House Hunting

The main purpose of our trip was to try to find a place to live so it would be all ready when we move over with the girls on June 8th.  We started the day with Mutsuko-san who works in HR at Joe's office.  She took us in a taxi to check out two international preschool/kindergartens, Willowbrook and The American School in Japan Early Learning Center (ASIJ ELC).  Both looked great and the girls would have a great time at either.  There were many other options, but we decided to just look at those two for the time being.

After our school visits we met up with a realtor from the KEN Corporation to begin our apartment search.  She was the first of three agent we would meet on the trip.  She was great and we loved her.  She was so professional, so nice, and seemed to try so hard, as did the vast majority of the people we came across.  We saw SO many places over the next 3 days (more than 20) that it became hard to keep them all straight, minus our favorites.  The pictures below hopefully give you the general idea of what we looked at. We seemed to find that location was #1, and the further we move from our "desirable location" the more space you got. Keep in mind that all the photos below are from various apartments and I couldn't remember what they were all called. Apparently the name of the buildings are very important here as many streets HAVE NO NAMES (including main thoroughfares), which we found a little odd. :)

Small galley kitchen in Roppongi apartment

Living area with den off to the side. Pocket door in wall. Roppongi apartment.

Balcony, Roppongi

Outside of Moto Azubu apartment. Cute little cobblestone tree lined street.

Living area, Moto Azabu

Big bright kitchen with eat in breakfast bar, Moto Azabu.

Balcony overlooking pond

Model in lobby to demonstrate how this high rise building is earth quake safe. You push a button that simulates a quake and then watch the water on top of the models as they sway side to side.

Huge outdoor balcony!

Brand new, never lived in beautiful apartment. On the 3rd floor of a 3 floor building. Master suite upstairs.

Renovated kitchen!! Best one we saw. Wish I could stick this in the apartment we ended up choosing.  So beautiful, eat in table and a beverage refrigerator. 

Skylight in bedroom, Custom Moto Azabu.

PRIVATE ELEAVTOR that opens into the apartment!! Amazing. Custom Moto Azabu.

Beautiful apartment by the Ritz Carlton in Midtown.

We were a bit worried coming into the trip about where we might end up living.  After the first three places we saw, that was no longer a concern.  We were confident we would fine something great.  The smallest place we saw was over 1,500 sqft and the biggest ones were well over 3,000 sqft with up to 5 big bedrooms.  Some of the places we saw we had no idea what we would do with all the space.

We were reminded a couple of times on the hunt that these were not typical apartments for the Japanese.  Everything we looked at catered in some way to an expat, usually someone who was having their housing paid for by their company.  Some of the places we saw were charging over $15,000/month so other than expats, it was typically only very wealthy Japanese living in these units.  That sort of explained the unusual mix of cars in some of the garages.  Our company gives us a Prius (Annie, we are trying to get bright pink but don't think they have that here), but many other cars in the garages are Lamborghini's, Ferrari's or other exotics that would be pure torture to drive on the tiny streets of Tokyo. 

After a long first day of looking at schools and apartments, and a nice lunch at Roppongi Hills, we met a family from Joe's work for dinner at the Tokyo American Club.  We are excited about getting to be members at this amazing club and plan on it being a big part of our time in Tokyo.

First lunch in Japan

The second day was more the of same, with a lunch stop at Bottega in the Midtown Tokyo area.  It was a restaurant in the Ritz Carlton complex and along with the apartment rents and cab fares, it was the one of real sticker shocks of the trip.  Joe's fairly ordinary lunch was well over $100 but the location and views were first rate.

Fancy lunch in Midtown

We finished up the day with a an evening in the lounge at the Westin and went to bed early in anticipation of another 3am wake up the next morning.