I mean
seriously messy. The little hallway that separates the main room from the front door is not too bad, but as far as the main room goes, it is pretty close to the worst I've ever soon. There is barely any floor visible to be honest. I have wrappers, clothing, unopened mail, contracts, CDs, pottery, a guitar, empty boxes, silverware, and textbooks all over the place. I've been feeling a bit down lately and I think my more-than-filthy living conditions have a lot to do with it.
I admit responsibility for letting it get this bad, but it's really hard for me to get motivated to clean this place when even after hours of vigorous cleaning, it still doesn't look good. Anna doesn't like having to stay here because the carpet and walls are so filthy. I don't blame her...my room is about 50 years old, and maybe there have been a few hundred tenants so far, most of which must have spent most of their time inside smoking cigarettes, judging from the yellowish color of the once-white walls. The carpet has all sorts of hidden surprises, including caked-in dirt (not everybody who lived here seems to have followed the Japanese custom of taking off one's shoes before entering the room), iron burn marks, and myriad other stains of various colors and sizes. My friend Shannen, who lives two doors away, gave me two plants, a Eucalyptus plant and another one whose name I don't know. They definitely help to improve the atmosphere inside, but there is still a lot lacking. Tonight I promised myself that I would go to the gym because I haven't lifted weights for a long time, but I am too tired, so my new goal is to finish cleaning my room. I have lots of new good music that my best friend here, Taka, recommended to me, so I will try to boogie my way through the job while listening to Faye Wong (a very famous Taiwanese singer, 王菲), Daft Punk (a French techno group), and Quruli (くるり, my new favorite Japanese group).
Between my daily expenses and my travels to see Anna, I haven't been able to turn a profit at all this year. In fact, I am in the red, as they say. I am trying to trim the fat off of my budget, so instead of buying fresh vegetables and fruit - which are ungodly expensive at the closest supermarket - I decided to go for the canned stuff instead. I had a nice surprise shopping today, when I realized that they sell one of my guilty pleasures for relatively cheap - creamed corn. Thankfully, it was absent altogether of fish extract, which may sound like a matter of course to you, but fish extract finds itself in almost everything here.
My friend from our year in Kōnan, Ronnie, is in Kyōto for the day visiting Anna. Evidently he is teaching at the second-worst middle school in Ōsaka, and the kids are horrendous. They throw chairs and desks out the second- and third- story windows routinely but are very clever about covering their tracks. You'd think that they would just install security cameras to catch the kids, but I guess that would be too expensive. He didn't renew his JET contract, no wonder.
I don't have too much else to say right now. Maybe I'll post again to report on the success of my room, including before/after pics.
