Fort Awesome - Japanese Outpost
[Last updated 8.17.2003]

I live in the projects! No foolin'. The Higashi-Sapporo danchi comprises four large government-built apartment buildings in one of the less savory parts of town. Forutnately, this is Japan, so "less savory" means little more than an occasional mugging/purse-snatching. I feel extremely safe here - my only fear is of a major earthquake, in the event of which most tallish buildings would presumably become deathtraps (and i'm on the 9th floor). But, as with life anywhere, one takes one's chances.

My apartment is remarkably large, at least to my mind. I'm godawful at estimates, but I'd say it's 20' x 25' overall. Divide it into roughly equal shoji-delimited quadrants and you've got four basic areas: kitchen/study, living room, bedroom, bathroom/shower/laundry room. I also have a balcony, from which I can see the tips of the mountain range surrounding Sapporo peeking above the swanky apartment complex across the way. Whoa. That was a poorly-written sentence. Just look at the pictures and you'll get the idea. The balcony also affords a wonderful view of the godforsaken incontinent pigeons who joy in soiling it. It's not pretty.

Home - building one of the danchi. Big. Yellow. Ugly. But still kickass.

My wacky elevator! Yes, it only goes to the floors listed. Actually, the floors it goes to are more like elevator access hallways. So what the elevator claims to be "10" is really just a hallway on what could be called floor 9.5, on which no one actually resides. I have to walk down a half-flight of stairs to get to my place. Those on on 10 have to walk up a half-flight. I'm not sure how this system came to be. I'm guessing that, because everyone has a complete flight of stairs quite literally at their doorstep (so there are actually 7-8 flights of stairs in every building - this is presumably for ease of evacuation in the event of an earthquake?), the architects figured they might as well take advantage of them and save some money. Just a theory. We actually have it pretty good. The elevator in at least one other building only goes to floors 1, 4 and 8.

The kitchen. I love the floor (go Celtics!). Note that I lack an oven, so my pie-baking skills are already deteriorating. Also note the numerous bags by the trash can. Garbage/recycling is considerably more complex in Japan than it is in the states. Maybe I'll just establish a landfill of sorts on my balcony - hell, it's already a cesspool.

The study (other half of the kitchen). I have the luxury of two refrigerators, one of which I don't use at all. Guess I should up my alcohol intake to the point where I need both to keep all the beer chilled. Yes, that is a can of Pocari Sweat on my bonus fridge. It's pretty good - tastes like Gatorade, only sweatier.

The living room. Starring the super-huge TV! Forutnately, Japanese TV has been a huge letdown. I have yet to see anything significantly more entertaining than Iron Chef. What the hell happened to the fabled game shows on which contestants attempted to do shit like swallow a sea urchin whole then pass it anally? I'll issue a full report on TV later.

The Bathroom/shower/laundry room. The washing machine/"dryer" combo is rad. The dryer is actually just a spinner (lacks a heating element). It doesn't have a tachometer, but it seems to get up to some pretty serious RPMs. I could probably use it to extract bulk quantities of DNA, but then I'd get gross stringy DNA on my clothes, and I think we all know what a cleanup nightmare that is.

The bedroom. It is a hole.

One view from the balcony. The yellowish building on the left is building number three of the danchi.

Another view. I think the highest mountain is Mount Moiwa, where I will surely break my legs learning to snowboard this winter.

My view of Higashi-Sapporo (higashi is Japanese for east) and, in the background, downtown Sapporo. I'll post my brilliant pictorial essay of downtown Sapporo (which is absolutely awesome - downtown, that is) later.

Ooooh. Pwetty.