretty (there are plastic curtains and some ugly dollar store shelving and bedding) it was clean, adequate, and most importantly spacious. If we were living there for longer it could be made into a cute place with a few areas rugs and some curtains, but we wont be doing that. Now, when I say spacious I mean in comparison to our current apartment, which is a 12 by 12 room with a narrow hallway and a bathroom where your knees hit the wall when you sit on the toilet and you have to squeeze between the sink and a wall to get into the shower. Also, in our current housing the bathroom is so tight that the shower and sink controls are the same knob. It's hard to explain. Anyway, this new apartment has hardwood floors and a decent sized sleeping room with two twin beds in it. There is a sliding door that separates it from the kitchen and bathroom. The kitchen is a decent size and the bathroom is only slightly bigger than our current one. The kitchen comes with a sink, small eating table, a refrigerator which is between a normal size and a mini dorm fridge, and two gas burners instead of a stove. The sleeping room has a sliding glass door onto a small patio area which has a washing machine on it as well as a pole to hang dry your clothes (every one does this in Asia it seems). We are saving a significant amount by sharing this place as most of our classmates pay almost as much for an apartment alone or have to live in a guest house where you share bathrooms and kitchens. We do have to pay utilities and internet but they are reasonable. The area around the apartment is great, it has lots of convenient stores, a large supermarket on the corner, a few restaurants and bars, and a full blown pagoda temple in our backyard. It is outside of the crazy neon filled Times Square-ish neighborhoods which are very expensive and in more of a residential neighborhood. There is a wall-mounted heater inside but we are unsure yet how effective it will be and whether we will need to buy a space heater. Although it was the first place we looked at we reserved it right away because our classmates are all looking for apartments and the ones near campus are getting snatched up quickly. We are glad we waited to get here before getting a permanent place based on some horror stories such as people who arrived and found out that their shower was OUTSIDE the apartment and they freeze in there every morning! Some people also live an hour or more from campus which is tough too. Our place is also only 5 rail stops from our potential employer in the financial district.
After securing our housing (we will be moving in officially on the 19th) we dropped some stuff of at home in our cell and decided to check out the hip Shibuya shopping district. We walked for a while down a main street near us and then since it seemed to be a long way we hopped on the Ebisu Japan Rail station (there are two metro train systems in Tokyo, the Japan Rail which circles the perimeter of the city and the Subway which is a more extensive network). We took this one stop (it cost is 130 yen each or a little under a dollar each- you pay based on the distance you travel on Japan Metros) to the Shibuya station. Note: you need to enter your ticket into a machine to get out of the station as well as in, so don't lose it or you may have to pay maximum fare! The subways are constantly completely packed, but strangely quiet inside and everyone just look straight ahead.
I have a pic of inside the subway car.
Also, the floors at the stations have marks where you stand in an orderly line. When the train comes the doors line up perfectly with the lines and everyone enters in an orderly fashion. We were shocked as we got out since this was our first time out of the neighborhood-ish part near our apartment and campus and into the very metropolitan part of Tokyo. There was neon and people everywhere.
We were headed to a department store I read about in one of our guide books, which was described as nice but less exclusive and expensive than the stores in the ultra-shiek Ginza district (Shibuya seems like Soho whereas Ginza is more Park Avenue). Turns out I still couldn't afford the black purse I have been shopping for in this store- it was akin to a Saks Fifth Ave with designer boutiques everywhere. Very fun to browse though. We then headed for a place called Sonoma, which his a California-style Western food place nearby. Chris eats lightly at the Japanese style meals so I figure we better get some meat and potatoes in him now and then. This place was cute and reasonably priced at about $12 for each of our meals (fish tacos and BBQ chicken), although anytime you get one or two beers with your dinner the price of your meal doubles since they are often $8-10 each. While there we picked up a copy of the Tokyo Metro magazine and Chris found some ads from Japanese parents looking for Americans to spend a few hours with their kids every week playing and teaching English informally This seems like a great way to earn a little money and experience the culture as well. We've heard kids are great to learn Japanese from since they speak slowly and more simply! We also read about climbing Mount Fuji in one of our guidebooks and decided we will plan that for April. It is very easy to do since there is a bus for $25 that will take you to a station at 8,200 feet and from there it is 6 hours to the summit and 2 hours to descend back down. We came home from Shibuya on the train around midnight and went to bed.
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| 3. | Day Three - Shibuya and apartment - Tokyo, Japan Jan 11, 2007 (  2 ) |
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