峰沢寮の生活

Life is interesting in the Minesawa dormitory when it isn't an exercise in enduring the idiocy of your fellow university-student male.

Our rooms are 12 square metres, which is enough for one person to live in and clean without much trouble. Our rent is 8700 yen per month (A$100), which is about a fifth of what people who rent apartments near the university pay. The electricity and water ends up being 2000 yen per month, so all up it's around A$120 a month. Bear in mind that at the ANU, the room rental in the residential halls is at least $200 per week.

Back to Minesawa... First of all, we have a shared kitchen. We have a bathroom and sink with a cold water tap in our rooms, but the kitchen is shared.

The rules of the dormitory state that washing your hair or brushing your teeth in the kitchen is prohibited. You'd think that Japanese kids, obedient and bowing constantly, would give this rule notice, wouldn't you? This, frustratingly, is not the case.

Males in their late teens or early twenties will wake up, get a towel and shampoo, and proceed to the sink in the kitchen to wash their hair.

Why would they do such a thing? Simple, FREE HOT WATER.

In the Minesawa dormitory, like in most of Japan, free-of-charge running hot water is rare outside of kitchens or sushi restaurants (where it's available on tap for making tea). We do have shared shower facilities, but hot water is obtained by inserting a 100 yen coin for 10 minutes of comfortable bathing, after which the hot flow abruptly ceases. The cessation of warm water doesn't arrive without notice though: the hot water pipe clangs, and three seconds later, you're bathing in ice.

To save money, these cheap people wash their hair in the kitchen sink. Some even wet a towel with hot water and rub themselves clean with it while standing at the sink.

The ones who suffer are the normal people: on top of paying for our own proper showers, we have to pay for a fraction of the hot water used by the cheaparse pigs, not much, but we're still paying.

We also have to, while attempting to cook, have to scream at half-awake idiots who, barely able to stand, cling to the same sink you've stepped away from for a moment to grab a chopping board.

This is why I now cook in my room. I have a small oven, a gas stove, pots and pans, a fridge, and enough noodles, rice, vegemite, oil, salt/pepper etc to last at least three weeks. The only thing I do in the kitchen is wash my dishes when I feel the need to. And even for that I make sure nothing gets in contact with the surface of the kitchen - baskets from the 100 yen shop cover that.

I will soon post photos in conjunction with this text of the dorm and its quirks, so you, my dear readers, gain a better understanding of the life of a foreign student in the Land of the Rising Sun.