Finding a shoebox in Tokyo

All day last Saturday was spent driving around Tokyo with two real estate agents, inspecting a list of properties that roughly met some initial guidelines we had given the relocation company.  The choice was difficult to make without Jae here, but a full day of driving, stopping at an apartment, shoes off, wander around taking photos, shoes on, back into the car ... that was 100 times easier without a 3 year old hanging around.

With typical Japanese promptness, the first agent picked me up at 930am, and dropped me off at 12:40pm, apologising profusely for running 10 minutes late.  At this point I had 20 minutes until the second agent came to collect me and spent most of it feeling like I was going to throw up at the thought of not finding anything that would suit our needs.  We had looked at 6 or 7 places, and while I knew going in that compromises would have to be made, especially for size, there weren't really any of them that I thought we would be happy in.  They were all either too small (even with expectations of living tight), too old, too dark from being buried on the bottom floor in between 10 story buildings, oppressively expensive even for Tokyo, or just so inconvenient for me to ask Jae to live in with no real grocery stores or play areas for Nevan near by.  I was starting to think that I was going to be in serious trouble, either with Jae for taking a place that just wouldn't do, or with the company for having to extend our stay in temporary housing.

The second agent must have been sitting outside the apartment literally waiting for the clock to hit 1pm because she called me on the tick and off we went.  The first guy was nice but a bit like you'd find any other real estate agent in the world.  The second agent was actually just nice, and a had a funny mean streak making fun of real estate agents who need a GPS in order to find their way around Tokyo.  This girl was the driving equivalent of Rain Man, turning down 1 lane alleys so narrow she needed to do a 3 point turn to make the corner, cutting through wards to avoid traffic on the main routes that had led the first agent to being late getting me home, and every once in a while she would stop talking, start counting out something on her fingers and mumbling in Japanese before setting off again with the most polite driving I've ever seen.  I wouldn't have been able to find most of these places with a GPS and a sherpa guiding the way seeing as how there are no real addresses in Tokyo, just building names and block numbers, and street names are very rarely posted even in Japanese except for on the main boulevards.

She had way more interesting places to show me, and more that were actually in our price range.  As the cost of schools and regular expenses began to mount in our planning for Tokyo, as well as the housing depression in the US meaning I will have to keep paying the mortgage there as well, our price bracket had dropped several times.  The other agent had places all the way from our original price down to our new limit, but I actually went into the second round of apartments feeling like I could afford them.  After the morning session, I had narrowed down our original list of a half dozen areas to just two main wards, Setagaya-ku and Minato-ku.  Luckily, 6 of the 7 places she had queued up were in those two areas and we managed to see them all.

Setagaya-ku was the popular choice around the office.  My boss and one of the other managers on the team live in Setagaya or close by, its quiet and apparently really good for families, popular with expats who want to get out a little bit more into a Tokyo beyond the skyscrapers, and very representative of a normal Japanese ward.  It is mostly 2 and 3 story buildings, with very few buildings that are even 10 stories tall.  The streets are small, the train line central to town, and I thought it was excellently cute.  I saw one place that was a serious contender, taking a ton of pictures of every apartment even if I didn't like it, just to be polite to the agent.

Minato-ku is more what most people probably think of when they picture living in Japan.  50 story apartment buildings with the most modern fittings you can imagine, each complex with its own grocery store, gym, movie room, and pool.  It's also more expensive, not as endearing in a little back alley Tokyo kind of way, and more expensive.  The convenience factor for my commute is about the same between the two, but for Jae, Minato-ku is just more ideal as we wouldn't need a car, schools are pretty close by, and there is a little play area next door for Nevan.  We had looked at two apartments already, where I was dutifully taking pictures, when we walked into a corner unit on the 26th floor of Bloom Tower on Shibaura Island.  The apartment is small, the walls in the living room are a strange yellow-orange color, it's at the very top end of our price range, but good lord the view.  It looks out over Tokyo Harbor, with the entire Rainbow Bridge in view from the living room, master bedroom, and bathroom.  It's the kind of view that totally made me forget to look at practical things, or take pictures so Jae can see it.  So, yeah ... that's the one we applied for.

Further afield

Monday was Japanese Labor Day, so I took the opportunity to try out the subway system a day early so that I wouldn't do my aimless wandering trying to find my station during commute times.  I also needed to find a store that sold wrapping paper or gift bags so I could prepare the small presents I'd picked up in duty free for my co-workers.  I got directions from the front desk of our apartment on how to get to the subway station and set off, emboldened by my inability to get lost the day before.

The subway entrances are all clearly marked, so finding that wasn't a problem.  I was slightly stymied in my first attempt to get a PasMo card (rechargeable subway/rail ticket), thinking I had misunderstood the limited English signage, but it turns out that the machine I chose was just out of the actual cards at that moment.  160円 later and I was in Shibuya.  Blind luck had led me to get on the train at exactly the right spot, so when I exited there was a stationary store directly in front of me so I got the gift bag purchases out of the way with no hassle.

From there, I just picked one of the many, many exits from the station and once again was rewarded with blind, stupid luck, coming out to look directly at the Cerulean Tower standing in the distance.  I climbed one of the pedestrian overpasses to head towards the office, but had to stop to take some video of the intersection.

Yeah, once again, I'm not sure why I am so fascinated by Japanese intersections.  After hanging out on the overpass for a bit like some kind of weirdo, I walked up to the office.

This is the side of the building that the lunch room and the bathrooms look out from, the bathrooms having actually a pretty nice view that you unfortunately can't enjoy at the same time as the heated toilet seats, at least not with any social discretion.

Having accomplished all of my immediate needs (gift wrapping, making myself feel better by preparing to avoid getting completely lost on the way to my first day of work), I just wandered around Shibuya for a while.

This is the famous Shibuya crossing from basically every American film set in Japan.  I've been shooting all of these videos on the little flip video camera I won at the last poker tournament in Sydney, which makes for handy footage, if not slightly less impressive than you would see in a real movie.  The crossing is actually really impressive in person, even though there were hardly anywhere near as many people in it than there are on a busy day.

Pac Man guards the entrance to an alley featuring what appears to be a gentlemens club, judging by the signage.  I did not go in to investigate ... it was too early in the day and they looked closed.

The little pink building on the left side of the street is only about 3m wide and contains a condom shop, two or three clothing vendors selling different types of crap, and a Brazilian tattoo parlor on the top floor.  Across the street is a pachinko parlor with the requisite hawker outside yelling about loose slots, etc.

I was starting to get hungry at this point, but instead of eating some place in Shibuya, I decided to take the subway back out to Ueno, where I had spent a large portion of my time on my last visit to Japan a decade+ ago.  Ueno is home to tons of motorcycle dealers, some of them operating out of a storefront so small they basically have a desk and nothing else, with all of their bikes parked on the sidewalk out front.  I ended up heading to a sushi bar that I had eaten in last time I was here and enjoyed my first real Japanese meal in a Japanese restaurant since I arrived.

Feet on the ground

I finally arrived Sunday morning ... and it kind of freaked me out.  For the first day that I was in Tokyo, I really didn't leave the apartment.  The concept of going outside, into an environment where I would be totally lost and unable to talk to anyone was a little but overwhelming.  Moving to Sydney was a lark, but this is a real foreign country and it does not cater to English speakers.  Other than the subway system and some of the most major streets, there is no English signage, which means taking that interesting looking turn down a smaller street can realistically lead to being completely and totally lost.

Finally, after hiding in a video game for a few hours and some gentle chiding from the wife, I wandered out on to the street.  I went out the backdoor of our apartment complex (ours is the one with the little red dot on it, in the middle of the map, and our apartment is at the far left hand side of the building) on to a little 1.5 lane alley.

This is a pretty boring video of it since I tend to leave a bit earlier than the average salaryman, apparently, so the street is deserted at this time in the morning.  This also means that I have not yet experienced the Japanese subway crush, but it's coming.  When I stepped out on to the street, there were a ton of people streaming along, moving to the side if a car or van drove past.  I'm not sure where they were all going since it was a Sunday, but I hopped in to the flow and just followed them down the street.

That took me out, after a turn that I carefully tried to remember so that if I needed to come back the other direction I wouldn't miss it, to Aoyama-dori.  From there, I basically just picked a direction and wandered around for a while.

For some reason, I am fascinated by intersections in Japan.  This one isn't even that exciting, although if you were to walk in this direction for a kilometer or so you would eventually arrive at Shibuya station and then the office.

The Prada building which, once again, I found less interesting than the street.  There was a snooty party going on there that evening, with massive sumo bodyguards out front that I decided probably did not want to be filmed.

After making this stunning contribution to the world of urban filming, I wandered around for a little bit looking for something to eat.  I will admit, ashamedly, that I chickened out and went for McDonalds, where I could point and order by number.  But, I at least ate there instead of scurrying back to my apartment, enjoying the smoke filled atmosphere while all the Japanese people inside laughed at the white guy who travels half way across the globe to a land of intensely great food ... to eat at McDonalds.