no more suitcase living!!!

Jenny and I have scored a flat! It's just minutes from the lovely suburb of Richmond. It's a pretty ideal neighbourhood where you can forget that you live in one of the worlds biggest cities. Although it's not exactly downtown, there are several options to get us into central London pretty quickly, should we end up working there.
We sign the papers and move in on Saturday morning, and it's furnished, so no sleeping on a cardboard mattress until the money starts rolling in.
It's in a small 3 story apartment building. Apparently one of our neighbours owns a nearbye Chinese restaurant, so I plan on befriending him posthaste.
I'll post some pics after we move in.
The bonus is that it has two bedrooms, so friends and relatives are always welcome to visit.

Bring money.

Tokyo Minibar

I had read about these tiny little streets in Tokyo lined with tiny little bars. In the New York Times article I had seen it said that many of them were for regulars only to such a degree that the regulars all keep their own glass at the bar. The most famous of this backstreet bar areas is called Piss Alley.
We didn't find piss alley, but on our first night we found this other one nearish to our hotel. Jenny read that they had been constructed during the war for this or that reason, and were supposed to be taken down after, but never were.
I really wanted to go into one, so we picked the least intimidating looking door, which had a Jack Daniels logo over it. Inside was basically a small bar with 8 to 10 stools up against it, and that's all.
It was done up like a biker bar and the bartender was this waify guy with super long black hair and lots of denim. Of course everyone (the two people in there) looked at us when we came in, but the bartender was perfectly accommodating. He served just whisky and beer and for each different drink he got out a block of ice and an ice pick and carved it up to fit specially into the glass.
The odd thing was that despite the tough look to the bar, he was playing the cheesiest japanese pop music. Isn't the weird!!???
By the time we left, the joint had reached max capacity, and they all enjoyed watching us try to signal for the cheque. Apparently you're supposed to make an 'x' with your two index fingers, but being as this was our first night we didn't know that yet. There was much waving of the hands and furrowing of brows.

It seemed like every night of the week the japanese office workers would all be out in their suits after work getting drunk together. They'd float about Shibuya and Shinjuku in large groups looking jolly and very red in the face. Jenny and I spotted this one guy passed out on his feet tucked behind a sign.

Tokyo Nights

Tokyo Nights

Fly JAL!!!

So we went to Japan. Maybe you knew already? After my awful US Airways experience I decided to see if requeting additional legroom would yield any results. The guy at the counter said it might be tough to seat us together, but he said if we wanted extra legroom we had to sit at the bulkhead, which is where they usually stick the moms with screaming babies. Not great. So we managed to get seats together.
Then as we're lounging, having a little pre-12hourflight snack, Jenny gets paged. She goes to find the Japan Airlines counter then comes back telling me that they have to switch our seats. We both figure this means we're getting split up, because the guy had said it would be tricky to sit us together.
So Jenny and I go back to the counter all prepared to start getting angry, and instead they tell us that we've been bumped up to premium economy.
Bigger, reclining seats, free booze&champagne, as you can see, more meal choice, etc. I could have spent the whole five days on the plane.
On the way back we had regular economy. Again I asked about legroom and they sat us at the bulkhead- no screaming babies!
The moral of the story is: ALWAYS ask for more legroom. I'm not so tall, so I said that I have a bad knee which acts up when cramped.

For our first few days in London, Jenny and I stayed on her father's houseboat in Richmond. Not a bad situation, marina livin'.

We slept in this tiny room in the bow of the boat. You had to pass through her dad's bedroom and through a wee hobbit's door to get into it, which made it somewhat akward, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Now we're housesitting her dad's best friend's apartment in Richmond for two weeks. It's a welcome relief from all the couch surfing. Too bad it's only for two weeks. Boo.

The job hunt is going fast and furious. I've applied for a wide variety of things, from full time advertising writer to part time UNIQLO slave. It's a little bit of a frustrating time, but we were expecting that.

Check out that MoFo!

All it took were the words 'Monkey Forest' for me to get excited about going to Staffordshire to lay low for a few days.
We went to the legendary Monkey Forest on a rainy Saturday afternoon. At first the sanctuary looked like it might be no more than a bunch of monkeys sitting around eating, but then the baby monkeys sprung into action and put on a good show of monkey hijinks, scooting around and playing tug of war, etc.
There was no flinging of crap.

sleepless in gatwick

We arrived safely in the UK, though the flight was terrible. There was zero legroom, so when the lady in front of me reclined her chair, I had to spend the next five hours straddling her seatback.

When we arrived we rented a tiny Peugeot which we were sceptical would hold all our gear, but it did. Then we drove three hours, on no sleep to Jenny's parents' place in the country.

Jenny said I was looking a little yellow during the drive up. We both felt pretty awful, but a few relaxed days in the country did us nicely. A few pints here, a walk in the countryside there.
Nice