First few days...

Well so much for Shinjuku. Not my favorite place in the world, but definitely something else. When I finally woke up the next day, Emiko and Yoshi were at work, so started off my surfing and chatting and skypin'. Trying to find a room, or at least a few websites advertising rooms. Which wasn't really that difficult. The problem was, however, decinding on a area to live. If you don't knwo the city, and Tokyo is really just part of something bigger, 'cos you can be end up for example in Yokohama or Chiba, without noticing. And if you have the name of some part of the city, you'll never find it on the underground map. Part of the problem being that there are JR (Japan Rail, as far as I have figured it out, state-owned) lines, + about a million seperate private lines. Obviously you need different tickets as well, can't change from on to the other that easily, though by now I have credit-card-stylee cards, one for all the private and one for the JR lines. Now another problem is, that hardly any of the stations I want to go to are on any of the five or six train maps that I've got by now. Definitely not on the one in my Lonely Planet travel guide, and most of the others are only available in Japanese, which doesn't help much, 'cos I don't know how to pronounce the Kanji's. Short explanation: Japanese writing consists of 3 "alphabets", Hiragana (46 signs, for Japanese words when Kanjis do not exist or are not commonly used), Katakana (46, for foreign words) and Kanji (20.000+, who knows). You need to know about 2000 to get along. I know about 20. Well...
Enough about that.
Later I went out to get some food, same result in the supermarket, half the stuff I didnt't know, and definitely couldn't tell from what's written on the packaging. So I bought some vaguely familiar stuff for some pasta with tomato sauce. And some beer! Did some cooking with my new found flatmates, and it ended up havin quite a different taste to what I intended. Not bad, just different. Not that I don't like Japanese food. Luv' it. Just don't know what to do with the ingredients. Another thing to learn.
Next morning I managed to get up a bit earlier, nice rainy weather less than 15 degrees, and went to a place with Emiko, where people concentrate on being nice to foreigners. For free. So if I stay in this area, I could get language lessons almost for free, from really friendly people, migth even get paid for teaching a bit of English or German. And somebody migth even find me a room to stay. Not for free though. Then I went off to see the first 2 rooms, one being in Nishifunabashi, easy to remember, like everything here, which turned out to be part of Chiba, so completely on the other side of town. 2h on a couple of trains, and I'm there. Surfer/Skater dude, who's the manager, shows me the place, 25 people share one house, nice relaxed, but a bit far away maybe. depends on where you wanna be. Which I still don't know.
Next one is back in the west of Tokyo, this opne is only for about 15 people, and only one shower, not really for me, though I like the area. A hippie girl in tie-dyed jeans tells me how cool it would be if I moved in, and that there had already been a German from Hmaburg in this house, once upon a time, and if I wanted to play on my electric guitar, I'd be more than welcome. No idea where she got the idea about the guitar from. But then again, she's been lining in that house for about 4 years...
Also went to Akihabara, Electric City, earlier that day, just check out the photos on the left. That'll be another chapter some time soon.
and in the evening we went to an izakaya, traditional japanese pub/restaurant....check the photos...there'll be some more soon, cause you can get all that stuff in any supermarket. Might send anyone who's interested a pack of fresh gristle (Knorpel). a few beers and off to bed....seems to be arepeating theme...hope I won't finish every blog entry this way....