Thursday, March 31, 2011

I finished moving to Tokyo! (sakura house)

After living in Gunma for all my college years, I moved to Tokyo in order to work for the only company that hired me, Rakuten Inc.
I really had no money to move, so I came again to a sakura house, sakura houses are cheap places for foreigners exclusively. There are dormitories, shared rooms, single rooms, and even hotel-like places for very short term staying.
When I first came to Japan, I also had no (very few) money. And I stayed in a dormitory in Shim-Bashi (close to Tokyo station). That totally sucked. 8 people!! living in the same small room...
There was like only one table in the whole room, to eat obviously. So if you wanted to use a computer, you had to do it in bed... Which is mostly OK, but the power cables were really set in a dangerous manner^^.
Not just that, every one had different lifestyles, and it was very hard to sleep/concentrate/watch porn...

Anyway, I had a bit more money than I had when I first came to Japan^^. So I could afford something better. Still, it's a shared room, but the last guy just moved, and I have the whole room to myself!!


It's not that bad. But certainly not meant for staying long...

They give you a list with things that if you break, you have to pay for.
The list looks something like this:
  • mirror = 4000y
  • lamp = 5000y
  • table = 7000y
Which is ridiculous being that you can obviously see they are mostly 100y stuff (there are special stores which sell all their products for one 100y coin). The lamp is probably 1000y, and so is the table...
I guess most foreigners wouldn't know so they put those crazy prices.

The worst thing so far, was actually signing the lease contract. The guy who attended me wasn't exactly 'polite'. And I really hate that, especially in Japanese people, being that they know good manners and how people is usually treated as a customer.
But there are some assholes everywhere I guess.

At least the place is close to my work. And I can probably like go walking everyday. Which is great being that as I said, I have like no money left.

sakura house's toilet:
In the censured part, it says "26cm"... eeeeeewwwww


After living a few days...
The room is like very warm, a very good quality I didn't expect. But there's a catch! The walls are like very thin, and next to the window there's like a hole that connects the rooms (it probably was a huge room, and they just put some reforming walls, you can see like tons of screws in the wall, and a very long tape!!), so you can hear everything the next room's people are doing...
This morning (April 2), the guy next room brought his foreign girlfriend, and you could totally hear them having sex...
I was doing my homework then, so you can guess how distracting that was! (I couldn't keep my ear from the wall...)

And the staff doing the cleaning were also talking in a very loud voice right in front of the room, so that was just plain annoying.

Still, it's probably just a weekend thing, being that weekdays were very quiet.

updated on 07/25

These pictures are from when they "painted" the walls. They moved me temporarily to another room, and this is how they gave it back to me...
I'm never living in a sakura house again...
How can they treat people like this.

1 comment:

  1. That sounds pretty terrible, but come on, people can have a bad experience almost anywhere. I stayed at Sakura House for 3 years and I had a great time! However, I lived at 4 different locations at various guest houses and I had a overall really great time there.
    I guess it all depends on where you stayed. As you mentioned, you started out by staying in dormitory. I could never live like that, I need some privacy. That bad experience probably colored the rest of your stay too.

    I would probably not recommend a dormitory to anyone, but I would highly recommend a Sakura House guest house to anyone looking for a place in Tokyo!

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