Our apartment is a cosy 19.5m2 with a small hob, sink, washer, fridge, shower, bath, TV etc. The bed room is a loft situated above the kitchen/entrance which we have to climb a ladder to get to. The apartment though seems to have been made for a but it's comfy and will do us fine for the next 6 months. Luckily there's a heater/air conditioner too so the chilly Japan winter isn't getting to me too much (I actually think it's been warmer here the last few days than in England). (Note: These pics were taken after I'd tidied)
Our first few days (the Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th) after we'd arrive was mostly spent waking up at 5 am and then falling asleep again until midday (yay jetlag!). But when we were awake we spent the time exploring the area, including the local 100yen shop/super market (getting plenty of items for the house and food), and the nearest mall Aeon which has EVERYTHING (well...a bookshop and doughnuts). Wes invested some money in a map of Fukuoka which has been a life saver so far. Also, despite the fact we've gone to many, many cheap bookshops already we haven't bought that much manga! I also invested my first few yen on a cooking magazine which turns out to be full of amazingly useful Japanese recipes. I admit I haven't tried any out yet but I've certainly been using it for inspiration.
We began classes on the Monday 21st. We were met at the station by one of the teachers and led to school which is a small office on the 4th floor of a building (next to a bookshop called Book Off). I think we were both surprised at how small the school was. It has one office, 2 classrooms, and 1 private classroom, a small kitchen and toilet. And besides Wes and myself, 1 other student. Apparently the school has over 100 students at it's other campus, but that's for people studying for over 1 year. And I must admit I was a bit disappointed when we were put with the other student (a 30-something Canadian who's living here with his Japanese wife and daughter) whose Japanese is not as good as ours so we're going over a lot of the grammar and vocab we already know. But it is only our first week and we're only just getting into it, fingers crossed it'll pick up soon. In the mean time we've been exploring, shopping, cooking and translating manga. We have plenty of time for our own study, just haven't got round to it yet... Practice N2 kanji is on the list of things to do for the rest of this week.
This weekend though we plan to go to Tenjin, the main shopping district in the centre of town, less than 6 miles away so we can cycle there! OH yeah! We got bikes to get to school with! Cost 10,000yen, but when the train costs 400 a day there and back, that's only 5 weeks cycling to school and back to get our money back. Yay!
So fingers crossed I'll update again with pics of the school our bikes and the area before an update on the weekend! o/
That bed attic thing looks awesome :O
ReplyDeleteHow high is it though? From the photo the room looks about normal height, with the entrance hall being ~5 feet o_O Maybe the room is really tall, which is throwing off the sense of proportion? o.o
The room is about 11 feet tall, so the doorway is about 6.5/7 feet tall and then the lost is above it. Does that help? :/
ReplyDeleteOMG your room looks amazing! That's the kind of apartment I want to get eventually.
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