Erek Speed

Last time, I was sitting in my hotel contemplating my return to Japan. This time, I’m going to talk about the following week and my adventures finding an apartment.

The Monday after I arrived I visited a realtors office so he could find me a place to live. I didn’t much care about size but I wanted a place close to work and good arcades. I work in Shinjuku and there’s a really good arcade in Shibuya so he ended up showing me a place in Shibuya and a couple of places in Shinjuku.

They were all fine but one of the places in Shinjuku was a block from work and came furnished so I went with that place. I spent a few days chilling and bumming about around Shibuya and other places in Tokyo. It’s pretty nice to be in this city and not have any obligations but I would be glad to return to work. It’s good to have a purpose in life.

In Japan, apartments have quite high move in costs. Not only is there 1 month rent agency fee and 1-2 months deposit but there’s also 1-2 months of key money (??) which is essentially a bribe to sweeten the deal for the landlord. This plus first month’s rent and stuff like lock changing fee and cleaning fee made me worried for a bit that I wouldn’t be able to move in as soon as I needed. In the end, everything worked out and I was able to move in.

In that time, I also went to the Tokyo Game Show with Hidde and spent quite a bit of time sleeping. In the near future, I’ll have a post about the former but probably not about the latter.