Monday, March 21, 2011

moving to Tokyo

Yesterday I went to see some places to move to in Tokyo.
The real estate company guys had kind of a "loose" office, and the guy attending me kept sneezing (he had a cold) right next to me... In Japan you usually wear a mask when you have a cold, so that was rather impolite. Besides the fact that they kept shouting when someone had a call...
After just looking the database and doing lots of phone calls to see if they were still available (3hrs in that...), "we" were going to actually see the places. Then "we" became "I" as that guy had to do some contract, and promised to meet me at one of the places after that was over.
He ended up just telling me where the keys were, and the combination for some number locks and didn't come.

The name of the company was Etown, it's in Gotanda, Tokyo. Don't go there!

Anyway, the places were all too expensive. I needed like 180.000 minimal in order to move to any of them, and they're the cheapest the could come up to.
The thing is, in Japan you have to pay for "Reikin" and "Shikikin", some stupid fee that originally was meant to thank the landlord for letting you move in + some deposit kinda thing.  They usually cost from 1 to 3 months of your rent... So you end up paying like 5 times your rent just to move in.
Places without Reikin and Shikikin are getting more available, but most places still have them.
I was obviously looking for places that don't need them (being that I have like no money at all right now...), but the real estate company's commission is still one month. So I need like 2-3 times a month's rent in order to move in to any of their cheap places ( which is about 180,000yen).


I don't like it, but after the paying the tuition fee for college, I really have no money!
If I could at least pay after I get my first payment for working in Rakuten that would be great!

I guess I'll be staying in sakura house again...
They give cheap rooms for foreigners in Japan. And have dormitories, shared rooms, single apartments, etc.
You still need like 30,000yen for deposit + your rent before hand, but that sums up to like 75,000yen for a 2 people shared room very close to my company, which is like less than half of which would take me to move to any other place.
The thing is... sakura house is not such a nice place^^. The place I lived in when I first moved to Tokyo a few years ago, was a dormitory of 8 people! (in one room!) So it was dirty as hell, stinky, you have no space to even change your clothes, no closet, and obviously with 8 people living together, different lifestyles that really end up getting on your nerve...
Some guy from Europe came to Japan just to party and went to like discos  in Roppongi (where all the cheap/easy chicks in Japan are) every day, coming back very drunk. Which would be just OK if he didn't keep waking me up.
And forget about watching porn, with 8 people, there's always someone in the room...

At least, apparently the maximum people in the room they have is like 6. Which is an improvement. And they have a lot more cheap, shared (2people) rooms. I'll give sakura house another change, just till they pay me enough to move to a decent place (maybe about 3 months...).

No comments:

Post a Comment