Moving by bicycle

On Friday, 2006-06-09, the movers came to move the furniture from the apartment in Fukuzawa to my new place in Oyamadai. Officially I was able to move in from June first, but I wanted to move as much as my stuff as possible before making the actual move. I also needed some time to prepare for the move, so I waited until the 9th to make the big move. Over the week prior to the move I made two to three trips on my little bicycle from one place to the other. Each trip takes about fifteen minutes, and there is a fairly large hill in between the two so either way half the trip is pedaling up a hill, and the other half is braking down the hill, trying to avoid hitting people on the sidewalk.

Over the course of the move-in, I’ve probably made about twelve or thirteen trips between the two places on that little bike. It is a great bike. It can fold in half, and I recently put a basket on the front just for cases like this when I would need to move things around in it. Sadly, it is a bit small, and even with the seat as high as it can go, I can’t stretch my legs out far and long trips on it are quite uncomfortable. Still, I get the feeling that if everyone in America rode a bike as much as I ride that little bike, we wouldn’t have a national obescity epidemic.

Of all the things in my apartment, probably about twenty percent of them by volume arrived on my bike or in my backpack. That doesn’t sound like much, but if you go by item count instead of volume, that number rises up to about eighty percent I think. I really have gotten a lot of mileage out of that little red bike since I bought it early last year.

Paying $140 to not use a bed

Thanks to my friends Eric and Tai, I was very lucky to be able to receive a lot of furniture and appliances. I received a refrigerator, microwave, rice cooker, washing machine, television, and things like that. I also got some of Eric’s furniture for compenstation that has yet been determined, but it really was useful for me because I didn’t have to worry about buying furniture for my apartment, I only had to worry about moving it. Of course, since I am the worrying type, I still did plenty of fretting and worrying, but in the end it all worked out.

The one thing that I was worried about was Eric’s bed. For some reason, he bought the most monsterously large bed he could find, it was 200cm long by 140cm wide. Now that I’ve moved to Japan, I’ve become more used to the metric system, but the bed is about 4.6 feet by 6.5 feet. I took measurements of the door and staircase, and in general the bed would fit, but I wasn’t sure if it would be possible to get the thing around the corners of the staircase. The movers were good at their job, it took only two hours to pack things into the two (small by American standards) trucks, and unload them into the new apartment, but when it came to the bed they just could not get it up the stairs. So I had to do something with that bed. I couldn’t just leave it out on the street, because that would be breaking all sorts of rules. Usually you have to pay to have large garbage taken care of in Japan. Luckily the movers would haul the bed off, but I had to pay them about $140 to do it. It is a real shame because the bed was very comfortable, and only about a year and a half old. Even worse, I had to buy a new bed, but of course I made sure that the new one was small (a single) and that the frame could be disassembled so it could make it up the stairs. It should arrive in a week. Until then, I’m sleeping on a futon on the floor, with a few blankets folded up for extra padding.

On the dangers of relying on a bicycle to move

On my last trip to the Fukuzawa apartment, my bike picked up a thumb tack in the rear tire, and it went flat. I had to walk the poor thing back to Oyamadai. I didn’t think this would be much of a problem though because there is a cute little bike shop right on the main street where I should be able to get the puncture fixed.

I went down to the main street, but the bike shop was closed. Since it was noon, I guess the owner must have been out to lunch or something. So, back to the apartment for a while to unpack.

Returning later, the bike shop was still cloesd. I went next door to the Diving Shop, and spoke to the owner there. He said that the bike shop next door was open randomly, would often shut down business for good, then mysteriously open up again a few weeks later. Now, I don’t generally base my impression of a business based on what the owner of the diving shop says, but he seemed like a nice guy, and it looked like in any case, I wouldn’t be fixing my bike’s poor tire at the shop next door. So I had to find an alternative. A quick trip to the local police box got me the information I needed: there is another bike shop about fifteen minutes down the rode.

So I walked the bike down to the other bike shop, and got the tire fixed for 1000 yen. While he was at it, he also fixed the squeeky rear break. I just wish the shop wasn’t a fifteen minute walk away, because that is a long walk when you don’t have a bike. It is an interesting walk though. The road to the bike shop is lined with some opulent houses. It seems like a really rich and nice area. I wonder what I am doing living in the vicinity?

Pros and Cons

As of today, I am completely moved-in to my new apartment in Oyamadai, and I am really very happy with it. There are many positive points about this place, and only one real negative point. First, the positive points:

• It is a large apartment for Japan
• It was just renovated, and has a beautiful interior
• The bathroom is absolutely excellent; toilet and bath are separate (desireable in Japan) and there is a separate area for the sink (very rare in single person apartments)
• I have a small balcony that is protected from the rain to dry laundry, and there is a space for the washing machine
• Two closets, both large
• A huge shoe rack / storage closet at the entrance
• I absolutely love the neighborhood
• Very close to Jiyugaoka station, which I use for my commute (a bit closer than where I used to live even!)
• Fourth-floor apartment, no burglers are going to climb up this high
• Low ceilings so I can easily change light-bulbs (contrast this with my apartment in New York, where even with the help of a step-ladder on top of the coffee table I needed to balance on top of two phone books to reach the lights. Typically I never changed the light bulbs until every single light source in the room was exhausted, and only then if the TV didn’t give off enough light to serve whatever purpose was necessary.)
• Close to Oyamadai station

and now the negative points:

• Very close to Oyamadai station
• Fourth floor walk-up, no elevator (although, this could go in the positive list, since it means enforced stair-climbing exercise)
• Low ceilings. If my dad came to visit, got excited and jumped for joy, he would hurt his head. Luckily, I’ve never once seen him jump for joy, so I think overall this isn’t really a big problem.

The only real negative is that the apartment is right next to the station, and you can hear the trains as they rumble by. It isn’t really that bad though, and in the two nights that I’ve stayed here the noise has not been enough to wake me up. If I have one some music and the windows are closed, it isn’t even