Showing me the way to get home

Recently, I`ve been reconsidering my move into Tokyo. Omiya seems more like home than Dullsville, so my laziness had me pondering a happy, suburban future in Saitama. Not for long though, I didn`t come to Japan to live in the suburbs. I`ve decided to investigate moving into the Big City a bit more, spurred on by my increasing boredom and frustration at having a nihilist for a boss. His unquestioning acceptance that life and Lipscombe are shit doesn`t hold with my own world view (though parts overlap).

Before I can completely let go of the security of the Japanese Croydon, I thought I`d check out what was available for what price, so today I met Kenji and went to an apartment letting agency in Sasazuka to do just that. I feared cockroach-ridden shoeboxes with mould-spattered bathrooms and the pervasive scent of dead tenant. Overall, everything was fairly clean, presentable and considerably bigger than the company accommodation I`m currently paying over the odds for. The idea of having my own little home ten minutes` walk from Shinjuku is massively exciting and, unlike flat-hunting in London, every apartment had a certain appeal and it was only my unyielding fickleness that swiped a couple of the wish list. They are only marginally more expensive than my current apartment and considerably larger, though the key money is a huge obstacle.

Japanese landlords have somehow devised a wonderously beneficial system to line their pockets. Tenants usually provide one or two months` deposit up front, along with your first month`s rent and this crippling, non-refundable gift - usually two months` rent again, dubbed key money. Money you will never see again, it`s just a gift to your new landlord. It is this which puts most gaijin in guesthouses (which I am now loathe to do, having seen one amazing apartment in Sasazuka that I just fell in love with) and some salarymen on benches while they save up their spare yen for key money. The apartment I fell for was around ten minutes from Sasazuka station, had a huge kitchen (my current kitchen is a sink and plastic hob in the hallway, so as soon as I slipped my shoes off in the genkan I just knew), a separate tatami bedroom, a huge loft space that could double as a spare room and a small private balcony. (Kenji is standing near the genkan of the first place we saw, which I dismissed over its bedsitness - I do not want a stove in my bedroom.) All I need to do now is cobble together the ¥485,800 for the first month and its mine.

Kenji has vowed to look for places online that only need one month up front. Without him, I would most definitely be Omiya-ridden. He and David are very new friends and I was initially cynical of their exceeding niceness. They most definitely aren`t trying to get me in the sack, so I was confused about what they might be up to. Why would anyone go out of their way to be so incredibly kind to someone they barely know? We`ve met a handful of times, but they have double-handedly restored my ever-decreasing faith in human nature. They have taken me under their wing completely. David quickly recommended a good letting agency for me to use (some are a little gaijin-phobic, to say the least) and readily offered Kenji`s assistance in dealing them, something that only threatened a small squabble because Kenji didn`t have the chance to do it himself. They have slyly denied the genuine cost of bills, refused my money when I catch them out at this and turned a blind eye to my greed to insist I only pay a small portion of what I genuinely owe in a wonderfully Marxist levelling of wealth and are generally being good in ways I haven`t experienced from men who aren`t after getting their hands on my chocolates. Hideously, while writing this, I am still pondering what the catch is. Maybe they want me to harvest their baby.