Throwback Thursday: Tokyo apartment

I promised photos of my room in Tokyo for comparison to the one in Hitachi. Here they are!

The room looks pretty ok in the photos, but guess how much stuff I hid behind the bed. :P Not really much space to do anything, especially to cook anything. The table also wasn't big enough for my study style (I need space to spread my books and notes!), but luckily there are plenty of cafes in Tokyo where I could go for studying.

But the location was perfect! If you don't remember, I lived in Takadanobaba and had only two stations to Shinjuku and five stations to Shibuya with Yamanote Line, which is the busiest line in Tokyo. I certainly don't miss the morning rush hour in it.

Greatest things in my room were the TV (great Japanese listening practice, current room doesn't have one...) and the light switch on the wall next to the bed. 

Yes, I kept my rice cooker on the floor because there was no space.

Doorway with genkan. The closets are only for hanging stuff, so not that useful and I ended up keeping half of my clothes in the suitcase.

If you're still wondering why I'm so happy with the Hitachi kitchen...

Bathroom is a bathroom. It's the same size in Hitachi as well. Note: Japanese people love baths, thus a bathtub and not just a shower. Though I have to admit that taking a hot bath after a long day feels reaaally nice.

My great balcony.

The view. Actually pretty nice if comparing that the people living one floor lower would probably stare at the wall.

Moving to Hitachi-shi

Hey, my name is Kata and I suck when it comes to writing a blog. It's been three months since the last update, but for my defence I have to say that I didn't have internet in my new room (only on my phone) until the last days of Jan.

I spent my Christmas holiday in Finland, met friends and family, ate ryebread, cheese and salad, did a shopping as I needed to get things for to survive the next 8 months, ate ryebread, ate ryebread etc... Did I tell you that I ate ryebread? Best thing ever when toasted and eaten with butter, tomato, cheese and cucumber. Yum!

I came back to Japan on Jan 4th and moved to Hitachi-shi on the 7th, so I had 2 full days to clean up my room, do moving-out-registration at Shinjuku city office, meet some friends at izakaya, deliver Finnish souveniers to my host family and pack up all my stuff and send some of then to my new dorm ahead of me. I used Yamato Transport's Kuroneko TA-Q-BIN service which was both efficient and reasonable priced. They picked up my luggage by 6pm on Wed and on the next day it arrived to my new dorm during the time slot I had specified.

The luggage I sent to Hitachi. They are the same size. I also carried a full backpack and a sportsbag with me. Wondering how I'm getting everything back to Finland...

All six of us moving to Hitachi-shi or Hitachinaka-shi from Takadanobaba (Baba for short) went together. Alan (UK) is living in Hitachi as well, but his internship started before ours so he already left earlier. From the Team Baba, Thomas is moving to Kudamatsu (far away to the southern tip of the Japan's main island Honshu) and Francesco (IT) to Tsuchiura (halfway between Hitachi and Tokyo).

Ed and Anthony are living at the same dorm as I am, while Mathilde, Aidan and Giovanni are living near Katsuta station about 20min by train from our nearest station, Hitachi-Taga. We got picked-up by our supervisors at the station and they took us to our new dorm to do the registration and get the keys, showed us the bus stop we'll have to use to get to work and finally took us to the city office to do the registration.

I never posted any photos or told anything about my room in Baba, but I have the photos and I'll promise you I'll post them here at some point. Anyway, my new room is waaaaay bigger and I have a kitchen as well as my own laundry machine and dryer! I also have a huge amount of closet space, the thing my previous room didn't have. Couldn't be happier with this new room. :) This dorm also has common rooms on each of the four floors, another thing we didn't have in Baba.

What is this amount of space!? (It's normal in Finland, but not in Tokyo)

I finally have something that can be called as a kitchen!

Those closets can easily fit people inside, they are huge!

The view from my window.

View to the city from the corridor.

Inner yard. You might be able to see our pets (yellow rubber ducks) in the fountain if you look really closely ;)

I'm going to write more about my Hitachi life later, just wanted to do a quick update after a long silence (yes, I'm still alive here! :)).

Brussels meeting

The Pre-departure brief (PDB) for the Vulcanus programme was held on Monday 6th of July in Brussels. Most of the participants arrived on Sunday, couple of people earlier. We all stayed in the same hotel so we had a good opportunity to meet and get to know each other already before the meeting. 45 people is quite a lot people to get to know in a couple of days, but I'm sure we'll have enough time while in Japan. On the first meeting everyone seems nice and laid back and I'm sure we'll get along well. :)

I arrived to Brussels around midday on Saturday and got lunch with the people who had already arrived. We later walked to the city center to see to see the Grand Place (and Manneken Pis, because it was nearby). Brussels is quite small and there's not that much to see. We actually went to the Grand Place or nearby many times during the three days I was there.

Grand Place square

Manneken Pis, one of the most famous sights of Brussels...

Belgium is famous for it's chocolate, which I bought as a souvenir, but also for waffles. I learned that there are actually a couple of types of Belgian waffles, Brussels waffle and Liege waffle. I got waffles twice while in Brussels and both times the Liege waffle as it seems tastier and softer. Delicious!

Liege waffle with chocolate ice cream from Waffle Factory. The other was a Liege waffle with warm chocolate and hazelnuts from Maison Dandoy.

On Monday we had the long awaited meeting. We went through a lot of info about our arrivals to Tokyo, how to get to the hotel and to the meeting, we got the schedule for autumn, personal information about our internship and dormitories, the COE form etc. Most of us got all information, but there are still some who are waiting for their dormitory addresses for example. The COE form is needed for the visa application and I already got my visa yesterday from the Japanese Embassy of Helsinki. They made it ready while I waited for max. 10 minutes.

The most interesting info (for me) that I got: Where I will be living:

We got detailed information (address etc.) about the apartment, but I don't want to tell all that here. So you have to be satisfied with the following info. :)

My Tokyo apartment will be in Takadanobaba. The train trip to school with Yamanote line (apparently the busiest line in Tokyo) takes only 12 minutes. That means my travel time to school is only 0,5h which a really good time considering that some people on the programme have to commute even up to 1,5h per direction to the school. There will be at least 6 other Vulcanusians living there with me and we'll all have our own room.

My Hitachi apartment will be located 8km from my work. I'm considering getting a bike since taking the train doesn't seem the best option (have to walk 3,5km anyway). Might take the train on the snowy and rainy days though. We'll see, there's still a lot of time until I'll get to Hitachi. In Hitachi at least two Vulcanusians are going to live in the same dorm with me. Again it's a single room.

Both of these apartments are well equipped (see below data for my Tokyo apartment), I have internet provided for Tokyo (for Hitachi I apparently have to get it myself) and I don't have to pay for electricity, gas or water. Some people might have to pay for their electricity, or they might not have a bed or desk or they might have a shared kitchen or bathroom (and in at least one company dorm there seems to be no kitchen in the whole building...). So I'm super happy with my apartments thus far. :)

My Hitachi apartment has the same things except there's no telephone, but the apartment is 24m2 and I have a private washing machine.

At the end of the meeting we took a short test of Japanese. Those who couldn't finish the hiragana and katakana sheets are required to study them before coming to Japan. As for others who knew more Japanese, we are going to have max 30 minutes conversation with a Naganuma School teacher to determine our speaking and conversation level. Mine will be on Wed 22nd 9am Finnish time which equals to 3pm in Japan. Wish me luck!

My flight back was on Tuesday afternoon, so I had 24h left in Brussels after the meeting. For the rest of my stay I walked around the city, ate something not that special (+waffles and nice hotel breakfast) and drank some beer, all these with some other Vulcanusians. Belgium has some interesting beers as they also had a raspberry one (with 30% of raspberry juice). After that I wanted to get a real beer, even though I usually rarely drink beer.

I left my DSLR at home on purpose, so all of my photos are taken with my phone which usually doesn't take any good photos. This seems way better than usually though.

Nice trip, nice people and nice waffles. Next time most of the Vulcanus team sees each other will be in Japan. It still feels so far away even though I have less than 2 months left in Finland. Better to eat more rye bread and karelian pies.