It is April and most ALTs have been in Japan for a bit now. Perhaps training is over, maybe not. Most ALT companies and eikaiwas help set you up when you arrive to your. My ALT company had an IC, they met you when you got off the train and set you up bringing you to the bank, town hall and all that. Plus they helped you buy some appliances or anything you might need when you first get into your apartment.
Here is my story- I arrived in the late 00s with a big ALT company. Things were OK, training was pointless and covered things like don’t have people mail you drugs. Made a few friends and off I was. My branch manager got me a train ticket and I was to go to a rural area in Kanto. Mt IC starts calling me on the train asking me when I’d get there. There is only one train an hour and my manager told him my train time.
I get to the station and he is waiting for me, he is an older Japanese man, about 65 or so. He spoke decent English and had lived abroad. He took me to my apartment and I met the landlady and signed the contract. I asked him if I could get internet set up. He told me no it is too far. Even though the yahoo internet store was 2km in town. My IC then rolls out. I didn’t get anything done, no bank account, no alien card, no shopping. I wanted to shower, but didn’t have a towel. I didn’t know the area, but fortunately my apartment, which was a small house had a bike that came with it.
I went out and got a beef bowl and then some stuff to shower with at a drug store. I couldn’t find a store that sold beds. The apartment came with a couch, so I slept on that with a whole bunch of clothes on, since it was cold still in late March.
I had to ask people online to help me get gaijin card and did that and the bank account myself. Same with the internet.
About 2 weeks in I finally was able to start talking to friends and family using skype and all that. I was online for a good while, after haven’t been on a screen for weeks. Out of the corner of my eye I see a shadow moving. I though it was my eyes just getting tired for being on a laptop all day. I turn a see a huge mukade walking around my bedroom. I get some Kabi-Killer and blast it, it emerges from the foam like some DBZ villain in a fight, undamaged. I had to take it and flush it down the toilet as it just wouldn’t die.
With things warming up, the bugs came. Same with plants. I had grass growing out of the gap between the tub and the shower. I had slugs. So many slugs. I put my futon and all my stuff in my bedroom in a pile when I went to work. I put a giant ring of salt around it to protect it, like I was afraid of witches or something. I put saran wrap on my drains and put sand around my apartment. Still nothing kept the slugs out. I emailed my manager and he was like ‘oh yeah Japan has lots of bugs’. So there was no help there. Finally in May I came home, and I usually put my pan upside down, but that day i had forgotten. I came in and there was a slug in my frying pan. I decided right then I couldn’t handle that apartment and moved in with a friend until I found a new apartment.
It was kinda wild and a bit awful, but I got a decent story out of it.
Anyone feel like sharing theirs?
10 comments
My first apartment was really noisy, so I moved.
Lived on discount canned tuna and toast for the first three months after blowing my budget on apartment essentials. Apartment manager called my boss to complain about the no cat policy. I said I had no cats. Drags my boss down to my apartment while I’m working to prove I had cats. They enter my apartment, no cat. But a few cat food tins.
Long story short, I had been eating kitty tuna for months … I swear there wasn’t a cat on the label. Within a week the whole town knew and the local paper even wrote a story about it. Sheesh…
Nice modern ground floor LDK. Open the curtains
Oh what’s that?
That’s a graveyard
Ok
But don’t worry…
Ok?
It’s new!
…Yup, about right
Still doesn’t really bother me. I wonder if the same can be said of the nursing home residents right next to it
Running gag with other ALTs that while I might not have a cool ancient samurai ghost, I’ll probably be haunted by an obasan spirit who’ll only make the little disapproving Japanese hiss noise if I do electric kettle tea or get my recycling wrong. Probs might protect me from the NHK man if I’m good XD
Bonus, there is a neighbourhood black cat who will appear from underneath houses and drains to yell at you. No touchy but meowrigatos for snacks
If you’re worried about bugs – catch a few of the small huntsman spiders and loose them in your house. They’ll keep it free of little insects and pests (I haaaatttteeeee centipedes, cleared out the milkweed around my place that attracts them). I got 3 I named Terry (Biggest), Holt (Most efficient, stays above the garbage area) and Jake (probs most active). If they’re the only bugs I see, far as I’m concerned they’re paying rent.
Back in the day 20 years ago. A guy called Anton corned the market in Gaijin housing for English teachers on the Chiba side of Tokyo.
He was often seen going round the garbage stations in a big van on big Gomi day to get ‘new’ furniture for the new arrivals.
Someone I knew complained that they didn’t have the sofa that he promised so Anton removed one from the neighbors place while they were at work…
Lots more on this guy!
Stayed in a seemingly private room in a dorm hostel for several months, the walls to your room only went up so far up, like a toilet cubicle might. There was a big gap at the top to both the next people’s rooms and the main corridor. It was literally like sleeping and living in the same room as people. You couldn’t eat potato chips because it was like just sitting there listening to potato chips 10 cm away. Really unnerving. Now I always check the walls when I look at accommodation photos.
Another place jumped like a motherfucker at every minor earthquake.
Another place I left the window open and had mosquitoes buzzing in my ears for nights, couldn’t get rid of them. Ok, that’s on me. But it was bad enough to remember.
Another place had a guy who slammed his door like it was his job to do it, massive asshole. Got so bad I started leaving my phone recording over night to send the clips to management. Guy would talk to you like you were deaf too, just shout at everyone. Real salty lol.
Current place has a train line sound like someone banging a cymbal in your ear, at first it was a nightmare but actually I don’t even register it anymore somehow.
Stayed in another share house too, they have a resident assigned as a manager who gets money every time they are able to complain about something that you do. So if they want to they can abuse it. Stuff like “only residents can use the sitting room”, “you can’t leave anything out of your room”, “no noise after 10pm on a Friday night”. The rules themselves are fine, but the place had a 1 warning system, so if the assigned manager tennent reports you for 2 infractions over the 6+ months that you stay there the management company starts sending you 7000 yen bills. And of course it’s in that guy’s interest to report you because he gets half the money. No “hey guys it’s 10pm you gotta stop chatting in the living room”. Just takes a video from around the door and sends it to the management. I tried to dispute the bills and they just send you a letter saying “This is a 3 day eviction notice unless you pay the infraction. We will lock you out of your room unless you pay.” Really abusive system if you get the wrong person.
Eikaiwa company supposedly completely furnished apartments, it was one of the perks of the job. I knew the Japanese apartment would be small, so I was prepared to deal with that. Most of the stuff was new, including the “bed” which was more like a wooden cot. Must have been the cheapest thing they could buy that was shaped like a bed. It also wasn’t long enough for me (180 cm – not monstrous).
I broke the bed in my first week by sitting on it. That’s it, nothing crazy. I spoke to my manager, saying the company promised a fully furnished apartment and I didn’t find the bed long enough, and also that it had broken because I sat on it. I told her that I wanted a better bed, and not a wooden cot.
One of my foreign teacher coworkers overheard the conversation and confronted me for being too confrontational (lol), I told him that the accommodation wasn’t acceptable and I was negotiating for standard furniture that an adult would use. Well apparently Japanese people would just deal with it because he told me that’s just not done here. (it was my first week. admittedly, I was probably speaking a little too directly, and the managers English wasn’t great.)
Well they did send me another bed. Another of the same, short, wooden, weak-ass cot. I put it in my loft and didn’t use it the whole time I lived there. I slept on a futon on the floor for years.
Some of the old people thought I was a yokai of some sort. One day I ended up getting salt outside my door.
Also they thought it was funny the earthquake alert scared the shit out of me. (The young couple nextdoor).
I chuckled at the DBZ description of the centipede fight.
I had the same training as OP – lols at the drug mail.
I was an alternate in Hyogo in a small city. The IC took me to city hall and signed me up for health insurance and pension, but then told me “you don’t have to pay the pension part though”. Well that effed me up, as I didn’t pay it for years…
luckily I got onto social insurance and got past the two year backpay period.
The apartment was ‘furnished’ with the tiiiiniest futon set, and pure wood block underneath. It killed my back (I’ve had gikkuri multiple times since), and I had to get the other two ALTs in town to drive me to a home center to buy a mattress.
I also remember killing a 7/11 pizza in that microwave… think charcoal, with smoke streaming out the top of the apartment door🤣
Way back when I moved from Toyama to Kawaguchi in Saitama by changing dispatch companies. The company I moved on to was RCS. Their management said they had an apartment that I could use in the area at a cost of 6000yen per night till I found somewhere for myself.
I was a bit bewildered why I had to pay for an apartment but grudgingly agreed. However when I arrived at the apartment it was completely empty. No bed or futon. Just a completely 6畳sized hard floored box.
What was I supposed to do? Sleep on the floor?
I just stayed in a business hotel which was actually cheaper to stay at!