MOVING TIMES

Was waiting until things were pretty nigh final until updating my living situation report. Good news - I have a new apartment!

The middle of September, I realized I probably would NOT want to stay in my current university-sponsored apartment all 4 years (potentially) of my contract. It's a center basement apartment with no outside view on three sides. It's spacious enough to open a small bowling alley in, but still dark, and the ceiling weighs down on you. Time to move before I got too settled in where I was.

PLAN A

Easiest thing would have been to move within the Canaan House apartment complex to a third-floor apartment that had been vacant for some months. But several weeks of petitioning brought a resounding NO from the university general (housing) affairs - for no reason. ("No" is the stock response to any request, so I'm told by the other gaijin teachers.) Apparently, once checked in, a Canaan House resident can never leave. Except off campus. (And then I can never come back to Canaan House. So there!)

PLAN B

I then took the other option of finding my own accommodations in the area. I looked at apartments from Nishinomiya to Kobe with various real estate agents and found several places I liked. The first one, closer to campus, had been immediately glommed onto by the next day, when I returned to put in an offer.

The second one was in a lovely wooded area in a crook of a hillside with a stream running past and a gateway (torii) a few meters away to a Shinto shrine up the hill. A two-unit, two-story apartment. When I told a Japanese friend at my Kobe church about it the next day, he was amazed. "I've stayed with the neighbors upstairs! Airi and Koji! They attend our church!" (What are the odds of that happening in all the apartments in all the towns between Nishinomiya and Kobe?) A return visit during the day with the Japanese friend to review what I had liked the first visit and meet Airi and her son upstairs convinced me that I wanted to rent it.

But, ever unhelpful, the university now refused to serve as "guarantor" for my off-campus lease (i.e. to cosign to pay for any debts/unpaid rental payments the expatriate leaves behind if he skips the country). The Japanese faculty in my Language Center department also refused to help. "Nothing personal, but I wouldn't serve as guarantor for even my brother," our associate director told me. Fine, you bring me all the way out to Japan then make it impossible for new faculty to rent anywhere decent! Living on the streets of Kobe are always an option ...

I then spent a week hunting for another guarantor. Even Koji and Airi upstairs volunteered at one point, but then found that one tenant guaranteeing another was not kosher by landlord standards. It looked like I'd have to give up on the apartment I wanted and take something cheaper. And I'd already signed a university document saying I'd be out of their apartment by October 31, so no turning back.

PLAN C

All I had left was to find a situation that DIDN'T require a guarantor - few and far between in Japan. So, I revisited some lesser apartments I'd visited first near Nishinomiya and picked the best of the lot - a bit small, but on the third floor with a bit of view.

Then last Thursday, the day I had committed to taking the "best of the lot," my Japanese friend emailed to say he'd found a guarantor for the woodsy apartment - a Japanese man and his wife from church. (Total strangers! Amazing that church people will come through when the university department that had picked my CV out of 55 others to hire didn't have enough trust in me to act as guarantor!) But leery of getting my hopes up too much at this point - "roller coaster" is the operative word here - I said, "Fine. Let's see if this one gets approval or not."

Down to the wire (another party had expressed interest in the same apartment), the Japanese wife of the potential guarantor met me at church, hurriedly handed me the documents with their information, I ran down to the Century 21 realtor with around $750 as a deposit - and the process was underway!

This Tuesday evening, I sat in the Kobe office of Century 21 with my agent Maeda-san and my Japanese friend/translator as the two of them went through the all-Japanese lease documents. (The only words on the page I could read were "Century 21" in English at top!) My friend nodded, asked questions, nodded some more, then asked, "OK. You can just sign here!" (So where's the translation, translator?) "Umm ... can I ask you about some details first?" I replied.

Then it was back to church, where the Japanese wife met us with the family's seal. (Signatures in Japan are legal only with a hand-made seal dipped in red ink. They make an exception for odd foreigners who actually WRITE their signatures.) She dipped and pressed. I signed. And the docs were done. Then it was back to Century 21 by the 8 pm deadline with the cash (no checks or credit cards) for about $4000! I nearly emptied my bank account out to do it (then my wallet later, when I treated my translator-friend to dinner after 9 pm). But the deed was done!

Move-in is tentatively scheduled for October 31, the last day for me to get out of the old apartment -- and the first day the owner will let me move IN the new apartment. It's located 10-minutes walk from a train station (essential here in Japan) halfway between Nishinomiya and Kobe. I estimate my daily commute will take about 40-45 minutes.