Kichijoji

Finally I’ve got around to making another post! Only my second post in the three months I’ve been in Japan. Apologies to my avid readership…or well apologies to anyone who was waiting for some news from me anyway. We had to wait ages for our internet connection to get sorted after we moved.

As most people know, I wasn’t exactly overly enthusiastic at the prospect of moving back to Japan, and especially Tokyo. I was looking forward to starting my married life with Saori in earnest of course, but I just had this image of Tokyo in my mind which consisted of endless ugly grey buildings sprawling as far as the eye could see. And after living back in Ireland for a couple of years, I wasn’t really looking forward to getting back into the formality of Japanese society either. But now that I’ve been back here a few months I’m glad to report that Tokyo isn’t such a bad place at all, and while the Japanese are no doubt a formal bunch, they’re also very kind I’ve been made to feel very welcome.

As I said in my last post the place we were living in was Kawasaki. It’s not a particularly nice city, but it was convenient for a while. With all its homelessness, industry and drabness it probably wasn’t the best place to get reacquainted with Japanese life though! The place we moved to, Kichijoji, is in west Tokyo, about 15-20 mins from the main centres of Shinjuku and Shibuya and much nicer than Kawasaki!

We found our apartment with surprising ease. We just went to the estate agents, spent a couple of hours looking at plans and photos of places, picked out five we wanted to see, and then one of the estate agents drove us round to all five. We liked a couple of them and decided which one we wanted most. Japanese landlords can be very fussy about who they rent to and are notorious in turning away foreigners so we weren’t overly hopeful, but the next day we a got a call from the estate agents to say the place was all ours. It went incredibly smoothly. So next we had to part with five months’ rent in deposits and various other charges. An expensive and painful business!

Apartments in Japan come completely unfurnished without even so much as a light fitting so we had a couple of very intensive days of shopping in Ikea. So now we probably have most of the same furniture as you in Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, etc!

We had decided on Kichijoji because it was convenient for Saori’s job in Shinjuku and because it’s well known as one of the most desirable places in Tokyo with a bit of a Camden vibe. There’s loads of cool little shops selling all sorts of stuff, a couple of excellent parks (quite a rarity in Tokyo), cafes and bars and ….

Ireland House! No not a pub, but a place selling Irish stuff. I’ve absolutely no idea why, or how they would ever have enough customers to keep going but there it is. Unfortunately the only Irish food they sell is Butler’s chocolates and Bewley’s tea.

I started working as a translator at Meiji University at the end of January. It’s been very enjoyable, but it’s only short-term so I’ll be finishing there in a couple of weeks. Anyway, this post is dragging on a bit so I’ll write about that in a separate post. Oh and while I’ve been writing this we had a wee earthquake! They’re never much fun…

Here's a few pics of the local park and the night it snowed: