Today was my first whole day in my new apartment and, rather than elated, I've felt a pretty potent general malaise. I'm feeling the pressure, now, to get a job rather acutely, and I'm having some doubts about the living situation. It's not, precisely, that the inmates are unfriendly, but there is a general lack of camaraderie that is a bit surprising given the fact that we are all members of the extreme minorities. On Tuesday, for example, I trekked all the way across Tokyo, through incredibly densely populated areas, and did not see, to my knowledge, a single non-Japanese person. That kind of monoculture is unheard of in cities like New York or LA, but it is common in the wards of Tokyo. You would think that we minorities would bond a little harder, under the circumstances. There's also a lot of institutionalized racism here that I'll probably discuss in a later post. Most Japanese, of course, are at least polite and even friendly, but I would be unable to rent an apartment, in the most common example of institutional racism.
So, tomorrow I go to my interview at 1:30 and I am lacking both cash and shaving cream...might have to rough it with plain old soap, although I hate to do that. I need to convert dollars to yen tomorrow, either way, but I wish I had done that before I ran out. On the other hand, I can't spend yen if I don't have them in hand and that's not a bad thing, either.
So, yeah. Anyway. Kind of a down day, but that is to be expected on occasion. The only thing to do is pick myself back up and get back to it.
*edit* OK, one of my roommates is pretty damn friendly. The others, maybe not so much, but I'll give it some time before making any full judjments...
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