To move and to be moved – Part II

At the real estate agency we finally found out that the arrogant man was our landlord. While the agent was searching for other apartments around Osaka University he showed us the paper where I had claimed Osaka University as my guarantor for the apartment. It turned out that all the names of the persons who’d move into the apartment have to be noted on this paper but there was nothing filled in. I remember that when I filled in this paper we were told that this part wouldn’t be necessary and so we trusted him. We had made it clear that we were looking for an apartment for two when we went to the agency for the first time but since my boyfriend will go to Tokyo in September this year we wouldn’t need a big apartment. The agent had obviously misunderstood this point and therefore introduced us to single apartments… But beside this he didn’t seem to bother much about his mistake and seemed rather happy that he could make another contract with us.

Unfortunately, our choice of apartments was very limited due to our situation. We needed an apartment were we could move in on the following day and which was not more expensive than the one before.  I really liked the first apartment. It had the perfect size and was located very conveniently so I readily accepted that we would have to pay almost 1000 € reward, which unlike a deposit will not be returned if you move out… This money is now lost and the move itself plus the furniture we bought were expensive, too, so we couldn’t afford to pay any deposit or reward a second time.

In the end, we could choose between four apartments out of which one was so tiny even one person couldn’t really live there. Two others were 1-room apartments that were very dark (What’s the sense in building a wall in front of a window?! The niche that was created by this was called “sunroom” and should apparently be used to dry the laundry, so the laundry will have it nice and bright. But don’t you need some sunlight, too, my dear Japanese???) and had a strange form so that it would have been difficult to place our furniture there. The last apartment we visited was luckily alright. It has almost the same size as the first one but is very Japanese, i. e. it has tatami mats on the floor, a big oshiire (closet) and very thin walls. In some ways it is even better than the first apartment but the bath is really really tiny and there’s no space to cut in the kitchen although it’s bigger than the one before.

When we moved into the new new apartment we hadn’t even lived in the first new apartment for a week. The second move went well, too, and when I returned the key to the landlady she seemed to be sorry. She apologized several times but I couldn’t answer more than “Yes…” and left the house. I went to the new apartment on foot which took about 25 minutes so it’s not that far but the environment is very different. The nearer I got to the apartment the more I had to fight against my tears. It felt like a nightmare… All the energy I felt during the first move was gone and only reluctantly did we settle in this time.

Now we’re living next to Osaka airport between (love) hotels. It’s a very anonymous location but there’s a Gyoumu supermarket 5 minutes away so that we can at least buy inexpensive food. The house itself is very anonymous, too. We haven’t even met the landlord yet. On the other hand we seem to be free to do whatever we want to do here. It took a few days for me to accept this new situation. When I came back from work on Thursday it felt like coming home for the first time. I could tidy up everything at last and started to add a personal touch in here. The Saudek and Mucha postcards I brought from Prague found their place and some photographs will follow soon hopefully.