Touchdown in Tokyo

Hullo again, sorry for the break but I STILL don't have internet access at home here (old cliche, but you really don't appreciate the value of things until you're deprived of them - have been practically chewing my fingers off in net-withdrawal over the last couple of weeks), having to use a local internet cafe at irritating expense...

But, anyway, I'm in Tokyo! Just about the biggest of big smokes, although my little part is quite a lot quieter and less frenetic than what you might have seen in Lost in Translation, etc. (although, excitingly, that bit of the city is only a 20-minute train ride away for times when I want to dip my toes in the madness.) For anyone who wants to look it up, my local train station is Tanashi and my town is Nishi Tokyo (West Tokyo). My new apartment is quite small, although not too bad by Tokyo standards, and very new, which is a nice change from the '70s-era places I lived in in Kuji. In what's almost a cliche of Japanese design, the builders have packed a lot of facilities into a small space - aircon of course, small bath, indoor clothes-drying (the bathroom's a kind of wet-room, sealed off from the rest of the flat, and you can set the extractor fan to maximum extraction and heating at the same time for rainy days; you could also set it to a sort of DIY-sauna effect I guess, although I may avoid that in preference for not collapsing in the bath...), kitchenette with space for all appliances, and a lot of storage space including a cupboard designed to hold about 40 pairs of shoes! Girls will be girls, I guess...

Moving in has been crushingly expensive (handing over around 2 and a half grand in cash in order to get the key was a rather surreal experience, could barely fit my wallet in my pocket - the only time in my life when I will feel vaguely like a Premiership footballer), but the good news is that the new job starts paying from my first month, very handily. They also let me claim a transportation allowance for the bus, despite the fact I live an 8-minute walk from the school - not my idea, I promise; very happy to accept the money though. I also get my final salary payment from Interac later this month, so with substantial help from paternal sources (thank you again Dad!) things are manageable.

Although my time has been mostly taken up with furnishing the flat, setting up a new bank account, etc., I did have time on Friday to visit the Jackson Pollock exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art. Felt quite smug at being able to make at least some sense of the Japanese explanations, hoping my fellow visitors were suitably impressed!

First day at work tomorrow, only a brief introduction to the new students I think but should be interesting anyway. Internet access is finally being installed a week tomorrow, will be blogging more frequently after that I hope! Bye for now, take care.