Chapter 1 : Comfy Hunt

The date is now May 26th, and in the morning I arise for my first task in the holy land of glorious nippon : finding an appartment to live in for the next 3 months. In this task, I receive the help of my internship supervisor, who will be called Mr.K from now on to respect his privacy. To get to him, and therefore getting to the place of my internship, I must first go to Ikeda, a city located in the north of the Osaka prefecture. Ikeda is famous for its... umm... well, at least something, right ? I don't know anything about Ikeda.

To go to Ikeda, I must first cross the path of "core" Osaka, which is the Umeda station. When I got there, I pretty much realized that the place I was staying in was kinda underwhelming compared to what Osaka should look like. Near Umeda station, I could not resist grabbing some pics because of all those massive buildings you can't see back in Baguetteland. For now I am just passing by, but there will come a time where I explore this vertically gigantic area.




Umeda station is a big hub for several Japan railroads like the Hankyu Line and Hanshin Line. To get to Ikeda, the former is the one I have to use, specifically the Takarazuka Line which goes through a lot of places I don't know about yet. Speaking of which, there's a cool thing about trains here, which is the different types of "speed". For starters, there is the basic circuit which is the Local route. And it goes through all stations in the current Line, and the Express route only goes through the most popular/important stations. There are also other types like Semi-Express. While it's a bit frustrating to miss on stations you want or get ignored by trains on your not popular station, it's an interesting system.

Arriving at Ikeda. Honestly, it looks like a good place. It's hard for me to tell what kind of population or quality of life there is because everything in Japan is still brand new to me, but I appreciate the scenery and a decent amount of shops. Of course, as it seems to be a big thing in that region, Pachinko & Slot buildings are all over the place. After ignoring a bunch of hilarious shop names in French, I am now on my own to find the place of internship, which is supposed to be on a 10 minute walk from the station. Honestly, you can't imagine the joy I felt when I found a map actually showing where it was in Ikeda. After taking a picture of the map and accidentally deleting it halfway through, I found the place and only got lost for 10 minutes.

Skipping the details about who they are, I met some nice people there, including Mr.K. But since my internship hasn't already started yet, let's just get down to the introduction part : specifically, finding an apartment. Even more specifically, finding Comfy HQ for the stay and yes, being comfy is a discriminating factor. Honestly, out of the 3 different places I visited, they were all very
comfy so I chose based on the price and location. In the end there was a very hard choice to make : one place was close to the company, and another was a bit far, but there was a train station nearby to go to Ikeda. Naturally, the second place was cheaper or there wouldn't be a discussion, but there was another problem : the former was far away from shops are stuff like that, so I'd have to go a long way to get my grub, and even visit Osaka on weekends. No can do ! So eventually after an excruciatingly intense reflexion I chose the latter. Of course I regret not taking the former a bit, but I think I would have regretted my choice anyway.

Comfy target acquired. Even though I haven't moved in yet, the choice has been made and a few preparations are left to make. To end my journey, I decide to go back and explore a bit around Umeda on my way. Specifically, I wanted to visit the famous Yodobashi Camera, aka the best place to find electrical/electronic products in Japan. The building is huuuge and contains everything you could think of, from smartphones to home appliance. The second floor, or at least about one third of it was dedicated to video games. I won't go into detail here, but the most hyped game was Ace Attorney 6, and this really surprised me. There was also a fair bit of advertisement with Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 3 and Overwatch. Anyway, the reason of my visit was to check out the rental sim cards to get by in Japan, but strangely enough, in the massive mess that is the first floor (entirely dedicated to smartphones and phone companies) I did not found what I was looking for. On a small note, I was ready to grab some food at the 8th floor (named Yodobashi the Diner) but not only most of those were a bit expensive, but also extremely crowded. In front of some restaurants there was a line of 10+ people ! Honestly I didn't sign up for this.

After getting lost (again) I found my way back home and got some cheap Takoyaki and Oreos at Don Quijote. Life is great.