You know what i love?

Shinkansen!

Found a place!

Well, I'm moving out of Saitama tomorrow and into Naka-itabashi! Found a great place there - large room, free electricity and internet, clean and renovated building, should be great! All for only 61,000 yen a month and that's INCLUDING utilities :)

So, until i get a computer this blog may not be updated so much, but I'll see what i can do. I'll try and get some photos up at some stage so until then, just know that I am happily making my new life in Tokyo in a cool new place just minutes from the city!

Until next time, then!

UPDATE: Here's the link for the place. I am in room B-08. Also it seems there IS a PC in the common area - well, according to this website anyway - so until I start working that'll be useful.

Only in Japan...

Found some rather amusing items at everyone's favourite store, Don Quixote...

UNIQLO

I forgot to mention that I bought some jeans from UNIQLO, possibly the best store in the entire world. You know how people say Japan is expensive? Well, sure, rent is a bit much and owning a car is practically impossible for anyone who's not a millionaire (because of exhorbitant parking fees and taxes), but food and clothes are DIRT CHEAP! While I was in Shibuya I stumbled across one of these fabulous stores and found a completely cool looking pair of jeans (which, in Australia would most definitely be close to $90 or $100) for 3990 yen or AU$43.56.

I can't remember the last time I found clothes of this quality for such a low price. AND if you're lucky, you can stumble into this store during a clearance and get the same stuff for half price! As for food, well, after buying my jeans I went to a noodle restaurant - you know one of those ones with the wooden bar and the stools - and got a giant bowl of soup noodles with what could only be described as half a pig's worth of pork floating in it, AND a bowl of rice, for 600 yen (AU$6.50).

Seriously, this rocks.

Photos from Shibuya

Went exploring all by myself for the first time today, and decided to go and visit Shibuya, just one of Tokyo's main shopping districts. Check out the lights and signs on the buildings and also, the amazing number of people crossing the road at this busy intersection in the photo with HMV in the background.

(photos still crap - is it the camera phone? or am I just shaking it around or something!?!)

Tokyo is a three-dimensional city!


Q-Front building with giant screen


Honestly, there must be 1000 people crossing this intersection every 30 seconds...


Bright lights in the street malls of Shibuya


Some pretty lights

Response!

Got a response from one of the three jobs I applied for yesterday, saying that I have passed the initial screening process and now have to fill in some email questionnaires and whatnot.

Check it out here.

I told you guys it wouldn't take long! Check out the pay, 250-280k yen a month, that's like between AU$2690 and $3013 per month. Cool!

Cold, cold, cold

Cold and windy today... nothing much occurring.

Applied for 3 jobs today and sent email inquiries about two places to live, so hopefully I'll hear from some of them in the next few days.

Haven't really done anything - except go to the supermarket and eat tsuna-mayo o-nigiri (tuna and mayonnaise rice balls wrapped in seaweed), but soon we might go to this hamburger family-restaurant type of place called "Bikkuri Donkey".

Great!

Got the photos

Ok they are a bit blurry but here are the ones I took in Akihabara. Remember i'm just trying to work out this phone so i obviously didn't have it on night mode or anything. Oh well, let's just say... "the quality will increase".

Akihabara

Went to Akihabara today and actually, took some pictures on my phone. But until I find the damn CD for the computer I can't actually download them. So, when i work it out, i'll post some of the cool photos of it.

Anyway, we explored Yodobashi Camera, a massive camera/electronics store with about 8 levels. On one of the floor we found a whole range of BB guns, like full-on shotguns and assault rifles just hanging there on the wall, hehe.

Went to McDonald's and got (for the three of us) one big mac set, one teriyaki burger set, two chicken burgers and two cheeseburgers - all for 1570 yen! Haha although Japanese McDonald's is still oily - I can feel the oil leaking out of the skin on my face as I am typing hehe.

Oh well, that's it. You can probably expect photos soon. As soon as i work this crap out anyway.

Keitai Denwa!

Went to Akabane and bought a mobile phone today on the AU network - free with a $50 a month plan or something (actually my friend did all the talking for me so she worked out a good deal). These phones can do everything - email, watch tv, play music with headphones, AND you can also use it at the train stations and convenience stores - you put money on it and can just wave it at the turnstiles to catch trains and stuff! Convenient, ne? And i got to pick my own number - well, the final four digits anyway - so you know what I chose?

1 3 3 7 :)

Awesome.

Don Quixote

Went to a shop at about 2am last night called Don Quixote, not far from where I'm staying in Saitama. This shop was absolutely amazing - it's like a variety store, but it sells literally EVERYTHING. AND! It's open till 5am every day! Want a $2500 television at 3 in the morning? No problemo! Clothes, bags, jewellery, all sorts of food (it has a supermarket section), vacuum cleaners, stereos, hell, it's even got Rolex watches. Basically, if it's not in this shop, it doesn't exist.

Need a new electric massage wand at 4:30am? Don Quixote to the rescue!

Registered.

Went to the City Office today and registered as an alien. Despite being forewarned that the non-english speaking staff and the bureaucratic methods by which they check, and check, and check again for the legitimacy of a foreigner's visa etc., the process was actually rather easy and took no longer than twenty minutes!

So, stage 1 is complete, onto stage 2, getting a mobile phone! I think for this one I might need some "native assistance".

Exploring.

Caught the Saikyou-line to Shinjuku today, that's just one of the many big places full of bright neon signs that has a sort of "entertainment-district" (restaurants and arcades and bars and whatnot), but nearby is also a business district full of some unbelievably enormous buildings. One of them, the Tokyo Government Building, has an observation deck on the 45th floor. Amazing night views!! And Tokyo just has this really amazing three-dimensional feel about it - you'll be on ground level, but the streets will be suspended above you, or you'll go down some stairs to some massive underground shopping plazas. It's just so massive, so awe-inspiring. It just "smells like money."

Anyway we just came back and ate japanese curry for dinner, which was good because after walking around town for just a few hours we were starving! So, now we're just going to drink some beers and probably have a slightly earlier night than we did last night (6am, lol!).

Tomorrow i plan to write my resume, but also i have to go and get a foreigner registration card, and perhaps a bank account too...

Ok, enough for now. Seeya!

Arrival

well, it's 9:50pm Japan time and i finally made it. I am now in Saitama, one station out of Tokyo! It's about 6 degrees and I'm about to go ride to the shops and get some beers. God knows, that after lugging a suitcase through the streets of tokyo, changing trains and whatnot, one deserves a 500ml can of the good stuff.

So, more to come...

Moving 40gb of data to an iPod...

... has taken close to two hours.

On another note, packing for a move overseas is utterly shit.

3 sleeps to go!

4 sleeps to go!

Well, here it comes! Only 4 sleeps until I fly to Tokyo. I plan to be there approximately 10 months - from the 24th of February to the 15th of December - and it is still unconfirmed whether I will return for more after that. I am doing a working holiday, so the first thing I have to do once I arrive (apart from find my own place) is find a job! I guess it will be English teaching for now, as I have a degree and a working holiday visa, which should put me a cut above most of the other foreigners there, also it pays anywhere between 230,000-300,000 yen/month.

So much to do before I leave though! Cancel/transfer internet/phone, buy stuff (like gravox which apparently they don't have in Japan), empty my computer onto my ipod, update my resume etc. Crazy times.

I am looking forward to buying a digital camera in Japan and updating this blog with actually interesting stuff for all my fans to read! So, look forward to that I guess... At the very least this way I won't have to write a thousand emails to you all... hehe.

Another!

Oops!

i forgot to post the previous song as well. This one was sort of accidental, but i like it anyway.

bizarre!

Piano music

A new song - this time a long (5m55s - too long?) piano piece.

Actually, I wrote this long ago before I was even able to record (before I had the program, or the keyboard), and just remembered it for like, 3 years until now.

So, finally i keyed it in. Actually by the end of it i was so god damn frustrated, which is ironic because according to the 2 people who have heard it so far, it is quite relaxing (read: boring?). You be the judge.

Chillax!

money is good

In fact, it's GREAT.

I've saved > $1000 in about 3 or 4 weeks, and that includes buying a number of new clothes, paying bills, and going out every weekend and getting so drunk that i forget my own name!

Love it!

latest musical offering

Played around again with Reason 3.0 tonight. This is nothing special, I just like the instruments really.

Since i haven't played with it for ages, I figured I might as well put it up here.

Enjoy!