First, a description of our new apartment and second, all the good luck that has come our way recently.
The place is in the middle of Yotsuya (close to and between Shinjuku and Akasaka).
It's a bit far from the two main stations (about 8-10 minutes walking) and close (3 minute walk) to a smaller, less convenient station (but we still manage to use it to get to where we need to go). The supermarket is also a 10 minute walk. The neighborhood is very quiet and peaceful. Not much green, but we do have a couple trees and a nice small park closeby (but would never really go in because it's really just mainly filled with people with dogs and kids. We do have a really nice view of an old-style japanese house and yard and walkway from our living room window. The owner keeps it up and it looks beautiful all the time. Makes me feel like I am living in 19th century Japan. Check the pictures.
To help with the distance to the stations and the supermarket, I got a bike. It makes the supermarket a breeze (3 minutes) and really allows me to transport more than I normally could than if I was walking because my bike has a big basket in front. In Japan, the type of bike I got is referred to as a grandfather's (old man) bike. Additionally, I
don't even use the bike to ride to the subway every morning for work because I can just bike straight to work now in less than 15 minutes. It's great. It's a nice ride past a park and palace and grounds where foreign dignatories stay while their in Japan (Bush was just there for the daywhen he came to Japan a month ago) - Also, there's no car exhaust fumes and a minimal amount of people on the sidewalk for 80% of my "commute" because there's no offices near this palace. Biking also helps me to save 100$ a month on train fare. Plus, I am not in the crowded train so my daily stress is down a bit. I don't get dealyed whe the train is late or stops (not often, but annoying when it does happen and you're trapped inside). And, lastly, I am getting 30 minutes of exercise a day - 15 min there in the morning, 15 back at night. It's mostly downhill in the morning and therefore uphill on my way home. That's much better since I have more energy at night and since it won't make me sweaty riding to work in the morning (in the summers).
Another thing about the bike - I have a very odd position as I ride the bike - due to the old man/women style it is modeled after and due to the fact that I am already much taller than the avg Japanese. As I ride it, I always have the Wicked Witch of the East's song in my head: De-Dede-Dede-deee-de, De-Dede-Dede-deee-de.
We'll just have to see what happens once it rains. It hasn't rained yet and it's been a month since we moved in!
The actual building we live in is a nice building. The bottom floor is for offices and has 3 separate small companies in the 3 rooms. Then the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floors are residential. We're on the second floor. Since there are offices in it, the lobby is really decked out and is huge and oversized. We even has a reception desk and a receptionist there on weekdays (presumably for the offices and their clients).
Small anecdote: I was taking the trash out one day and had to walk past the offices on the first floor. As I was throwing the garbage into the garbage room/closet, I could feel more light than usual coming from one of the offices because the door was propped open. I also felt like someone was staring at me. As I swung around to see, my eyes focus on this huge towering figure in black standing 7 feet tall in the entraceway of the one office about 10 feet from me. It was a full-to-scale replica of Darth Vader in real garb - not cheap plastic but metal and blinking lights and stuff. My brain immediately started trying to process what I was looking at and find reason for it. The first thing I thought was this is a dream and I should run because if it is a dream the Darth Vader will start running after me. I don't know why that office has that statue but it was freaky. I keep checking the door again to show Marie and get a picture for this website, but no dice yet, as it! The door's always closed.
Ok, so we're on the second floor. I usually take the stairs because it's much faster than waiting for the elevator. I also got Marie to follow suit.
You walk in to a good-sized foyer (good-sized for a Japanese apartment). We even have some shelves in there for shoes, umbrellas, and one other small compartment to store things. Next thing is right on the left is a tall, thin closet which could hold a golf bag (I put 2 coats in there instead). Also on the left is the room with just the toliet in it.
Lots of shelves in there too for linens and such. Then if you walk a step down the hallway from the entranceway, a small room the size of a king size bed is on the right. We use this for our bedroom and have 2 semi single beds pushed side-by-side. That gives us a little room to walk in the room. We use this room for the bedroom because it's far away
from the rest fo the main rooms in the apartment and therefore quiet if the other person is awake. Problem is it doesn't have a heater or air conditioner so I'm not sure we'll be able to use it in the dead of winter or the "alive?" of summer? It also has a small closet we use to store luggage and off-season clothes we don't need to access
regularly.
Go down the hall another step and on the left is the remaining parts of the bathroom: sink and mirror, space and hookup for a washing machine, more linen closets, and a real nice shower and tub. It's definitely a great compared to the bathrooms I'm used to here and very convenient for 2 people to use at the same time.
From there, down the hall a little more and you enter the main room which has the great window and lot so fspace for huge sofa, dining table, TV, shelves, and rogs and stuff. First, is the kitchen on the right. It's long and thin and tons of shelves and counter space and tons of room for two people to be cooking at the same time (even after we added a hutch and small refridgerator, too. To give you a better idea, you can judge japanese kitchens by the amount of burners on the gas range. Most apartments have one, some have 2, but this one has 3. However, the best part of the kitchen is a huge empty space where more shelves would be above the sink. It is cut out and looks into the living room so you can see the TV or other people. From the living room side it there is a counter above the sink that looks like a bar. We could get bar stools and use that as our dining room table if we were so inclined.
Lastly, on the left of this big room, then, there is a doorway that connects a medium-sized room that I use as my office. It has a big closet that Marie has staked a 80% claim to. But, I have staked claim to the rest of the room and have my desk and 4 computers there with an ungodly amount of cables strewn about the floorspace. There is a good-sized balcony attached to sliding doors from this room where we hang our clothes to dry after washing them.
Ok, now on to the lucky, good news. Really I should title this "How to fully furnish a new apartment for negative 1500$ :) We managed to do everything without paying a dime.
Marie has gotten lucky multiple times recently and it has impacted our apartment positively. The company Marie works at manages and designs booths for companies presenting at exhibitions. Her department/team's (20/5 people) first job/account upon her entering the company about 6 months ago was for the Tokyo Game Show - which is the second largest show in Tokyo each year (the top being the Tokyo Car Show where all the new makers show their newest and furture concept cars). For the Tokyo Game Show big companies like Microsoft and Sony show off their newest technology and gaming systems (XBox and Playstation III, respectively). Plus, a bunch of smaller game makers each show off their new titles for these new consoles.
Her company was in charge of managing the Microsoft XBox 360 booth. They were to design the entire display and layout. And, while normal companies, rent a small booth of floorspace in this huge exhibition hall, obviously Microsoft and Sony rent out half of the whole room (the whole exhibition spans about 2-3 adjacent airplane hanger sized-rooms. The design for Microsoft's "booth" was to model a normal living room with real furniture and sofas and shelves and flat-screen TVs and let people who waited in line for an hour sit alone in one these five simulated living rooms and try out the newest XBox 360 and choose a game to try (at that time the XBox was not even out yet so it was the first time anyone could try playing it). Marie was in charge of ordering all the furniture for each of the "living rooms" and in charge of getting it to have Xbox logos and colors (the color scheme is off-white and black and light green). While she was there for the 2 days setting it up and the 3 days it ran, she did get me a free ticket to go and see it for a day, too. Little did I know that same furniture would soon be in our apartment.
About a month later, her co-worker, aware that she was moving into a new apartment, informed her that she could have whatever she wanted from this furniture since it was just sitting in a warehouse outside of Tokyo and the company can't really use it again since it has "weird" colors (and some Xbox logo stickers). Her compnay owns the furniture as Microsoft didn't even want it. Her work even arranged a huge moving van and paid for it to take her up to the warehouse to pickout whatever she wanted and then deliver it to our door that afternoon. She took tons of stuff (and knew exactly what she wanted since she was the one who ordered it in the first place). I came home that day to find her and Rumiko (who came ovre to help) re-assembling a bunch of furniture. There were new rugs all over, new bookshelves, too many things to list here. It looked great.
Within a day we had everything setup and the apartment looked like an Xbox showroom (minus a new xbox of course - but don't worry we just needed to wait another week for the luck to make that happen). The sofa you see in the pictures is my old slightly smaller than a Double size bed with cusions on it. It works like a great big sofa you can stretch out on.
Good luck #2:
Since we wanted a larger bed for the bedroom and were using my old bed in the living for a sofa, Marie and I ordered the equivalent of a Queen size bed for the bedroom. We ordered it COD. It was delivered. They didn't ask for the money. No one has contacted us since. The Japanese COD system is a wreck! But, it's good for us. We just saved 500$.
Good luck #3:
Since Marie's company has Microsoft has a client (for more than just the Game Show), they wanted to promote the marketing of the XBox here the day it debuted. You may have heard about it in the States - in the US, Microsoft didn't make enough consoles for the demand and there were long lines and the unit s were going for 3 times the amount on Ebay. Japan is a different story. Since everyone here likes Sony (because Sony is Japanese and Microsoft has a reputation for bad quality), the XBox is not that popular. Marie's company wanted to make it look like there was more demand than there really was, so they offered 10 employees the right to go wait in line at 5am in the morning the day it debuted so they could get their pictures taken - I'm not quite sure of the Marketing reasoning behind this, but I don't question it when it involves a free video game system for my apartment. She was just to bring her company back the receipt for the console and one game that she wanted and they would pay for it.
She just stayed out all night with 5 other co-workers and they all got in line around 5am in the morning, waited a couple hours, and bought the unit. Of course, I was at home sleeping normally, so when I woke up it was like Christmas morning - I had a new XBox 360 and a driving game named Ridge Racer. Only bad part is, only Japanese XBox games will work and there's not many available yet. Games from the States are incompatible :( Here's a link to a Japanese Gaming Website that took pictures of the Debut from early in the morning. Marie is the girl on the left in the picture with the two girls holding the bags.
Good luck #4:
Marie won 1000$ at her company's Christmas party raffle!
Good Luck #5:
I won some gourmet sweets at Marie's Mom's Christmas Party's raffle.
The pictures start off with moving day, and then show the new apartment with sparse furniture, then finally with the XBox furniture in it's current state.
