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I live near Akihabara station in Tokyo. This area is known for being Tokyo’s “electric town” because it has so many electronics shops. It seems it is also a popular area recently for street performers. On the weekends just outside of the central exit there are sometime as many as 6 or 7 groups performing. Naturally some of the groups are pretty good and other no so. Each group usually has at least 20 or 30 people gathered around listening. This evening was no exception.

I always have trouble finding pants my size. I can get casual pants by mail order or online but for business use it is basically impossible for me to get anything off the rack. Naturally that is even more true in Japan than it would be in the US or Europe. I needed a couple of pair of pants so I decided I had no choice but to have them custom made. I choose a store called Eikokuya in Ginza to do the tailoring. They have a relatively long history going back to 1940. It takes two weeks until the first fitting and then a week after that to finish. I’ve had custom made pants before, but this is the first time to order in Japan. I am hoping the level of quality will be better than the last pair I had made in Shanghai. I’m guessing for the price it will be.

Finally, my apartment has curtains! The size of my windows are non-standard so everything had to be order made. This took about two weeks. And this time of year in Japan, a country that doesn’t have daylight savings time, the sun rises about 4:30am. That’s means, especially for the first few days after I moved in, I was waking to bright morning sunshine around 5:00am. Now, especially on the weekends, I can look forward to sleeping in a few hours without having the sun wake me up. Added to that, without the curtains and because I have big windows facing east, my apartment was heating up quickly in the morning.

One nice thing about my new office in Tokyo is that I have a pretty good view of the city. I can see a little bit of the Tokyo Tower and to the right (outside this picture) is Tokyo Midtown. Plus I even get a little greenery in the middle. Not bad for an office in Tokyo.

For the first time in a long time I rented an apartment without any furniture or appliances. This is good because it means for the first time in a long time I can choose things that match my own taste instead of always having to rely on someone else’s taste. Not that my taste is that good but still getting to choose things myself has been fun. Naturally this has all come at a big cost because I’ve had to buy everything all at once: bed, couch, table, cabinets, chairs, curtains (which still haven’t arrived), TV, rug, etc.

Here are a couple pictures of the place today. This is Japan so space is very limited. I have a 1LDK which means a one bed room plus one large living/dining/kitchen. By Tokyo standards it is of relatively “normal” size. By American standards it would be very small. But I’m used to that so no complaints – except that I still have 25 boxes of stuff in transit from China and and not quite sure it’s all going to fit.