Last day of class at JWU. The sensei pictured with us, Yamada-Sensei,
was my favorite sensei for the ILP. I’ll miss you guys, Class B!
I’m finally
here! In Kyoto! After finishing packing yesterday, and eating my last
dinner in Sugamo with pens since I packed my chopsticks prematurely, I
took the Night Bus out of Shinjuku for the last time. I arrived in Tokyo
at around 6am. Thankfully the city has enough recognizable landmarks
that I was able to find my way back home again from Nijo Station (about a
mile and a half from my house).
Nicky had cleaned the whole apartment
and left me a bowl of fruit and flowers, which I thought was so sweet~
though I pretty much went straight to my bed and fell asleep. We had
another full day ahead of us planned, so I wanted to get some rest, but
around 12pm or so, we got up. Nicky had also bought me some really yummy
mochi, so I had that for breakfast.
I had promised to show Erin where to
get a used bike, so we decided to meet around 3pm, though got a little
sidetracked since Nicky wanted to show me this really awesome temple she
discovered last week. The name of the temple is Kitano-Tenman-Gu; I’ll
write more about it once I find the USB cable for my camera, haha.
While we were helping Erin get her
bike, we actually ran into Ian, who was buying things for his own
apartment. He needed a futon, so we took him to a place up the street we
had seen and helped him find something appropriate for his height. I
felt helpful ^.^
After helping Erin shop for some more
household items, we took her to the temple too (since its free
admission, something that never happened in Tokyo), and then went back
with her to her Leopalace. I admit to a bit of envy- Nicky and I had
been looking at the Leopalace, but in the end, it was too far out of our
price range. It’s a really nice place though- large, much larger than
our own since it makes use of a loft space for the sleeping area. It
also comes with a washer, and the bathroom is surprisingly large, since
it’s built for Westerners.
We met back up with Ian for dinner,
and since we realized that we were all living within five minutes of
each other, we decided to check out Ian’s place as well. He apartment is
awesome. There’s a veranda, and sliding rice paper doors, and a large
kitchen. As well, he has an amazingly large closet, like Erin, and both
of them have been kind enough to say that Nicky and I can use their
closets to store our luggage, since our apartment didn’t come with a
closet.
When we
came back to our apartment, and I started unpacking my stuff, I started
feeling a bit depressed, to be honest. Mainly because I feel like we got
short-ended on the apartment situation (no closet, no veranda, no
separation of space). I’m pretty sure Iwai was just trying to sell this
corner unit since it was the only one on the floor with no closet. On
the plus side, though, we are very convenient to a lot of different
things, like the subway, the street market, Doshisha, the Golden
Pavilion and any other number of temples. It also came mostly furnished.
Also, our apartment will look better once we are done unpacking the
clutter. I’ll post pictures once we abolish the luggage problem here. If
we really end up hating this place, we can move after six months, but I
think it’ll be okay... we came here to experience Japan, and if our
house is too comfortable, we’ll never go outside. In the end, it’s still
bigger than my room in Berkeley (so I know I can live in this space),
Nicky is finally living with me, and I’m only paying $250 a month in
rent. Not so bad ^__^