New Digs

A while ago I said I was thinking of moving into a guesthouse, the (often) really shit dorm style housing that foreigners often find themselves in when they first come to Japan. Obviously that could be viewed as a step backwards, but certainly it's cheap and fairly hassle-free. Anyway, the only guesthouses I could find were in the middle of nowhere, or tiny, or ludicrously overpriced.

I like living fairly central. In London, all the dizzying heights of Oxford street were thirty minutes away by bus, or less if I took the Tube. And I wanted the same set-up here. I spend a lot of time in Shibuya and Shinjuku. So,when a friend told me she was leaving and asked if I would like her room, I said yes.

The house (HOUSE, not apartment, thank goodness) is in Shimokitazawa. That's only four minutes away from Shibuya by train. Lovely!

Shimokitazawa is a bit like Camden, before they high-streeted it up and ruined everything. Or maybe Portobello. There are no tall buildings, which is in itself a miracle. "It's popular with young people," my students say dubiously, and I don't know if that's good or bad in their eyes. But it's nice to see all the little African inspired shops and things, and people-watching is great there. Before, in places like Otsuka or Mizonokuchi (my old towns), all you could see were the salarymen in their stupid cheap suits. It was really depressing really, as you saw them you knew more or less exactly what they were doing, where they were going, what their routine was like. Their stupid wives were probably cooking their stupid dinners in their stupid little apartments, after a stupid day at the stupid office. So seeing people dressed in actual colours, or a young ponytailed man sitting writing in what looks like a journal at the table next to you as you sit with a coffee, is quite a nice change. Tattooed men appear on posters outside record shops, and the picture is a picture to be admired, not sneered at with disdain. Shimokitazawa has an air of hope and aspiration about it - people seem artistically inclined or imaginative. Places like Shinjuku or Mizonokuchi, in contrast, reek of despair.

I've been developing a bit of OCD about my new room's cleanliness. Everyday I'm dusting and cleaning the tatami before work. Everything is binned, washed, wiped, Febreezed or folded immediately. As soon as I wake up, I turn around and straighten the bed covers. That's a bit mental, maybe. When I was a student, I was a filthy pig. I only tidied up when it got to the point where I was picking my way through the debris to reach the door, and it's a miracle the sheets got changed at all. Did I change them? I don't remember. But call it old age, or new house excitement, or whatever else, I'm enjoying it. I never made any effort with my last place - it looked like a bomb had hit it and the floor became an extra shelf. Also, you couldn't swing a cockroach in that tiny space. And there WERE cockroaches.

It brings back my student days again...


THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE MAGGOTS

In my shared house, I looked at the kitchen sink. Someone had poured rice into it and left it there. I looked closer. It wasn't rice.