6-01-03

It’s been over a week since the last one of these, and there’s a fair bit to cover, but the first bit of business is to say how proud I am of my brother Alex who graduated from high school last Friday. It royally sucked to have missed his graduation dinner and the ceremony, but I’m still busting with pride over here in Japan. In just a few months, Alex is going to be a freshman at the University of Florida. I would have happily supported any college decision he would have made (weeeeell, except for maybe *one* decision…then the support wouldn’t have been quite so happy), but I am just pee-my-pants happy that my little brother is gonna be a Gator. Hell Yeah! So hooray for Alex. I also have to say that my little Grinchy heart grew three sizes on the day I heard that the Mom and Dad factions of my family managed to peacefully gather for Alex’s occasion. Hooray for the Dufresne Clan!

Next I’m asking for prayers, happy thoughts, good vibes, or whatever you have to spare for my brother Andrew. There’s something up with his throat that landed him in the hospital. I’ll spare the more squeemish of you the details but it doesn’t sound pleasant at all. Then he up and checked himself out of the hospital AMA. That’s our Andrew. What’s the phrase about God looking out for little children and fools? I’m just hoping it’s true. So I’m not there to call or visit or anything, Not that Super-Fix-It MG could do anything in this case anyway. Seriously guys, keep him in your thoughts.

OK, about Japan. When last I left you, I was still not yet employed. That changed last Monday. I had a second interview with Berlitz, and they also made me an offer. They offered me 20,000 yen less a month than the other school, but were offering medical insurance, which the little Japanese school could not offer. In addition, they agreed to give me all of Wednesday and half of Thursday off, which are Chris’ only two days off. So I went with Berlitz. Right now my work visa application is in processing and it should be approved by the third week of June. Now for the funny part: I’ll be teaching English to 4-9 years olds. Me teaching children. There will be some adult classes mixed in, but for the most part it’s me and the kiddies. This should be entertaining.

But Berlitz doesn’t provide housing…nor did any of the positions I applied for (that it would be easy to find a teaching job that offers housing is one of the "misnomers" we believed when we decided to move here). So now, despite what I said about it earlier, we’re engaged in the search for affordable housing in Tokyo. In Japan, they have a complicated system for renting. You can’t just go to an apartment complex and try to rent. No, no – that would be too simple. Instead, you have to go to a realtor, and the realtor helps you find a place. For that privilege, you pay the realtor an amount equal to one month of rent. Then you pay your new landlord about one month worth of "thank you money" for allowing you to live there. Then you pay "key money" in the amount of 2-3 months worth of rent. This is all before you move in and before you've paid the actual rent. Leases are also for 2-3 years instead of annual. In addition, many places won’t deal with foreigners directly at all and they require you to have a "Japanese friend" who they can speak directly to. Sounds like fun, no?

But I haven’t gotten to the really good part. The PRICE. Tokyo is part of Japan. Japan is an island. Barring drastic and unwelcome seismic/volcanic activity, islands do not grow. Ergo, space in Japan is limited. Tokyo is world famous for being the most expensive place to attempt to live on the planet. The apartments are tiny, most come completely unfurnished (and here unfurnished means nothing – not even a fridge). In fact, most Japanese don’t sleep on beds. The floors are covered in tatami (rice mats) and they put sleeping rolls out on those and sleep on the floor. For all of this, you’ll pay a minimum of $1500-$2000…and that’s a lowball figure. Happy, happy, joy, joy. Tiny, unfurnished, expensive – hurrah.

But all is not lost. I’ve found a few services that cater to foreigners. This is mainly good because they speak at least some kind of English. I’m actually pretty good at understanding the Engrish. While Chris might be aces at learning actual Japanese, I’m way better than he is at understanding Japanese people attempting to speak in my native tongue. Anyway, these places rent to foreigners on a monthly basis without key money. Most of these facilities are called "guest houses," and are like dorms in that you have to share some facilities with your neighbors. Sometimes all you get is a room to sleep/live in, and you share everything else. Sometimes you just share the kitchen, sometimes you only share the shower, and occasionally you don’t share anything. They almost always have all utilities included, and most are furnished. Right now we’ve got about 5 options and one is a guest house called Asakusa House. It has 2 private rooms to live/sleep in (Two rooms folks! This is FANCY) and a private kitchen and toilet. The shower and laundry facilities are shared with a similar guest house on the same floor. Chris’ reaction to this place was my favorite: "can you just make sure my pooper isn’t in the middle of the living room." This place, shared shower and all, is the cheapest place we’ve looked at for 106,000 yen/month. There are also two private apartments, both are varying degrees of inconvenient to commute from for 117,000 and 125,000 yen/month.

Poor, frugal Chris is about to die of sticker shock. He’s also pretty cheesed off at getting another stinky commute. After what he had in Florida, I can see where he might not be pleased to return to that life so fast. But this is the reality of the situation. It’s just that expensive to live here, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Tomorrow I’ll visit a few of these places and will probably put a deposit down on the best choice. Just another part of the cultural experience I guess.

Speaking of cultural experiences, Chris and I had one last Wednesday….we joined the Japanese CostCo Wholesale Club!! We hopped on a train, rode five stops east of here, then took a bus (and I swear it was indeed a "short bus") to my new personal Mecca. For $40 we became members and gained access to food packaged in labels I COULD READ. Here’s what we bought: a 12 pack of Kodak film, a huge bag of frozen mozerella/spinach raviolli, 3 jars of Classico spaghetti sauce, onion bagels, cinnamon raisin bagels, 3 6-packs of raisins, a giant bag of carrots, 2 ribeye steaks, a big bag of frozen meatballs, 18 Mach 3 razor blades, 3 boxes of frosted flakes, a hugemongous bag of tri-color pasta, a supersize bottle ranch dressing, 4 3-packs of Yoplait yogurt, and 6 "half bags" of Doritos. Of course then we had to get all of that BS back to Urayasu via bus and train. We looked like retards carrying all of that crap, but who cares. Food, food, food that I can prepare because I can read the instructions.

Also this week, we went to Shibuya. That’s the uber-trendy part of Tokyo where the latest in fashion, food, music and gadgets can be found. It’s mighty loud and big and bright. It’s got a lot of clubs and stores. Frankly, I don’t care for Shibuya. It’s too much of too much. And really it has two parts to it. A high end with department stores and shopping and a sort of trashy lower end. Too many punks. Too many people who think too much of themselves. The best thing about Shibuya is that is has Tower Records and Tower records had a seventh floor of "imported books and magazines" (read: stuff in ENGLISH). The only problem is that a paperback is 2-3.5 times as much as you would expect to pay here. I wanted to buy the paperback version of Lovely Bones, but at 1,850 yen, there was no freakin’ way. I wonder if the Winter Park Public Library could interlibrary loan me some reading material, because I’m running out fast.

While in Shibuya, we discovered a store with an English sign that said "Sam’s *REAL BLACK MUSIC*." Now let me tell you that there are almost no black people at all in Japan. I mean someone should tell the NAACP ‘cause we are talking a serious lack (as a side note, this occasionally makes me think of an uncle of Chris’ who matter-of-factly once said at Thanksgiving that Dollywood is his favorite place in the whole world to go because there aren’t any black people there. If he’s cool with the Japanese, then this is his place). Anyway we went in Sam’s because who can resist seeing what they think is "real black" music. To be honest, it was a nice collection. Jazz, blues, spirituals, R&B, hip-hop…the works. Although they included Mariah Carey whose squealing makes my ears bleed, I was just glad to finally have an answer to the "what is she anyway" question. My only two beefs in the collection were with Eminem (not a black man) and Michael Jackson (not a black man).

Also while in Shibuya, two mistakes were made. The first was that Chris let me navigate (Kelley who spent a week with me in London knows exactly why MG should not have the map). I was trying to get us to some sort of landmark purple clock, but by the time Chris took over the navigation again, he discovered that we’d walked all the way to Harajuku, the next ward over. Oooops. So instead of the purple clock, we got a nice view of the 1964 Olympic stadium. Then we stumbled on a beautiful park with a huge dark brown torii that is the entrance to the Meiji Shrine, the most important Shinto shrine in Tokyo. We went for the camera to take a pic, and damn it all if it wasn’t gone. Just gone. The last place we knew we had it was at Sam’s Real Black Music store. Chris took a picture of me with the sign and then… Chris says he distinctly remembers handing it back to me. So I guess that means I lost it. Usually I remember putting things down or the point at which I messed up, but I don’t this time. But he’s sure he gave it back to me, and we no longer have it, so damn hell shit. We went back everywhere to look and left our phone number with the places, but I think it’s gone for good. So now we’re cameraless. I guess it’s a little funny that we’re cameraless IN JAPAN, but it’s not in the budget to replace it any time soon. So whatever, I’m apparently a camera-losing dumbass.

Well that’s all for now. I’ll let you know when we move or if anything exciting happens.

Much love to you all!