Wednesday, however, was all about the apartment. In the morning I checked out of my hotel, stowed my luggage and headed to the rental agency, where they briefed me on what was going to go down with the lease-signing and collected the money that would be given to the company that owned the unit. Oh! First we had to stop off and pick up the official seal that they had ordered for me. You see, in the US we use our signature to represent ourselves on paper, in Japan they use little stamps, I think almost always with the characters of one’s last name. Well, in order to go forward with the lease I needed to have one so they ordered one for me with my first name, actually, written out in katakana phonetic script. When I called the finished stamp ‘cute’ they looked at me strangely, probably because it’s something very official, so ‘cute’ isn’t really what they were going for.
We went over the lease with a person from the company line by line, and then after what seemed like forever they gave me a key and the guy from the rental agency dropped me back off at the station. I went straight back to my hotel and hired a cab to my new apartment –there was no other way to get my three giant suitcases there.
As soon as I’d managed to get everything in the door I got to work measuring with a tape measure I now remember that I spent most of Tuesday afternoon hunting down. I did my best to draw up a floor plan of the apartment with measurements, and though the finished product wasn’t exactly great I think it did the job. I had thought about going to Ikea, but since I had to wait for the man from Osaka Gas to come and turn everything on I decided to leave it until the following day. By the time the gasman left I was pretty hungry, so I set out in search of a supermarket, and then maybe also a store where I could buy something to sleep on, since I had just committed myself to living in an apartment that had zero furniture and no appliances in it yet. Luckily, I found both a supermarket and a home goods store one after the other, and so was able to get dinner, 3 days worth of breakfast, a heavy coverlet to sleep on, some towels, toilet paper and other necessities. Sadly, I failed to find an alarm clock and so spent the whole night waking up in a panic that I was late for my appointment to go get my visa changed.
Thursday was a terribly busy day! I miraculously woke up exactly when I wanted to, found my nearest subway station, and was early to meet up with the man from my school. Talking to the visa people was scary, but apparently I did well and so before too long things should be sorted out. I went pretty much straight from the immigrations office to Nanba, where the free shuttle to Ikea is located. I had never been to an Ikea before, but I really had not expected to be herded in one continuous curve from entrance to exit like a cow at a slaughterhouse. I don’t mean that it was a bad experience or anything, but clearly you are meant to spend your entire day in there slowly accumulating more and more items until you have so much that the only way to get it home is to ship it. Luckily, I’m extremely cheap, so I spent most of my time vacillating between the two-or-three cheapest items on my list, with almost no time left over by the end to buy too much extra stuff. I ate the meatballs, which were tasty but not exceptional, and a cinnamon roll, and bought pretty much exactly what I went in there for (primarily a bed and a little sofa). I had naively thought that I would be sleeping on my new bed within 24 hours, so I was a little put out when they told me that the earliest they could deliver would be Sunday. Only 3 more nights of sleeping on the floor!
From Ikea I went back to Nanba hoping to find a 100yen shop and lo and behold! There was a nice big one just inside the JR Nanba OCAT terminal! I bought dishes and other needful items…and then proceeded to carry them for what felt like an eternity. I had told myself that I would price the items that I had already seen at Yodobashi Camera at the Bic Camera store in Nanba, so even though I was tired I dragged myself (and my bags full of 105yen dishes and sundries) all the way there. The prices proved to be better at Bic than at Yodobashi, so I made up my mind to buy my household appliances there, thinking that at least if I wouldn’t have a bed I could have a tea kettle, or maybe even a refrigerator! Again, naïve. The electric tea kettle, microwave and rice cooker will arrive on Saturday evening, the refrigerator and the washing machine come on Wednesday evening. But! In the (really long) process of buying all this I managed to sign up for internet! I thought to myself, if I can’t have a hot cup of tea, buy groceries or sleep in a bed, maybe by tomorrow evening I can skype with my family! Need I say it again? Naïve. That one isn’t coming until the 17th. Sigh. At least signing up right there saved me 20,000 JPY on my appliances. Exhausted, bought myself a teriyaki chicken sandwich at the McDonald’s on the 2nd floor of Bic Camera and trudged home.
Okay, so Ikea:
-Everything is in Japanese, English AND Swedish. This means that I would stare at a word in katakana for a full minute before realizing that it was just the Swedish name for the thing spelled phonetically.
-Free refills on drinks. I love this. I had about four cups of different soft drinks.
-The almond cake had no marzipan in it. I was TERRIBLY disappointed.
-Okay, so the meatballs are just meatballs in a light gravy, not spiced, with a side of boiled potatoes and lingonberry jam, am I right?
-This has got to be the single largest store I have ever seen in Japan. It’s like a Super WalMart, only the people aren’t as scary and everything’s in Swedish.
-That heart thing with the arms, creepy or cute? I’m leaning towards creepy.
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