3 november 2013
After a little earthquake this morning, I kinda realized that it's time to do a little update on my blog. And it came to my mind that I haven't shared with you how I'm living. So i think this is a great opportunity to give you a little tour around my house where i'm living at. I'm currently living in a town outside Tokyo called "Toda" that lies in a prefecture called "Saitama". To get in to central Tokyo from here, takes about an hour with train. To my school, that lies in a place called "Takadanobaba" it takes approximately 30 minutes depending on how many people that there are on the stations.
It's a nice and calm town and you can actually walk alone on the streets. The only down part about living here is all the Chinese hookers that walks around during night, thankfully t
hey haven't bothered me yet. From my house it's about a 3 minutes walk to the nearest 7 eleven. The bigger supermarket is about a 10 minutes walk from here, and a 10 minutes walk to the other direction lies the train station.J&F Plaza in Nishi Kawaguchi is a guest house where about 25 people live. Most of the people are able to speak English but some only speak Japanese. My staying here so far has been absolutely perfect!
Nishi Kawaguchi Guest House,
We'll start the round tour with the the house.
The first photo is taken from the roof of our house (even the header of this post is taken from the roof of the house). As you can tell, there are tons of houses in the area, even though I'm not living in the central parts of Tokyo. This is just something that you'll never get away with, if you not living on the real country side.The house itself is a quite big mansion with rooms for about 30 people, there are 3 floors and the balcony on the top.
When you enter the building, you will arrive in the hallway. But hallways in japan is kind of different from what i'm used to. As you can tell from the picture, the actual floor is on higher ground than the ceramic tiles. If you'd walk on the floor with your shoes on, the house keeper would be pissed off.This is actually the same in almost every place in Japan. So keep in mind that if you ever visit Japan, and you see a hallway like this. Don't step on the floor. Take off you first, and then you can walk on the floor. And don't forget to put on your slippers.
The living room is where the action happens, and this is basically where everybody hangs out all the time.Almost every night, we are playing board games, eating together, watching television or just hanging out, chatting.
The game that we right now play the most is a game called "Jinrou" the English name for the game is "Maffia"and the rules of the game is quite simple. You get a role that you are supposed to play, either a citizen, a wolf, a fortune teller or a necromancer. The purpose of the game is to find out who the wolfs are. The tricky parts is that the wolfs kills a person every night, and if you don't find out who the wolfs are in time the wolf('s) win. To find out who the wolf's are, you are discussing during day, and ask each other things like, "Are you the wolf..." etc. Since everything turns out differently every game it's actually really funny!
The living room is also the place where were you can study, and ask people about help etc.
Hanging out in the living room is always funny, because we are always having a good time. It's really like we are one big family.
And for the last part of this round-tour I will show you my cosy little room. At my mere 11 square meters I think that I have made it really homely.
With the bed taking up like 1/3 of the room, there is still enough room for the things I need. To be honest, I think it's even a bit to large. Because, I'm only in my room when I'm studying and when I'm sitting in front of my computer.
As you can see in the pictures, I have a huge closet, and also 3 shelves where I keep the rest of my clothes. Even, as you can see in the middle picture, I have my own refrigerator in my room, right next to my desk. It's really handy actually, so you don't have to walk a mile to get your coke... ehehe.So yea, that's basically it! I hope you enjoyed this little tour around my house.
The next post I will upload will be about the differences that have encountered so far in Japan, and I have to admit there have been plenty, so stay tuned for that!
In the meantime, take care, and I'll see you next time!
