As you might imagine, we have been über-busy for the past few days, but now I could finally find some time to put up a new post. :) The move on September 1st went as planned without any issues, thanks to eager Japanese businesses that try to plan out their services to microscopic detail, so they wouldn’t embarrass themselves with bad business. So, how did it all go?

Phase 1: Delivering the key
Before you move in somewhere, you need a key of course. Usually agencies here deliver it by mail, just like in our case. The agent, as he promised last week, sent the key by courier at 9 AM which was delivered to us in Kawagoe two hours later. Now we were ready to sail off to Tokyo.

Phase 2: Taking the train to the new apartment
Two hours and a half train ride. Right before we arrived, they called us from the moving company, saying that the truck with our stuff was already there. Indeed, the guys were already waiting at the entrance for 10 minutes, ready to start taking the boxes upstairs.

Phase 3: Unloading the cargo
After they mounted protective cushions around the frames of every door in the apartment — see photo below — the two moving guys started bringing all our stuff upstairs. What was quite impressive is that for the whole half hour, they didn’t say a single word of complaint (at least we didn’t hear any ;)) as they kept running (literally) in the heat of 33 degrees Celsius to the truck and back while carrying our pretty heavy boxes, taking the elevator up to the 6th floor, and, as per Japanese custom, taking their shoes off and on at the entrance every time. When they were done, they asked a few standard questions, if anything was damaged, if everything was placed in the right room… We also got an extra questionnaire to rate the service from 1 to 100 with questions about workers’ behavior, work ethic, speed of service and space for comments or complaints.

Phase 4: Phone and Internet, the things one cannot live without
As they were unloading the boxes, an NTT guy called, saying he was to arrive shortly. He was here in 10 minutes, started playing with the phone jack, connected the modem for fiber optic phone and internet, checked the connection on a laptop and said that everything works fine. Darn! And I was hoping that something would go wrong after all to make things more adventurous.

On Monday they are supposed to deliver a washing machine, a refrigerator and some other items. Below you can see some photos I took from our new place:

View from the balcony – north-east.

A zoomed-in view of the maze of streets.

A zoomed-in view from the north window. This train is called Toneri Liner, the nearest station is 3 minutes of walk away, and the train runs all day every 7 minutes from 5 AM to about 1 AM.Toneri Liner was opened last year in 2008 and uses new AGT automated electric trains that run without a driver. The liner passes by our building, but it’s so awfully smooth and quiet we can’t notice it.