Category: Settling In

Honest to blog, it has been a lot of work today. (“Honest to blog” is a phrase Tomo has started using from “Juno”). I have my apartment, as y’all know. It is been 9 years since I really tried to make a house. Sheesh, it is a lot of work.

I went to the office on Saturday morning, but Saturday afternoon I had scheduled delivery of all my purchased things. My colleague offered to help ferry some things from the hotel to the apartment. What a great help. I really appreciated that. There are definitely some nice folks at work. Thanks MJ.

I would LOVE to show you pictures of my new place. As a matter of fact, they are in my camera. But I can’t seem to find my cable to connect it to the computer. Darn! I’ll look again tomorrow at the apartment. Anyway, I have some pictures of my pristine apartment and the craziness that it is now.

Once of the nice things about delivery in Japan is that usually the stores have the delivery folks assemble the item you purchased and then they remove the trash. I didn’t really realize how much packing material is used. Wow. So Furniture Dome was the first to arrive. Bed, mattress, duvet$$, pillows, nightstand, TV board, dining room table. I caught them assembling my bed with the headboard backwards. But … we got that turned around. Literally. The mattress was a little taller than the demo mattress so with the mattress and the pillows it is kind of hard to see the design of the bed. But I like it.

Next came the Tokyu Hands office furniture. That, unfortunately, was delivered as boxes. Honest to blog, there is a LOT of cardboard. I’ve been working over the last two days trying to build up that stuff. I am generating so much cardboard waste. Nagoya is crazy about trash, so I can’t recycle that with the regular recycling. I have to do something special with it. So it is gonna pile up in the guest room until I figure out how to get rid of it. I’m the least excited about the office furniture. I’m not sure how I want to arrange it. I have tables, chairs, a file cabinet, and book shelves. I could have done without the file cabinet. I’ll figure something out.

Next Eiden came with the refrigerator, washer, dryer, TV, and microwave. See, I really did get all this stuff planned for the same day. Pretty darn efficient. For those that miss my laundry stories, well, I did do a load of laundry. Eiden set up all the appliances as well and removed the boxes. I had them leave the TV box though so I can easily ship it. My TV has about a zillion channels but I can’t tell if there is a special weekend of free cable because I had everything. I kept getting an info box that looked like they were running some campaign so we’ll see later what the story is.

Finally, BoConcept delivered my dining room chairs. To quote Borat, “Verry Niiiccce.” Until I started tearing into everything it looked really good. I bought a duvet cover (thanks Mugi) washed it (ha!), and made the bed. It looked really nice for about 5 minutes. Then I started building up stuff. I only had the light from the living room at the time, so I was working in the dark. Anyway, got started.

Today I learned how difficult it is to run errands and buy big things without a car. This morning before I went to the apartment I bought dishes. Those were heavy! So I took a taxi with three heavy bags and dumped them in my kitchen untouched. But I wanted to get as much as I could since it is so hard to actually get to shops after work. I bought some tools as well. I wanted to get some chair mats, but apparently they were sold out. After much bad Japanese, I was able to get them to call another store and but two on hold there.

Once I got to the apartment, I started working on breaking down the cardboard. Then I kept building. Around 3:00 pm I went to lunch and got the chair mats and curtains for every room as well as shears for my room. I won’t buy custom curtains here, so the size doesn’t really work. So be it – it is what it is. I dumped that at the apartment and then went BACK to Nagoya station and bought an overhead light (and some power strips) for the office. I went BACK to the apartment, dumped that, and then went to the Apple Store and bought my new monitor ( 😀 ), some speakers, and an Airport Express. Once again, on Saturday I had Visa issues, so it was all cash except for things reimbursed by work. I caught a taxi back home (it is walkable to the Apple Store but not burdened with a monitor … do you hear that Ben, WALKABLE to the Apple Store!).

Once I got back home I hung the light, and kept working. I hung the shears and decided I liked it in combo with the curtains. Then I ran out of time.

Now I’m going to concentrate on getting the curtains up, getting everything built, and getting the kitchen clean. Then at least the place is livable. Only when I have internet will it really seem livable!

It is going to be nice. As long as I don’t look at my bank account.