As the heading of this post indicates, I have lived in five apartments over a span of fifteen years of stay in Japan. The current one to which we moved in 2018 is the fifth apartment.
The first apartment was in Kiba, near the office, where I lived for 4 months. The office was just 5 minutes walking-distance away. The apartment was 2 DK type and had enough space when I was alone. There was a shopping mall, Ito Yokado and tall buildings nearby. A lively place called Gatharia, where people gather with their kids. My dining room was so big during those days as I was dining at Mc Donalds, KFC, Japanese restaurants, and Mister Donut.
The second apartment was in Sakura, Chiba prefecture. I lived there for 3 months. I had to walk 10 minutes to reach the nearby supermarket and 22 minutes to the nearest railway station. That was like a village life, but could drop body weight a lot due to walking and running. Silence was the only companion while watching Japanese television programs. The branches of darkness played hide and seek game outside from where the shrilling sound of Cicadas tried to invade the silence. I was inclining towards spirituality, but occasional visits to Tokyo and its neon lit streets helped me to return to the world of ether.
The third apartment was a private apartment in Komatsugawa, near the 7-11 shop. It was one minute walking-distance away from Higashi Ojima station of Toei-Shinjuku line. The size of the apartment was 2DK. When wife and kids came to Japan, we started feeling the importance of moving to a little more larger apartment. Komatsugawa park, with 1000 Sakura trees was an attractive point of that apartment. Our social connections were growing and hence we hesitated to move away from Komatsugawa.
The Park and the growing social interactions with the expatriate community in Komatsugawa were the reasons behind choosing the fourth apartment near the Komatsugawa park itself. There was a thought of moving to an apartment near to the kids' school. Consideration social connections dominated our decision finally and we chose to stay near Komatsugawa park. We contacted Sakuma-san who manages a real-estate agency in Komatsugawa. He proposed some vacant 2LDK apartments owned by UR housing corporation. The size was 65 sqm.
The 10th building of UR housing complex is a 33 storey building with garbage disposal room and the bicycle parking space at the ground (first) floor. We preferred the second floor since the bicycles would not complain about the footstep sounds. That 2LDK apartment was nice until our kids grew up and demanded separate rooms.
All those 10 years and 7 months, company had made contract with apartment owners (almost 5 years in Private apartment and 5 years plus in UR apartment)
We started searching for a little more spacious apartment. We approached Sakuma-san (real-estate agent) again. He proposed JKK apartment, which is again in Komatsugawa. The size of the apartment we selected was 3SLDK with 88.8 sqm. JKK has an apartment complex in Komatsugawa 1-chome, near Higashi Ojima railway station. Our current apartment, which is on third floor has a spacious balcony with Arakawa river-view.
