This is the post that some of you may have been waiting for, and some of you may find boring, but here's the report about my everyday normal life in Japan, and how I'm getting used to it. This will cover most of the first 3-4 weeks that I've lived here, but not the last week, because it deserves it's own post. I'll separate this post into aspect of regular life, and how I've dealt with it.
Apartment:
You can see some pictures of my apartment in a a previous post:
"What happened since the start of my trip to Japan".
The thing is, the apartment is very small, especially compared to Quebec's ones. This is probably a regular small apartment in Japan, though I didn't see so much that I could judge about this. I'm used to have a lot of space, here I don't. It not so much problems except for the storing place. I almost have nothing, and there's not enough place for this. When I want to change the activity I'm doing I pretty much have to move everything; this include sleeping because my bed is usually where I put the stuff I'm not using.
The apartments here are also very badly isolated. So it's really cold, and electricity is expensive, so I can't use the AC that much.. not that it helps so much, it moves the cold air around by shooting hot air inside, but somehow it's really ineffective. so I'm pretty much always freezing... It's not so bad, people who know me knows that I hate heat more than I hate cold... but even I wish to return to a warm home after a cold day.
The bed is really small and it also seems kinda old... I still don't know if the bed is the cause of this, but it doesn't matter how much I sleep, I never really feel rested...
The bath is too small for me, it's just impossible, so all I can do is take showers... not that I usually take baths anyway. Even when taking a shower though, the bath still feels too small lol.
Neighbourhood:
As expected of Japanese neighbourhood, it's really calm, and clean. There's a bunch of convenience store everywhere. 3 groceries store a couple of restaurants and a ton of vending machines around too. Whatever the time is, you can find what you want close. I only walked around the northern part of the neighbourhood so far, and I actually got lost in the south part too but didn't find anything interesting. I also didn't try every restaurants yet, but the Udon restaurant is really nice, more on this later.
You can see some pictures of the neighbourhood here:
Shin Nakano Neighbourhood
Sorry I didn't take much =/
There isn't much to show anyway, it's pretty calm around here.
The only neighbour I spoke to is the one from the door in front of me, and it ha penned because she opened her door on me. Everyone's seems kinda nice though, especially the girl from the cigarette shop, but since I don't smoke I didn't have the opportunity to speak to her since the first time I asked her how to get to the station.
Food:
In the first couple of days, I didn't visit the streets north of the main street, so I though there wasn't a lot of restaurants around. I pretty much always went to the same restaurant, a gyudon restaurant (bowl of rice with meat, pretty cheap) or bought food at the convenience store.I discovered 3 groceries stores around me, but since everything is written in Japanese it's pretty complicated to get what I need, except for basic stuff which is really easy to recognize. I also noticed that, if I wanted to make pretty much any food, I needed a rice cooker... So I bought one. I didn't have the opportunity to go do the groceries since then so I didn't cook much.
Eventually I went a little farther north and noticed that one street is full of restaurants. I ate curry, udon, sushi. The Udon shop was especially nice, it's a little restaurant where there's only a couple of seats around the chief. The lady who owns the shop is really nice. One night I went there, and I ate with a celebrity in Japan, Nakamura Shidou, a Kabuki performer, and a voice actor. He did the voice of Ryuk in the Death Note movies. It was a rather interesting experience, he was really nice and spoke with me and told me how he like to eat tempura. I can tell you that everyone from Quebec would find it way too salty, even I though it was a little too much.
One of the biggest problem I found in Japan, is that Pepsi is hard to find. Coke is everywhere, but Pepsi is kinda rare. You can find cans in some vending machines, but finding a big format in order to save some money is pretty hard. I finally found a place that has it last week, but it's a 25 minutes walk from here... I think it's worth the trouble though!
TV:
TV in Japan is awesome, games show are really interesting and funny, even if you don't understand; especially Downtown. I love those guys so much, they are hilarious, especially Matsumoto. I got a TV maybe 2 weeks after getting here, I'm also using it as a second screen for my PC. The ads are also pretty funny and wild.
Random:
In snowed in Tokyo like a week ago, you can see some pics of it here:
Snow In Tokyo
I was happy about it, it made me feel home! Tokyo under the snow is interesting, but according to most people it happened once, it won't happen again!
Getting a cellphone when you have a short visa is hell.
That's it for now, if you have questions about something I forgot to talk about, or if you want to know more, don't hesitate to post a comment!
