10 posts tagged “moving”

Packing up all my stuff again, and I came across some things that brought back some memories.

Here's a vintage kimono that the art teacher who taught at a Japanese junior high school I worked at gave me. In what was one of the worst jobs I've ever had, I used to teach English.

Vintage

Anyways, she was into vintage kimono shopping, and she always told me how I would look great in an old fashioned red one. When she came across this one, she bought it for me.

Then I found this white jacket. It used to be snazzy, but it's kind of wrinkly right now. I'd wear it more often, if it wasn't for the fact that a boss that I despise bought it for me. She wanted me to look more professional/needed me to be indebted to her. So instead of paying me a living wage and letting me go home at a reasonable time, she emotionally blackmailed me with some gifts. Like this jacket. That I never wear.

Jacket

Shawl

And I just found this other stuff. I wore this at my friends traditional Timorese wedding. That skirt and then that shawl over my shoulder. Plus a canary yellow frilly shirt. My official role was as a sister of the bride, and I sat confused during the complicated ceremony, where the groom's family came over to our house to ask for permission. And it wasn't really my house, or the bride's, since she was from Adelaide, Australia. It was actually the groom's aunt's house!

TimorWedding

Baby Sister has moved into a nice apartment in kind of a crappy neighborhood in Korea Town. I gave her a big lecture on being safe, not that she needs it from me. She can take care of herself, but it made me feel better.

Moving out

And here she is moving into her nice new apartment. I love the cement floors and the windows are great. I'd die of happiness if I had an apartment like this in Tokyo. The elevator to this new apartment building was the same size as my old place in Roppongi!

Moving in

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And we managed to keep it all a secret. I bet he thinks we forgot. Hahahaha.

Almost time to say goodbye to my little treehouse/closet (photo courtesy of Shia and his awesome wide lens camera):

Closet

I'm gonna get fat this last week in Tokyo because all my friends want to take me out for a goodbye meal.

My ex-boyfriend (would-be-baby-daddy) called and wanted to meet up. Our schedules weren't really compatible (he paints buildings so he finishes around 8pm and only has Sundays off). I think it's good that he only has one day off a week, and that his job is physical so that he's exhausted. It keeps him out of trouble. He said he might take a sick day on Thursday.

I think I'll call and email my customers on Thursday and tell them Friday's my last day. I might as well.

I was telling Best Friend about how mama told me to turn the sound off when I was watching Coyote Ugly on the big TV screen, and I told her too bad because I wanted to watch it. Best Friend informed me that "you know you can't talk to people like that in the real world." Then she said that if she'd still work in a club if she could. Which kind of surprised me, but actually she's an all-or-nothing type of girl so she absolutely couldn't. She felt like a failure if she didn't have more paid dates than all the other girls. I, on the other hand, couldn't give two shits if I didn't have any paid dates. Then again, I'm a professional half-asser.

What will I do when i come back to Japan? I could be a bilingual office worker or do technical writing or translation again. "You could just write a book," said Best Friend, as if it was that easy. Just because she did it doesn't mean anybody can.

Anyway, I need to focus on what I'm going to be doing in LA. I do have my work cut out for me. Maybe I'll archive this blog and start a new one.

Getting rid of all my stuff. Now have one bag full of all my electronic gadgets, one suitcase full of clothes/shoes/makeup, and an overnight bag full of books and other etceteras. I'm gonna bring a "purse" (and I'll really be pushing the limits of what a purse is) with my computer and stuff in it.

I'm giving away lots of stuff too.

For the girls at the club:
Mirror, perfumes, painkillers, band aids, instant coffee, pregnancy tests, electric urn, lots and lots of dresses, shoes, vitamin drinks (fiber and hangover drinks mainly, and of course a few red bulls). Thought about leaving condoms but decided to just toss them. Oh wait, maybe I should give them to the girls after all.

For Best Friend:
Makeup, skincare products, water filter, clothes, books, printing paper. She's letting me store my printer and VCR at her place, thank goodness. Before you think I'm a loser, the VCR is for translation work, btw!

For the kitchen:
Cooking oils, honeys, vinegar.

Phew.

I've finished cleaning and sorting out my room. I tried taking a picture of my room but its just too small, you can't really understand what's going on.

The closet/treehouse

So that's my room, kind of.

Had a serious blast from the past today. My phone rang just as I was lugging the last of my luggage from Shinjuku to Roppongi. "Hey Jadie, who do you think this is?" said the voice on the phone in Japanese. Since the voice was calling me by my hostess name, I thought it must be Dancer Girl. But no! It was my old mama!

The mama that taught me everything I know! The beautiful Mama Masako! She ran a club in Ginza, and she was wonderful to me. I feel bad about the half ass job I did for her. Right now I resent working hard for my current lazy old hag mama, but I really feel bad for short changing Mama Masako. I was often really lazy, and I really could have worked a lot harder.

Anyways, so Mama Masako calls me, and tells me Fabiana is with her. So I rush home, change out of my sweaty clothes and throw on a hat on my weird hair and go out to meet her. Of course there's a rich customer there that miraculously is also super generous with his money. You know, I have to bow at the feet of my master. Mama Masako is over 40, but she looks absolutely stunning. She could pass as younger than me. And she comes across as cute. Not only that, she can get customers to just part with so much cash without even trying. I truly have to bow at her feet.

Working under my old hag mama is making me lazy and stupid. She's nothing compared to masako.

My predictions for the future:

Wireless internet will be like radio waves, and we'll all be able to hook into streaming audio/check our email/talk on skype using our cellphones/iPhones/iTouches/PSP/DS or whatever else is going to get invented from anywhere we are. Those cellphone companies etc. can make money by either making it so you rent out the actual machine, or by updating technology so fast that people want to replace their little portable devices every year or so. Revenue will be purely through advertising.

They already have this for books that have outlived their copyright, but you'll be able to buy books that you can read through your portable device. Like all books. I have all these books that I have to ship to my dad's place or get rid of somehow, and you know what? I wouldn't even have to deal with this if they were in tiny chip form.

Maybe you're reading this thinking "whatever, I like having a book in my hands and turning the pages" or blah blah blah. If you only saw how cramped shiznat is here in Tokyo, you'd understand. And it's not the same as New York, because I've been to New York, and yes it's cramped there and space is precious, but it's just not the same. People were having heart attacks over things that just looked normal to me.

Hopefully by the end of today I'll be able to post a photo of a suitcase and a few bags, and tell you that THAT is all I have in this world. I would have gotten rid of everything else, and I will feel a million times better about myself because of it.

Side note: when cleaning out my closet I found some killer Isaac Mizrahi heels (not sure if they're Target mizrahi's or not because my old roommate left them with me, who cares anyway, they look cool) that I have to start wearing again.

Now I feel like I'm drowning under a pile of STUFF. Stuff is EVERYWHERE!!!

I've moved almost every year since I was born. Sometimes more, sometimes less. We moved ten days after my mother gave birth to us. We were a gypsy family. My Dad would give us a little bit of warning, then we'd each get a few boxes each and told to pack. We moved around different neighborhoods, we moved from the West Coast to the East Coast via crappy car, we moved to Japan via airplane, we moved around different prefectures via trains etc., we moved to the UK, we moved back again, we moved SO FRICKING MUCH!

And the crazy thing is, it never got easier. Well maybe it did get easier to some extent, but it never stopped sucking.

And it's totally sucking right now.

I'm throwing it all away. Everything! Dresses, shoes, hats, clothes, 80% of my underwear drawer (I hate bras anyway),  makeup, nail shiznat, weirdo crap that I've been keeping for sentimental reasons, IT'S ALL GOING OUT IN THE TRASH! Unless anyone wants it.

In slightly related other news, I found some trousers I haven't been able to fit into but was keeping just to taunt myself. And guess what? I fit into them! Except one pair that just needs to die anyway. That's totally awesome. Except they're a bit out of style at the moment.

And if you were my real world friends, this wouldn't be any of your business, but I have scars all over my arms from being a stupid depressed teenager with major problems. Lord knows if I understood at the time that I'd have to LIVE with these SCARS for the rest of my fricking life, I would have thought twice. But I guess that's the point. At the time I didn't even have the ability to think about anything but enduring the god awful pain I was in, and if the 28-year-old me could go back in time and convince the 14-year-old me to just stop being stupid, I probably would have just ended my life right then and there. The 14-year-old me did not want to live that long.

Thank goodness I learned somehow that life is great and beautiful and lots of fun.

What was my point? Oh yeah. Well now that I don't work in an office, and I don't have to look professional, I don't have to stress about hiding my arms all the time. So all those stupid office-type long sleeve shirts? OUT THE DOOR! OUT IN THE TRASH! Hells yeah.

Jesus christ, I have so much stuff! I'm trying to pack for my move. Where did I GET all these dresses!!??? I brought a whole bunch of them back with me last time I visited my sisters and tried to give them to them. They laughed at half of them so we threw them away.

I brought a huge bag full of dresses and gave them to a new girl who was a student from Korea who couldn't afford dresses.

WHERE DO THEY COME FROM!? DO THEY BREED IN MY CLOSET!?

And I've been living in a room. A room! Where did I GET all this stuff!!???

So I paid the first month's rent and the deposit, got the keys, signed the forms, got the room! All I have to do is move in. I am now almost an official resident of nasty gross Roppongi.