our next stop
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
Mari found some temporary accommodation options for when they arrive in early July. Today I visited two of the locations, and they couldn't have been more different.
Because both locations were 15-20 kilometers distant from where I'm staying, and because I had three hours between the two appointments, I decided to take my bike. This was my trek around the city.
This is the first option, at a svelte ¥269,394 for the five week period, is in a bit of a gully in Shinagawa.
From the street...
The "yard"
The "yard"
The balcony, which the owner said was "dangerous"
A nearby playground. A bit lack-luster I thought.
This is the other option, at ¥314,808 for the same period.
Option 2.
Immediately next to a Yakiniku restaurant
Now, ¥315,000 is a lot to pay for a single month, it's about $4,000. But there are several mitigating factors. First, the ¥269,000 place had ceilings that were in places too low for me. It also had no clothes dryer, which isn't going to work in monsoon season with four people. By contrast, I'm currently staying in an airy place on the crown of a hill; but it's so humid and rainy that it's impossible to dry my laundry during a rainy day. Today's the first sunny day in seven days so just like last Sunday it's laundry-and-hope day.
Worse of course is the crowding. Several of my coworkers are having real trouble at home now because they're living in tiny apartments never designed for three+ people (including in some cases infants!) for weeks and months on end without break. In the case of one colleague, it's actually his wife who's losing it with their infant every day: she's really screaming, it's bad. In other case, the ~18-month-old wakes each and every time my colleague is on a conference call and given his position it's impossible for him to go two hours without being on a call so he's switched to "sleeping" during the day and working at night. One of my colleagues has a special needs child who's ~15 and one of my other (completely useless) colleagues couldn't deal with the kid's vocalization's in the background on the call and lost his temper.
Thanks to the Olympics giving way to a lock-down and embargo on most international flight, there's currently an abundance of short-term apartments. So while we're spending a bit more than we wanted for the place for Okubo but it's discounted by more than 60%.
We'll likely live in a place (much) further from the core when we can settle down.
These are some other places I saw and snapped along the way as I traipsed about the city.
I'd love to see the inside of this narrow, ramshackle place
The first place that Mari and I lived together, in 2006-2007
Somewhere along the ride out to Koganei, I found this baby Shinjuku
Sunset over the Tamagawa