unforth: (Default)
unforth ([personal profile] unforth) wrote2007-06-16 07:42 pm

A Very Nice Day

Today has been a very nice day. I got a fair amount done, clocked my writing for [livejournal.com profile] novel_in_90 (in two weeks I've only missed 1 day, and I caught up immediately!), got a dress I love at Goodwill for $2.50 (got two bags of things at Goodwill for about half the amount that one of the items originally cost, according to it's still-attached tag), had a really good work out in which I beat the hell out of a lot of my old "records" (including doing 3 miles in less than 30 minutes on the elliptical)...
...and I think I know where I want to live in Tokyo! I want this one.. It's very small and a little expensive but it has a really good location (nice neighborhood, close to multiple major train lines) and it's about 1/4 of a mile from a Bookoff. No, I didn't pick it ONLY because of it's proximity to the bookstore, but it was a definite factor - it's closer than any of the other potential locations I looked at, though two others were within a kilometer (I keep having to remind myself that I'll have to go metric while I'm there ;) ). It took me FOREVER (in this case, forever = approx. an hour) to sort through the Japanese on Bookoff's web page so that I could figure out where their branches were, but I finally pulled it off.

And the whole time I giggled because the place I want to live is on the Yamanote line. If the Dragons of Earth show up, my apartment is totally going to be one of those buildings next to the line that blows up, we're only a 3 minute walk to the entrance. I hope I get this one! :)

[identity profile] ultimabaka.livejournal.com 2007-06-18 03:33 am (UTC)(link)
I'm tryin to figure out how this works...do you get one of the teeny rooms within the "apartment" (like, for example, "602", where you have to share shit like the kitchen and the toilet), or do you get the whole apartment (like, for example, "6F", which just dawned upon me might be the whole floor...?).

If you're seriously considering paying almost 800 bucks (US) for 602, it sounds terrible to me...you could be in the middle of downtown Tokyo and that would still be painful ass-rapage. I had to google what 9.72 square meters was in square feet, and I did a doubletake. That's about 5 square feet bigger than the bedroom in my small hole in downtown Brooklyn. And my small hole is really small, you were here once $.

On the plusside, if I felt like uprooting my entire life to move to the Tokyo office of my hedge fund, we could each have our own teeny tiny holes for only 500 per month. As my coworkers would say, cash, money. $

As a side note, I once held the belief that everyone entering Tokyo should be accorded some kinda neato temporary anime-style power, just in order to survive everything being destroyed around you. All I thought about when I read the last line of your entry was my old games of Sim City, where, after spending 60+ hours making my city beautiful and stunning, I would simultaneously summon every imaginable disaster to bring it all down.

Think Godzilla being blown away by a tornado while the floods put out the fires created by my 6 earthquakes the rioters couldn't flee fast enough. *huggles*
-- Gerardo

[identity profile] unforth.livejournal.com 2007-06-18 02:31 pm (UTC)(link)
I get one of those little bitty bedrooms on the 6th floor - about 90 square feet - and access to the kitchen, plus laundry and a bathroom and shower. All utilities are included except for phone - this includes cable (I think) and internet (for sure). It also has a balcony. With the current exchange rate, it'll be $650 a month for all of that. Toss in that it's a 3 minute walk to the Yamanote line and two other major subway lines, that it's less than a mile from Ueno park - one of the nicest, if not the nicest - parks in the city, from what I read, and it's the only apartment I've seen from which I could conceivably walk to any major city centers (I could walk to Ueno, Asakusa, Ikebukuro, Akihabara, and, if I was feeling brave, Shinjuku and Tokyo)...I think it's worth it. :)

But I can't argue with the fact that it is teeny tiny. :) And I'll be sharing it with two other people! :)

Of course, right now it says it's not available...I hope that's because of ME and not someone else...I'll have to call them this evening when they open tomorrow morning (think about the time difference and believe me it makes sense. ;) )

[identity profile] ultimabaka.livejournal.com 2007-06-18 03:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah I saw the clock on their website when I sent out my first comment (around 11:30pm est), and the site's like "yeah it's 12:30pm out here, and we're open!"

Too cheery for my taste, but at least you know when they're open.

And you mean to tell me you have to share that microhole with two other people? I'm having trouble sharing my 350 square foot hole with one other people :P. This sounds like some silly Mexican/Chinese immigrant livinghole situation you'd see in the city. I'd be wary about this myself.

I'm not even going to go into sharing one shower with at least 8 other people ;), but it seems amazing to me that a room of square-footage bigger than where you're actually going to live has been devoted to just your bathroom ;)

The apartment itself looks to me as a normal 3 bedroom apartment divi'd up into 9 people. Amazing efficiency, I must say $. I can't say I can see this apartment going for anywhere near 4500 per month. Maybe the key is to buy some real estate out there and do the same thing...hehe good luck
-- Gerardo

[identity profile] unforth.livejournal.com 2007-06-18 03:36 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, that's probably true. :) My current plan is to live in that place until one of the apartments on the 7th floor opens up, they look a lot nicer, though there are more people per bathroom. ;) Alternatively, if I really don't like it, these Sakura guys have lots of other apartments, I think I could move really easily.

[identity profile] ultimabaka.livejournal.com 2007-06-18 07:10 pm (UTC)(link)
Nice...once you get in, your chances of upgrading have gotta be much easier. I wish you good luck $
-- Gerardo

(Anonymous) 2007-06-18 07:10 pm (UTC)(link)
Nice...once you get in, your chances of upgrading have gotta be much easier. I wish you good luck $
-- Gerardo