The Apartment

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Hello all. We are sequestered in our tiny apartment by driving rain and wind, so as we stared at the walls we thought it might be fun to update our journal and talk about a few things. First, we want to let everyone know we have recovered from Brad and Jennifer breaking up. It was tough at first, but one day at a time. One day at a time.

Really, we wanted to write about the apartment itself so wherever we live in the future we will know that no matter how bad it gets, it probably won't be as bad as this POS place. When I first saw it I could not hardly believe it. It was so small! Like an optical illusion. I did not know they made apartments so small. After all we went through at that lousy hotel we stayed in, I didn't want to leave it after seeing our apartment. The whole thing-kitchen, living room, bathroom, and" bedroom" (if you call 2 feet of sleeping space on the floor a bedroom), is smaller than the bedroom I had in high school. This place makes the keg factories I lived in in college look like palatial estates. How best to describe it? I think Jen nailed it in an email she sent me when we were writing back and forth about the ups and downs of Japan. Our apartment is one of the downs. She wrote:

We have a freezing cold, tiny, grubby apartment, a yellowed, plastic bathroom that sends freezing cold gusts of wind in, a gross and tiny kitchen with no counter space, a smelly washing machine, a hard floor to sleep on that we can only reach by a cold, steep, almost completely broken ladder, a huge dirty water machine that goes on every 10 minutes, a dilapidated clothing line to hang our clothes on, no garbage pickup, no english bookstores or reading material within a 30 minute radius, a $17 phone bill for a phone that doesn't work , no closet, no shelves for clothes, water that is either extremely hot or extremely cold and a tiny-ass, mustard color, hard chair made for one that two people have to share.

Jen has a future in standup, I think. The shower is really the worst of the worst. The shower head comes up to my belly button. It is detachable but if you detach it the water flow goes from a little bit to nil. When I get in, I turn it all the way hot, and as it warms up I jump in. Then it gets too hot and I jump back. I turn it on cold. As it cools down I jump in. Then it gets too cold and I jump back. That is really the only way to shower! As mentioned, we sleep on the floor which is quite an experience. And it is COLD! However, it is ours. Jen has spruced the place up and made it livable. The woman is like MacGyver! She takes two rubber bands, some coaxial cable, and some sheet rock and all of a sudden we have a plasma TV!

(Jen writing) I really wish I could tell you some of this was an exagerration, but it is not so. Our apartment is really that bad. For a country that is completely industrialized and labelled as a "world leader", I have to say I expected a little more. When moving to Tokyo, we were well aware of the limited living space here. I was more than willing to accept a small apartment and small it is. However, I did expect a bit more. Perhaps a bed, for example. I had no idea that we would literally be sleeping on an elevated floor with a quarter inch cushion "padding" us as we slept. The washing machine literally makes our dirty clothes smell worse after the washing. You might think that the four days it takes for them to dry on a clothes line might help with that problem, but in the dead of winter there is no fresh smelling wind and sunshine to assist us! Our refrigerator is slightly larger than a hotel mini bar. We literally have NO storage space so I enjoy daily trips to the grocery store around my work schedule. And of course, cooking is a complete joy without any oven to speak of. At least we have a microwave, which is more than we got in Korea. A silly part of me also thought that we would have a dryer. Not a large one, but a dryer still. For crying out loud, when I lived in Prague I had a dryer. At first glance one might not believe that the standard of living in the Eastern Block is better than in Japan, but I have experienced both first hand. I can't decide which is the hardest part for us. I guess all of it compounded just makes us tick down the days left in this apartment like it is a prison sentence we're waiting out! We have the choice to move to a larger apartment, but in the end it would defeat the main purpose of being here: to pay off all debt and to travel through all of Asia. Truth be told, the apartment saves us a lot of the money in the end and for that we can appreciate it. I would post pics, but we would be embarassed if Sally Struthers sought out sponsors for us.

And now for the most ironic part, Japan is still so much better than Korea! Stories of the good things to come. But those are never quite as interesting

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