Hickups

Well of course just when I thought things were going to go into smooth sailing, the sea starts to get angry. Nothing disastrous but it just looks like March is going to be busy after all. I might need to sell/gift a lot more of my things than I expected. Shipping boxes from England to Japan is very expensive and my budget might be less than I originally thought. I just need to keep slowly pushing on things. I also received more details on what I need to do and there are a lot more details than I expected.

The hardest thing is realizing how much of my stuff that I thought had value really doesn't. This gets back to my earlier post: things only have value when we project value on them. I might place one value on an item and someone else could place a completely different value on the same item. It's all just one big consensual illusion. I also found out that selling things takes a lot more energy than I expected. This last week exhausted me. I think this will make me really cautious about bringing new things into my life. It does make the thought of just giving many things to the charity shops look really appealing right now. I just hope I can get reasonable money for the few big things that are left.

But there looks like there might be sunshine poking through the clouds. The estate agent helping me has found two more apartments that might be the best yet. They are in Meguro ward and look to have all the things that I'm looking for. I'm looking very forward to seeing these apartments. I just hope they remain available until I can arrive. I think I would really enjoy living in Setagaya or Meguro wards. I think it will be more residential, but there will be plenty of train stations along the route to work where I can do shopping and go to nice restaurants.

As I was thinking about this, it is almost an inverting of my situation in England. I'm living in Cambridge right now close to the train station and right off a big shopping street and I work out in the country. If I do end up living in Meguro I will be living in a more residential area and working in a more industrial and city area. But even these residential areas don't look like American suburbs or English villages. I just don't sense that there will be that sense of isolation and 'needing a car to do anything'. In both America and England one needs to drive in a car for at least 10-15 minutes to get groceries or pick up anything. I just don't sense Japan will have this kind of isolation in the residential areas especially when the closest train station might be only a 9 minute walk away. I guess that is the fundamental difference between a city person and a country person. A city person doesn't want the isolation while a country person might actually appreciate that isolation.

I think I am going to really like living and working in Tokyo/Yokohama.