Well, today
was the day Nicky had to move out of the Weekly Mansion Sugamo. Despite
being sad about it, we both stayed pretty peppy all day, and took on
the adventure of moving in 33ºC heat + humidity with determination.
Nicky left about half of her stuff with me in Sugamo, which was probably
a good idea, as we had quite the ordeal today.
We needed to go to Shinjuku first, so
that Nicky could sign the lease on her new place, and despite fears that
we might get lost, we found the place without any missteps. [Of course,
if I’d followed the map they’d given her entirely, we would have walked
way too far. Thank goodness the building was labeled well!] While Nicky
took care of her paperwork, I scoured their materials rack for visitor
and job information, and got us both an English version of the subway
lines.
Afterwards, we decided to stop in at
Moss Burger to try their teriyaki burgers. Wow! So yummy! The combo of
teriyaki and asian mayonnaise was so delicious! We also had melon sodas,
which probably didn’t go too well with the rest of the meal, but oh
well. It was melon soda and it was green!
The next leg of our trip was the
difficult part. It was getting hotter, and the luggage was really heavy,
so we were getting tired and sore, and we still had to get to Nicky’s
new place. Well, we navigated Shibuya station well enough, and
Hamadayama after that, but unfortunately, we got lost on the street
Nicky’s house was supposed to be on.
What I can say is that Hamadayama is a
really nice, quaint little town. It feels very rural, as it is in the
boonies of Tokyo, and even if every single car in the neighborhood was a
BMW, it was mostly retirees scuttling about with their day. When we
finally got tired of going in circles, I left Nicky with her luggage so I
could run down the street to ask for directions. Unfortunately, even
the locals I asked didn’t know where it was. At this point I was feeling
a bit defeated, but returned to Nicky just as another woman came out of
her house to see if we were okay.
We were really lucky, because this
woman, Kaori, spoke excellent English, and offered her air-conditioned
home to us while she asked her husband Yusuke to help with directions.
We were even given cold tea while they googled the address for us.
Yusuke went ahead to find the house, and after he discovered where it
was, he guided us there.... how silly we felt when the house we were
looking for was -exactly- where we had finally admitted to being lost!
We thanked Yusuke and Kaori profusely before retiring up to Nicky’s new
room to make sure her air-conditioning and internet worked.
I had to get back to Sugamo to do some
homework, so wasn’t able to stay with her long, but it’s a really
lovely apartment... seated right in the middle of a small bamboo garden
with a koi pond out back. The cicada are a bit noisy, but I like that
sound, so it didn’t bother me. On the way back to the station, we
stopped at McDonalds [purely to compare tastes with Moss Burger] and
nope, McDonalds is still McDonalds, even in Japan. Don’t let the rumors
fool you!
After dinner, we parted ways for the
time being and I headed back to Sugamo for some much needed studying... I
got hungry again so decided to snack on some chocolate I’d bought the
day before at the supermarket. Of course, when I pulled it out of the
fridge (it would melt if it wasn’t in there), I actually noticed what
the candy was called... “CRUNKY”... that gave me a few giggles.
Also,
tomorrow starts my first full week in the intensive summer program!
Here’s hoping it’s not as intensive as Berkeley’s definition of
“intensive.”