A message from the Dark Ages (aka before I had internet)

(Written in late Sept.)

After a few weeks of craziness I am finally settled into my new (well, new for me) Tokyo apartment. The most difficult thing moving to Japan has been registering as a foreigner. All foreigners moving to Japan are required to register for a gaikokujintorokusho card (they make the name short and easy to remember for us). You basically can’t do anything without this card, like rent an apartment etc., or technically even be caught walking around without it (though I’ve never had that problem). Naturally you have to have a permanent address in order to apply for the gaikokujintorokusho so that you can rent an apartment… wait, what?? Right, so I ran into this conundrum where I needed to rent a place but I couldn’t because I didn’t have my gaikokujintorokusho card, but I didn’t have my gaikokujintorokusho card because I didn’t have a place to live…
Anyway, I ended up applying through the city office of my former host family with their address. Which was fantastic. Until I actually found a place in a different ward and realized I needed my new address on the card (that was being processed in another city) in order to open a bank account to receive my salary, get internet, and a phone. Somehow everything worked out, but not without a lot of commuting back and forth between home and city offices because they forgot to tell me something or gave me incorrect information. One good thing was that because the city offices made so many mistakes, they were obligated to put a rush on my card, so I got it a few days ago instead of mid-October (yayyy!).
In the meantime, I have been hitting up the area equivalents of dollar stores—100 yen shops. 100 yen shops are amazing and generally have anything you could want from cookware to school supplies. Since space in Tokyo is pretty limited, I have to get creative with storage and organizing. In my ‘kitchen’ I have one burner with a very small space (counter?) between the sink.