Random thoughts, comments, observations and general fluff from a random bint who left London at the end of September 2004 to embark on a new life and new adventures in Tokyo, land of the cute.... and is leaving mid-June 2010 - and counting!

Thursday, October 08, 2009

Oh Great!

Got home this evening and logged on. As usual. Found an email from house agency. Instant reaction was - what are they complaining about now. They don't send us chatty emails. Actually, word has it that house is owned by a cult.... But each to their own and as long as there are no more than a surplus of unread """""religious"""""" books lying around, I'm not bothered.

I like my house. Well, I kind of like it. I like my room. It's in a shared house (ten bedrooms - don't really like communicate with the other tenants because a) we keep different hours, b) we have language problems, c) i'm too busy with diploma / knackeredness, d) some of them are just strange, e) there's a lot of coming and going of tenants.

Actually, there's a couple of them that drive me nuts.

The house is in a pretty poor condition. But I like my room, as I said. It's a decent enough size. Plenty of space for me and the cockroaches. It's an old house. Kind of goes with the territory here. I have lots of cute cockroach traps lying around and cockroach spray (not pleasant when you accidently inhale it, as is quite hard to avoid actually) and I've been known to drown a few if I can...

The house is old. It has 'character'. Okay, it's kind of crumbling and rattles but so do most Japanese houses older than ten years of age. Kidding. It's made of wood and wood rot mainly, with doors and windows that don't quite fit.

And the location. The location is great. If you know Tokyo, it's near the Hilton and Shinjuku Chuo Park. It's easy walking distance to Shinjuku Station, Tochomae Station, Nishi Shinjuku Station... It's convenient. In Japan 'convenience' is very important. My students always tell me how Tokyo is such a convenience (sic) city. London and Paris are other convenience (sic) cities.

It's a quiet area. Even if the house isn't always quiet. It's cheap enough. Even if my clothes get mould on them and smell damp a lot. It's home. In a crumbly, I'm a foreigner and so can't really find anything much better with my own kitchen in a convenient area, kind of way.

I love the tower blocks around here. Lots of hotels and office buildings. A park. Lots of nice homeless people.

The house is one of a bundle of very old (we're talking Japanese old house not UK old house here) houses in a block of about three or four small streets and...

to finally get to the point of this post and the email...

We've received notice they're going to knock all the houses down.

On the one hand, I'm not at all surprised. I guessed about ten months ago it was only a matter of time due to the number of suited men walking up and down the streets taking photos and scribbling notes and the recently erected office blocks. The land this block of houses is on is probably worth a fair amount of money to someone.

On the other hand, it's bloody annoying. I'm not planning to be here for more than another six months. Having to move somewhere new in the middle of that is not convenient. They say the earliest this will happen will be end of January. Great. I have no time (diploma) for house hunting or moving this YEAR. And as soon as the diploma is finished, I'm off to India til the end of the first week of January.

We'll get 45 days notice apparantly. On the plus side, we won't get charged any damage or cleaning fees now.

The plus sides aren't feeling too plus at the moment though.

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