Moving!

A couple of weeks ago we decided it might be a good idea to move apartments. We had been toying with the idea for awhile, mainly because our first apartment has a complicated layout where you have to shower then dry yourself in the kitchen, there's only room for two people in the apartment at any one time and Ross bought a guitar... so we decided to look into moving. We also had visited friends in their apartment and been dazzled by the size and beauty of it (and also that it featured highly sought after natural light). Getting a new apartment in Japan involves lots f complicated procedures and a big layout of non refundable key money (about two or three months rent worth of money considered a gift to the landlord...madness). So we decided it was simplest to stick with the company we're already renting from, they deal with foreigners and you don't pay any of the crazy costs. They showed us a couple of places, including one near our friends Chris and Leigh but over the past few weeks we've grown to really love Juso, where we live. We love the energy of the place, the great restaurants, interesting people watching, a big river next to our apartment block, etc. It's actually a cool area to live, especially for sightseeing. We are 40mins from Kyoto and 25mins ish from Kobe. It's a really convenient area. So, with that said, we looked at an aparment upstairs! We looked at a place on the fourth floor (I wax and wane between 'damn these stairs!' and 'great exercise!') and the place is really great. After a few days of tension as we battled it out with another couple who wanted the place, we got it (and they got our old one....). So yesterday we moved apartments! The process wasn't too bad actually.... We (when i say we, I mean Ross) just packed all our clothes still on hangers and all our bits and pieces into our suitcases, trundled them upstairs then spent the next few hours unpacking and rearranging stuff. I can't believe how much stuff we've somehow accumulated in just two months. Some of it is unavaoidable; paperwork, textbooks, sightseeing info, etc but we've also bought bits and pieces for our kitchen,etc. So all of it had to be moved upstairs. This apartment is really cool. We enter and have a pretty good space for kitchen, dining, etc (there's room for four chairs around the dining table so they gave us four chairs, then we had people over last night and all four of us stood in the kitchen dining without touching!), a little room for our bedroom and another room set up as a loungeroom...with a red couch! This thing is tremendous! The best bits about our apartment: -non stinky shower -view of Umeda city, the sky building and the river -big TV -red couch -quick access to the roof of the building Very exciting move. I don't think we'll leave here. Ever. Not even for groceries. Especially as we'd have to carry them up four flights of stairs...I'll keep you posted, we may have to rig up a basket and pully system. This could be fun. Moving day was pretty fun actually, it didn't take too long and during the day our neighbour Laura keep passing by. We don't often see her as we have really different schedules but she has time off for Golden Week so we kept seeing her and her boyfriend Aki. She suggested that we go down to Cospa, her gym as we have been looking into different gyms to see whether we'd like to join. So we took a break from moving and went to Cospa. We walked in, had the start of a tour, marvelled at the pool then promptly left cos Ross was asked if he had any tattoos! Tattoos are still very taboo here (associated with the Japanese Yakuza mafia) among old people and gyms don't let people with tatts be members. It was pretty full on discrimination and it made Ross really uncomfortable, but it was funny afterwards when he just sort of stopped in the hallway, pulled off his slippers (guest slippers for our gym tour!), said thank you and walked out. I think we'll check out Gold's gym next..... Last night we did dinner with Aki and Laura too, they took us to a fantastic Okonomiyaki and Ykisoba place right near our house. The place looks like a dive but serves amazing food. Okonomiyaki is a sort of vegetable and meat pancake served with different sauces and toppings. You generally see it at street vendors but you can also go to restaurants where it's cooked in front of you on a hot plate then kept warm on it while you eat - a very fun dining experience! So this place was great and it was so nice to catch up with Laura and Aki and get to know them both. We finished the night by climbing on top of the roof of our apartment for chats and a quiet drink with a sensational view. It was awesome. Altogether. Not a bad little moving day.