Last time, I was sitting in my hotel contemplating my return to Japan. This time, I’m going to talk about the following week and my adventures finding an apartment.
The Monday after I arrived I visited a realtors office so he could find me a place to live. I didn’t much care about size but I wanted a place close to work and good arcades. I work in Shinjuku and there’s a really good arcade in Shibuya so he ended up showing me a place in Shibuya and a couple of places in Shinjuku.
They were all fine but one of the places in Shinjuku was a block from work and came furnished so I went with that place. I spent a few days chilling and bumming about around Shibuya and other places in Tokyo. It’s pretty nice to be in this city and not have any obligations but I would be glad to return to work. It’s good to have a purpose in life.
In Japan, apartments have quite high move in costs. Not only is there 1 month rent agency fee and 1-2 months deposit but there’s also 1-2 months of key money (礼金) which is essentially a bribe to sweeten the deal for the landlord. This plus first month’s rent and stuff like lock changing fee and cleaning fee made me worried for a bit that I wouldn’t be able to move in as soon as I needed. In the end, everything worked out and I was able to move in.
In that time, I also went to the Tokyo Game Show with Hidde and spent quite a bit of time sleeping. In the near future, I’ll have a post about the former but probably not about the latter.
I’m going to begin a series of posts to map out my entry into Japan and anything else interesting happens while I’m here. Smaller updates get posted to twitter at http://www.twitter.com/melink14. In general, everything I do is low traffic since I’m pretty low key but the things I do post tend to be things that are hopefully a tad bit interesting.
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We’re now chilling in Las Vegas. We have a pretty sweet hotel but everything here is quite expensive. The trip here wasn’t too bad. Here’s a list of cool things I learned:
- Utah has people in airplanes that check your speed. I want to be pulled over by an airplane.
- Utah also has a beehive as it’s state highway symbol.
- Going down mountains are super fun.
Vegas was fun, I was trying to acquire a taste for beer, but it’s still at the pretty terrible range. I had a pretty good fruity drink at some place that cost like 13 dollars. Everything around here is way too expensive but I guess that’s the price you pay for being in the city of sin.
Also, Tom was really interested in the the calling cards that were handed out by random people everywhere advertising the best prostitutes. $35 special indeed. (That was actually a lie.)
Tom has more here: http://alltom.com/pages/road-trip-2009
I don’t update my blog a lot so people don’t read it. When people do read it they think it’s pretty lame. That’s all fine, the purpose of the blog is to provide updates to people who care when I have time.
Since last time I graduated from MIT with a BS in computer science and have begun my summer job as a TA in the MITES program. I have a great group of kids and look forward to teaching them something about programming and life.
This year we’re doing iPhone applications which means I get to learn something about coding for the Macintosh platform. In order to facilitate this I bought a new Macbook Pro which came with an iPod touch.
I’ve also been accepted in to the Master of Engineering program in EECS here at MIT. I’m deferring it for awhile though because I’m going to go work for Square Enix in Japan.
I have a lot of things I need/want to do this summer. I hope I can manage to get some of them done. 
That’s all for now. Maybe I’ll update more often in the future.
Contrary to what the title may make you think, this post isn’t about cheesy G rated movies on ABC which you might have watched during a better more simple time. It’s about my plans post school. That golden time when I get to join the work force and become a productive member of society.
In this case, not this society, but Japan’s. That’s right, I’ve decided to go to back to Square Enix to work full time after school.
This was a tricky decision which took a lot of soul searching to arrive out. In the end, SE has a vision and a mission which is simply more exciting than the other places I looked at.
It will take a bit for me to get my visa after a graduate so I’m still up in the air about what I’ll do for the summer. I’ve applied to MITES but besides that it’s up in the air.
If I don’t get to do that, I’ll just chill in Kansas doing nothing, or maybe fun projects or possibly anything at all.
First, I have to graduate. 
It’s a bit unfortunate that it’s so easy to see how bad I’ve been about updating this blog. A quick glance down to the last post shows almost a 7 month hiatus on my part. With such a lapse in my main form of communication with other possibly interested lifeforms, you might think that I’ve been keeping people up to date through other more traditional methods. This is not the case. Various forms of activities, each more pressing than the last, has made me one of the worst correspondents of all time. I don’t feel like doing work so I guess now is as good a time as any to break one bad habit.
I’ve decided to make this entry more of coming back post than anything else. A flashback episode to get us caught up to events more relevant to the status quo.
I survived the last semester of school pretty well. It was my hardest term but also my best term with respect to grades. This was also the time of my main job hunt (I have to leave school eventually) which required me to fly all sorts of places which gave me less time do work and turned one A into a B.
Now, I’m into another term which I’m supposed to be taking easy, but at the same time have all sorts of added responsibilities and unsurprisingly still no real time for my various hobbies and pet projects. Hopefully, I’ll be able to catch up a bit in the near future and develop some kind of sane schedule before I graduate. I’m not holding my breath.
Future posts will cover my future after MIT, spring break, and maybe other stuff less related to my life depending on how much I care to share.
Wish me luck.
It’s been awhile since I posted which is unfortunate, but generally my day has consisted of: getting up, going to work, working, going out, sleeping, repeat. This leaves little time for awesome blog posts. Also, since I’m not out exploring like last year, my day is more routine and less hot touristy action. On a positive note, I did update my last blog post with pictures, so you can go check that out if you want.
This week, however, I’m on vacation because it’s Obon week. It’s the week that the Japanese return to their homes in the countryside and light laterns to guide the spirits of the dead back home. It’s like Mexico’s Day of the Dead, but in August.
While I’m technically on vacation (literally as well until today or possibly tomorrow at least), my project deadline is coming up and it’s hard for me not to think about work. I’m pretty sure I can’t just go to work legitimately, but who’s to stop me form stopping by when I’m in the neighborhood, just to check on things.
In anycase, this is a vacation and I’ll probably update with interesting things sooner rather than later.
I’ve been in Japan for a bit now, and as I’ve subtly alluded to, I’m not sleeping on the streets. Previously, I’ve mentioned that some sort of apartment exists, but I’ve not really gone into more detail than that. The purpose of this post is to shed some light onto the nature of my living conditions. To that end, this post will probably be pretty short because the apartment is small and generally, apartments are not very interesting. This post will be divided up into 4 short sections: my room, the kitchen, the toilet, and the bathroom. (more…)
I was going to write this awhile ago, but I broke my chair again. They haven’t replaced it yet, but there’s a second hand shop below my apartment, so I bought a real chair there for about $10. It’s so amazing. One of the best decisions I’ve made in my short life.
The title of this post is pretty vague; this isn’t going to be some kind of guide. Really, I’m just going to describe some of the hoops I had to jump through as a foreigner in the land of the rising sun. Foreigners are called gaijin in Japan, so I’ll use that term from now on. Unlike in the US, the term is not considered offensive, and it’s not uncommon for people and signs to address outsiders as simply ‘gaijin.’ (more…)
Another installment of my life in Japan.
Narita is a pretty simple airport so I didn’t have much trouble with it. I changed about 100 dollars into yen, and then withdrew about 300 more from an ATM. I did the cash exchange simply because you never know when an american bank will decide to not let you have money overseas. I had let them know beforehand of course, but this was to be on the safe side. (more…)