I said in the last post that I was going to make a post about the dorm that I’m staying in, YUI, and about the campus. I don’t really have the pictures ready for the campus yet so that will have to wait for another time but I figured since I haven’t posted in a while I would throw up a quick post about the dorm.

The dorm has 6 floors, a bottom floor, floor 0, that serves as a lobby as well as housing some of the facilities, and 5 floors with the rooms and amenities. Each floor is split in half with a female side and male side, except for floors, 1 and 2 which are all female if I remember correctly. Each half is then split again into 2 units that are identical but mirrored versions of each other, so each side has the same stuff.

First about the room. The good news is that they are all single rooms so I don’t have to worry about sharing space with someone else, which for me is a great thing as I really like having a space to go back to where it’s just me. Each room comes with a bed, chair, closet, end table, phone, lamp, fridge, towel rack, and desk with a bookcase attached. One thing I will say is that getting the lamp and fridge plugged in requires a bit of fiddling or a power strip as the plug for the lamp is too large to be plugged into the same outlet as the fridge. As a result I haven’t been using the lamp at all but that also hasn’t really been any sort of problem since I haven’t really needed it. Your given sheets, a futon, and a pillow for the bed and they have a linen service every first and third Monday to get fresh ones, it’s super easy just take your linens down to the bottom floor, put them in the bins, and pick up new ones. A couple things I will say about the bed; first one of the sheets you get looks like a mattress cover, it’s not its a cover for the futon. You can see it in the picture below, the white sheet that is surrounding the floral print cover. Using that is pretty important because you don’t change out your futon during the linen service so you use the cover to help keep it clean. Second the pillow you get is a bit odd, it’s quite tiny and is more like a cherry pit bag then a pillow. I’ve personally found it quite nice to sleep on as it’s very supportive but more then a few people have mentioned having problems with it. Fortunately there are plenty stores around here that you can buy a pillow from if you want a different one so you should be able to find what works. Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, you can’t put anything on the walls so it can feel a bit barren. Hopefully I’ll be able to pick up some things to put around the desk and such to make it feel a bit more natural. Regardless of that though I do like the room and, other then the lamp plug, really don’t have any complaints.

Picture of the room from the door. The closet is off to the right. The trash can is bewteen the desk and the bed and there are also drawers under the bed.

Closet and shoe rack/shelves

Next I’ll quickly go over the main parts of the rest of the unit. First every unit has a lounge, really two one at the front and one at the back. Nothing too surprising here though you do have to take your shoes off when sitting around the raised part you can see in the picture. This is something that shouldn’t really surprise you if you are familiar with Japan as it’s something that can be fairly common depending on where you go. If you stay with a host family for example you would more then likely have to always take your shoes off when entering the house. Even the eel restaurant that I talked about in the last post had me take my shoes off when I entered. It’s not something that you do everywhere, like going into a department store or convenience store you aren’t going to take your shoes off, but it’s something that you should expect to happen. A good rule of thumb is that if you see a raised section of floor, like you see in the lounge, you are meant to take your shoes off.

Next we have the bathroom. Pretty standard as well, sinks, toilets, showers, nothing special. I will say that the showers are a bit annoying. You turn them on by pushing a button but then they only stay on for a short time before turning off. So the only way to keep them running that I’ve found is to hold the button down, which takes up one of your hands, or keep pressing it periodically while the shower is running. Now your probably thinking, “oh well it’s for conserving water that makes sense I don’t see what the problem is.” It’s not the fact that it turns off that is the problem it’s the fact that it turns off after like a minute, maybe a minute and a half I haven’t timed it. But regardless its about enough time to wet your hair and start putting shampoo on it, so it’s a bit annoying.

Next there is the shared kitchen and dining room. The kitchen is pretty nice, though it does lack counter space a bit. Each room also has a cabinet in here to use as a pantry so you don’t have to store things that don’t have to be refrigerated in your room. There are a bunch of pots, pans, utensils, and so on that are for communal use. Pretty sure most of the stuff, if not all of it, are things that previous students have bought and left because they didn’t want to cart it back home. The dining room isn’t really anything special but does have large windows that overlook the courtyard so that’s nice.

The last major thing is the laundry room. It takes 300 yen for a full wash and dry, a little under 3 dollars. I will say that both the washer and dryer seem smaller then what I’m used to so keep that in mind. Also I’ve been having problems with the dryer not drying all my clothes all the way, namely shorts or pants. I don’t know if because of the smaller size I’m putting too much in or it just doesn’t get hot enough but the pockets and waist of my shorts always seem to be a little damp afterwards. I’ve just been hanging them on my towel rack in my room afterwards and it’s been doing the trick.

That’s it for the unit but there are a few other things in the building. There is a training room and karaoke rooms on the bottom floor. And a computer room and study room on the second floor. I don’t have pictures of these unfortunately and haven’t really used any of them yet so can’t really comment much about them. I will say the training room doesn’t have any weights in it from what I’ve heard. I believe it only has a treadmill, elliptical, some body weight equipment, and some ping pong tables. Not much but if your really into ping pong it’s great.

Anyway that’s going to do it for this post. Hopefully this gives some idea of what the space that I’m living in is like. I’m not really sure what I’ll make the next post on, will probably depend what happens in the next week or so I suppose. But until then thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.