8am, uguisudani

アルプス

Pic by Tomoko Saito

Somewhere in Kabukicho among love hotels and hostos, there's four floors of the cheapest, looking-nothing-like-Switzerland izakaya ever: 2 hours, table charge, all the beer you can drink and food never make more than 1,500¥ and it is ususally around ¥1,300. Beer is a must -nobody'd come here otherwise- at 100¥ the mug and 500¥ the pitcher, and then there's a rather extense menu of food to choose from: gyoza, mame, yaki-nabe, fried chicken, fried rice, chips... anything.

Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name, and although nobody at アルプス (Alps, as in the mountains) knows mine, it's the closest I can get to that feeling in Tokyo. They know me, they just don't know my name, but they know me, not sure wether they like me or any other gaijin for they send us all to the last floor where we won't mix with pure japanese, but they know I'm in the building, if you know what I mean.


I practically live there so if you ever come to Tokyo and want to see me, don't come to my house, don't go to my school, go to アルプス on a Friday night. Any other night there's a slight chance you can join us too.

somewhere over the rice fields

the crib life

Ah, the crib life...! This is where magic happens, where food mysteriously disappears from your drawer, finished toilet paper rolls reproduce as rabbits, electricity is perennial and where to my surprise, I have only seen one (ONE!) cockroach in the last 5 months.

But it is also one of the few single rooms I can afford within central Tokyo and is way better than the other 2 places I stayed in before. It is called 'Asakusa Crib 2', because there's an 'Asakusa Crib 1' not far away from here, where, by the way, I also lived for some 3 months last year. Basically this house were two different flats I believe, or maybe just a single family house and they made some 20 tiny rooms and convert it into a cheap guesthouse. First floor (groundfloor anywhere else but Japan) is where the common area is, then second and third is where the 'cribs' are. I'm lucky, mine has a window. It faces the building you see on the right. Not much, I know, but it's a window. If only psychologically, it helps, believe me, I lived in a place with no window in Yotsugi 2 years ago, and that's something I don't wanna do again.

All in all, this is what I call home and I will be leaving in a month. And that, my friend, makes me very sad.

le plat d'une femme est trés délicieux si cette vaiselle est utilisée

Quoi de neuf? Tu me manques beaucoup.