Moving in

Taking a quick dinner break from packing now.

This morning I went to Shinjuku at 10am to meet my real estate agent. Not really sure why since all he did is give me a map to the agency that manages the property. So then I headed off to that agency and spent an hour going through papers and signing and stamping them with my seal. At about 12 I got my key and headed off to my apartment. I didn't have anything but my brief case with me so I only stuck around long enough to turn the power on and call the gas company to turn on the gas tomorrow so I'll be able to have a hot shower.

Yesterday, after contacting everyone I knew to see if someone would drive for me, I decided to stop by the police station to ask if I could use my international driver's permit. I'd read that the law was changed and that it was only valid for 90 days after you enter Japan, but the cop said I was fine to drive until the 23rd, so I stopped by the car rental place and reserved a large van.

I also needed a navigator, and Ai might be busy tomorrow, so I called my friend Keiko, who lives at the next station. Turns out she was planning on meeting her friends in Tokyo tomorrow afternoon, so I offered to drive her up there and buy lunch in exchange for her help navigating.

So tomorrow I pick up the van at 9am, and hope to have it loaded and be off to Koenji by 11am. Lot of packing to go...

I'm approved

My Apartment
Originally uploaded by noexit.

I got a call from my real estate agent today, so I met I for coffee after work, and went to the agents office. I got it! Now all I have to do is wait for the paperwork from the dentist to get to the agent, then I can go to the contract signing. I think that the land lord will also be there for a sort of interview or something. Most landlords are very very careful about renting to foreigners. There is a reputation or fear that foreigners will leave the country without paying their rent or something. But I really think that it's an unfounded reputation. I'm sure there are more pad Japanese renters in Japan than bad foreign renters.

So now I'm trying to find someone who can drive for me. I can rent a truck that is big enough for about $65, but I don't think I'm legal to drive it.

I found an apartment!!!

Apartment hunting is really crazy here. Basically, you have to go to a real estate agent to even find what's on the market. Landlords almost ever rent directly, they always go through a real estate company. So you go to a real estate company, usually chosen by the sampling of apartment floor plans they have out front, although one agent said that some agencies will put our fake ones to attract customers, so pretty much any big one will do. There are two types of agencies; small local ones that the landlords list with, and then other agencies that collect thousands of floor plans from the smaller agencies. Since it's usually harder for the smaller agencies to find tenants, and harder for prospective tenants to find the apartment they are looking for, the secondary agencies are more convenient.

The thing that delayed me from looking before was that I didn't have a guarantor. In Japan, everyone has to have someone to cosign the lease. There are not background or credit checks that can exempt you from this requirement in japan, though there are a few, very rare landlords that will rent to someone without a guarantor, but the rents are generally higher.

Last week, while at my last lesson with the Dentist and his daughter, I told them about my new job, and and how I needed to start looking for an apartment, but that I didn't have a guarantor, and he agreed to be my guarantor. (Yeah!) So on Thursday, the very next day, I headed up to Kitijoji to start apartment hunting. I spent a few hours in one place, whose site I had searched on the web, and flipped through their books. I had expected them to be different; since I was able to search through what they had on the web, I expected that they'd have everything organized electronically, but they were no different from the rest. When you walk in, someone will sit you down, have you fill out a registration sheet with details about yourself and what you are looking for in an apartment. Then they pull out a book of copies of floor plans and you start flipping. I probably flipped through an entire box of paper in the three agencies that I went to. Meanwhile, the agent uses some other resources that they have to find other apartments that fit your description that they don't have in their files yet. If you find some that you are interested in, then they will take you to see them. The agency in Kichijoji had a car, so they drove me to each place, but the Shnjuku agency didn't have a car, (after all, it's Shinjuku, so it would have taken 2 hours to navigate the traffic to where the apartments were) so we took the train (20 minutes).

The first agency I went to was able to find one apartment that I was looking for, and it was really great except that it was a half hour walk to the train station. The second agency hadn't found anything as of yesterday afternoon, but the Shinjuku agency was really on the ball, and found a couple by yesterday morning, so I canceled my appointments with the first two and went to look at apartments.

The ones were not to my liking and I was about ready to lower my standards when we hit the last one. This is the one I decided to get. It was about $20 a month over the budget I had set for myself, but I think it will be worth it. It's in a reinforced concrete building which will be less susceptible to earth quake damage than the wood construction that most buildings are made of. It also has the bath and toilet separate, which was one of my main requirements, and the biggest obstacle to finding an apartment in my price range. People who haven't been to Japan may not understand the "bath toilet separate concept. Basically, the bathroom is just that; a bathroom. The toilet is in a separate room. You may not understand unless you see it, but it's just so much better. The apartment also has a large loft, which was the other difficult requirement I had. My image was to put my bed in the loft, and use the main room for living. This loft may just be just too small for my bed though; my bed it 120cm wide, and the loft is 119.5 cm wide. The difference is so small that I'm just going to shave that much off the side of my be to make it work. I think that from about 5cm off the floor, it's a full 120cm, so I'll just bevel the feet and it should work.

The apartment is also in a great town. Koenji is only 20 minutes from work, and 160yen! Where I live now, it costs at least 190 yen to get to a station that is even half the size of Koenji. I'll also have a train pass that will take me to Shinjuku to work and Shinjuku for free since my school will pay for it. Yea!!!

It's going to be much different living up there. I wont have cherry blossom petals falling past my window for a week during the spring (as they are now), but the apartment is far enough from the station that I wont hear trains all day. I'll also be much closer to shops and food (lots of food!) and spend so much less on transportation that it will probably pay for itself.

I'll get a floor plan up as soon as I can get them to fax it to me.

Apartment Hunting

Heading off to see a couple apartments. Hopefully I'll get the one good one that I saw last night. More later.

Giving up on Driving

I had the third attempt at the driving test today, and I have given up.
This is just ridiculous. The first time, I made a clear mistake, and
failing was plainly my fault. The second time was picky, and I can
understand one of the things that I did wrong, not why I lost more than
30 points, but I accepted that I would have to do it at least one more
time. But this time, I was stopped half way through the test after
flawlessly navigating a narrow hair pin curve, and told that I had
failed. The explained to me after I returned what I had done. She said
that I need to drive slowly enough around a certain corner so that I
can stop immediately if necessary, which I believe I was doing. She did
not explain to me what I had done wrong any where else, or where the 30
points were lost. It's plainly ridiculous. I've had a driver's license
for about 8 years, and there is no reason that I should have to take a
test like that more than once. They apparently don't fail people
because they don't drive well, otherwise I would have passed on the
second time. Maybe they want money, maybe they just want to make it as
hard as possible just to mess with us.

English, Australians, Germans, Canadians, and a few others don't even
have to take a driving test. Each of these countries have provided
Japan with statistics of their drivers, including things such as
accident rates as requested by the Japanese government, so license
holders from these countries are exempt from taking the driving test.
But when the US tried to submit these statistics, the Japanese
government said that they had to get separate statistics from each
state, effectively treating each state as a separate country. This
doesn't mean that people from states who have completely the necessary
requirements can be exempt however, because it still all has to go
through the national government.

So for right now, I'm giving up. Possibly, after I move to Tokyo, I
will try again. I have to have time though. Lots of it... I've already
used almost 4 full days trying it in Kanagawa. I have heard that
Kanagawa's test is the worst, so hopefully Tokyo will be better. In the
mean time I will go to a local police station to find out if I am legal
to drive with my international drivers license so that I can move.
Otherwise I might have to pay for some professional movers to do it...
Ugh.

Off to another Job interview. I only have 4 more this week. Ugh!

Another Job Update

Strawberry Shortcake

The last update I wrote was posted a few days after I wrote it, so this one will appear to be close, but there are actually a few days in between.

Today I had interview #2 at the Foreign Language College. This time, I had a sample lesson for 30 minutes (The longest sample I've ever had to do) with 5 students while the head of the school observed. I think it went really well, and the students were great. After the lesson, I had an interview with the school head, and the head english teacher. I think everything went well, so I'll hear from them soon. I think I'll get a part time job with them, but hopefully they'll offer me the full time job.

I also had an interview with the Japanese tech support company that I found at the employment office. It went okay I guess, but I'm sure I made a bunch of mistakes in etiquette.

I also got a call from Bloomberg today for an interview on Wednesday, which is exciting.

Saturday's interview with the dot com was terrible. Admittedly, I wasn't as prepared as I should have been, but neither was the interviewer, (the president of the company) but he was a jerk even before he really started asking questions. Even if I was better prepared for the interview, I wouldn't want to work for him.

After that on Saturday, I met Ai and her mom for dinner. Ai's mom was the one who really convinced me that I could find a non-teaching job, and now I don't want to stop until I find something. But I'm kind of on a short time limit. My current visa expires at the end of May, so I'll have to renew it, and I have to move out of my apartment by April 25th, so I have to find a company that will sponsor my visa, and cosign my apartment lease pretty soon. I hope I wont have to settle for something less that I want to get a visa and apartment.

Gland Canyon

Gland Canyon
They probably should have
checked the spelling before they
had it set in stone.

I know, I know. You've all been refreshing your browser windows every 30 minutes to see if I've updated my bolg. At least those of you who are still reading.

Well, I've been pretty busy. I don't know if I've mentioned it yet, but that job that I thought I had, well, I don't. I'm too young. Apparently, some schools set an arbitrary age limit, under or over which they are reluctant to hire even qualified teachers. So these last two weeks I've been applying to everything I see. The result of this is that I've had 6 interviews in the last week, and I have at least 5 more next week. The exciting thing is that there are some pretty neat jobs in this bunch, including some non-teaching positions.

First, I have been applying to some ALT positions, kind of like what I've been doing for the last year, except for private schools, which pay much better. Generally $2800 to $3500 a month. Most public school positions pay $2200 or less, averaged over 12 months.

The next step up is a position as the head teacher for a small foreign language college. The current head teacher is really trying to sell me to the management, but he's concerned that my age (again, too young) will be a setback in terms of the management's ideals. If I don't get full time with them, I should get part time, paying about as much as my full-time position did.

The most exciting for me potentally, are two interview I have set up, one Saturday, and one Monday, which are not teaching positions. The first is for what I guess would be a DotCom, which has a variety of online business, mostly to english education, as a sales person. I don't know much about the position itself, but it doesn't include teaching.

The second is a result of a tip that my friend Sunny gave me. She was an exchange student from Korea at Asia University, the school that I studied at 4 years ago. She currently has a job working with Korean trading company in Tokyo, which she found by using the government employment agency. Yep! The unemployment office! There is actually one in Tokyo that is specifically for foreign residents. I was a little apprehensive at first. I'm not too confident in my Japanese skills, and the information on the web said it was for foreign residents of Japanese ancestry. But I decided to check it out (Since Sunny doesn't have Japanese ancestry) and found that they are really quite good.

After a quick registration, I sat down with an employment councilor and an english translator, and they asked me some question, mostly in Japanese about what I wanted to do and about my work history. After that, they searched through a huge database of employment requests sent in by companies. We picked out about 7 or 8 of them, looked them over more throughly and called two of them. One manager asked to talk directly to me, and in Japanese, he told me a little about the position and asked about my computer background. Mostly he was concerned that I understood Japanese and Unix. I have done some tinkering with Linux, and Mac OS, beneath the surface is basically a kind of Unix, so I think he was satisfied enough to schedule an interview for Monday. The other one we called, didn't want to talk to me. They just wanted me to write a Japanese resume and send it to them so they could check my Japanese ability that way.

Some other jobs that we found were sales positions, and a position at a real-estate company that works with foreign residents finding monthly apartments and stuff, which could be interesting.

So I have a full schedule of interview, plus my third attempt at the drivers test next week. Don't stop reading!

Driver's License Getting pt. 2

Driving course
Here's the course for the driving test. There is a practice time for an hour before the testing starts where you can walk through the course. The place that I failed at is right behind me.

Today was part 2 of my driver's license getting adventure: the driving test.

I knew it would be difficult, but after talking to a girl who had tried it 3 times already, and attended a practice session last weekend, I got the full picture of the difficulty. Errors that would be one point off on the Washington State driver's test, like running over a curb, are immediate failure on this test, and things that they wouldn't even care about, like staying close to the left curb while making a left turn, are points off.

So, out of the 15 people that tried today, 12 people failed, (including me) and none of the first time people passed. The mistake that I made that failed me immediately was made as the tester was explaining a small error that I was making, so my concentration of other things was broken. But he did say that my shifting was very good (even though it was the first time to drive a stick shift in Japan, which is on the opposite side of US cars, and even though I haven't driven a stick since we sold the Subaru about 4 years ago.) But driving a stick, kept me from making the mistake of turning the wipers on when I tried to use the turn signal, and I didn't make the serious mistake driving on the right side of the road like the person before and after me.

I did meet some cool people this time though. One guy who was trying to get his license had lived in the US for the last 5 years, first at Evergreen State for an English language program, then at Ohio State for college. The girl that had taken it three times is from Shanghai, and just finished a masters degree at the university right on the other side of the hill from my apartment. So I'll be seeing them next time, and maybe for practice this weekend.

My next attempt will be next wednesday.

Driver's License getting

This week I decided to use my copious amounts of spare time to get a driver's license. I have an international driver's license, which until about a year ago, would have allowed me to drive in Japan for as long as I had a current one. Last year however, the law was changed so that after a certain period, you can't use an international driver's license even if it's valid. None of the descriptions of these changes that I have read have been entirely clear, but it seems that you can't use an international driver's license after 90 days of living in Japan, and you must leave the country for more than 90 days before you can use or renew an international driver's license.

So the only option is to get a Japanese driver's license. Unfortunately, laws governing exchanging a foreign license for a Japanese license have changed recently too. It use to be that all you had to do was show up with a Japanese translation of your license, take a simple written test, probably in your own language, and they'd issue you a Japanese license. The laws have changed however, so that now only citizens of a few countries are eligible for a direct license exchange. In order to be eligible for a license no questions asked (well, ten questions actually...), your country must pass certain overall standards for traffic safety, and give licenses to people who are licensed in their own country. The problem for the US is that the national government does not maintain records of the type that Japan needs, plus each state has its own licensing policies, making it very difficult to meet Japan's licensing department's requests. Since the US doesn't meet Japan's qualifications, we have to take two simplified tests of our knowledge and driving skill.

So begins my process. I started by getting my Washington State Driver's License translated into Japanese by the Japan Automobile Federation (Like the AAA in the US) in the middle of last week. I planned on going to the licensing center last friday, but when I woke up, if was very cold and snowing, so I went back to sleep. On monday however, I did wake up, at half past seven, and headed for the licensing center. Unlike in Washington, where it's usually located in an old strip mall or something, this licensing center was a huge complex of buildings, with a large driving corse. I arrived at 9:30, just before the application period closed at 10am. After submitting my paper work, waited for about an hour and a half until I was finally called to the window for a few questions. About 10 minutes later, I was given back some paper work, and told where to go to pay the fees, and have my picture taken. At 11:30, two hours after arriving, everyone was finally called in for the written exam. It was a ten question true/false exam, in any language you wanted to take it in, (I choose English) and we were given 30 minutes to complete it. There were questions like "If you are traveling through an intersection, and an emergency vehicle is approaching behind you, it's okay continue traveling because you were in a hurry" and "If you approach a pedestrian or bicycle crossing, and there are people crossing, you must stop and wait until they have crossed the street", and "If the traffic light is red, but there are no cars coming, it it okay to go trough it". I was the first to complete the test -- about three minutes after we started...

After everyone was done with the test, we went into another building to get our tests graded. In the same lobby, there were another 800 or so people (told you it was a big place), who were taking the full test, waiting for their test scores to appear on a large screen. When the scores appeared on the screen, about two-thirds of the crowd screamed happily, and the other third stormed out angrily, often being chased after by a friend who had just finished screaming and jumping up and down. It was interesting to see how everyone else has to do it, kind of funny to watch, since passing the written test in Washington isn't much harder than the one I had just taken, and also relieving that I didn't have to take the same test that they were all taking.

A few minutes later, someone came out and told the ten of us that we'd all passed. No one was screaming and jumping up and down this time. They handed us all a a map and certificate that we'd passed the written exam, and a date and time to show up for the skills test.

It was now 12, and the driving corse was open for walking, so I too a walk around it. There are stoplights, traffic signs, fake railroad crossings, and two small hills, and some narrow streets to simulate many of the small neighborhood streets in Japan. Most of the corse is apparently done at a pretty slow speed until the last section, were you must speed up to 40kph (25mph). So basically, if I don't run any signs, hit any curbs, or forget to use my turn signals, I should be all right. Oh, and I have to drive on the left side of the road, and the stick shift will be in my left hand, and the turn signal in my left. But other than that, I should be fine.

I'll let ya'll know on Thursday if I pass.

Welcome to March

Today was my first day of nothing. I started by doing a little job hunting, and then went up to Tokyo to meet Ai. I bought another suit, which I'll have to pick up later this week, and went to Ai's university to go to an interviewing and entry sheeting seminar. (I had to sneak into the library with a fake student number though.) I bought a couple job hunting weekly magazines that Ai's mom recommended, but didn't see much in either one, but we met her at the station on our way home, and in 30 seconds of looking through it, she found a few more. Wow, she's good. I did a little favor for her so she owes me a bit, but she'd help me anyway.

That's it for my short stupid random post that says nothing. You can tell I didn't work today huh? I'm not to tired to write! I have no milk, and it's too late to get some. No 24 hour groceries nearby.