Perfect Straight and Guest Houses

For anyone who has not yet been informed. I will be getting my hair straightened this week. It should last about a year and I'm really excited! I figured a new phase in my life needed a new hair style! I love being a girl...

Anyway, I did a lot of research on finding the best price at a place that was still reputable and I found a nice place down next to the station called Fleu[r] that had 30% off coupons so it would be about $170 and that was the best price so I made an appointment (which was kinda hard because they didn't speak English but we got it worked out).

Today I was walking to school to meet Kimi to go see a place (which I will discuss later) and on the way there is a hair salon that I inquired in called hippopotamus. (Really cute!) Well the gentlemen that runs the place speaks English and I ran into him and he told me that he would do my hair for free! I was so shocked! Before he had told me 20000 yen ($190 roughly) and now he was telling me I could do it for free, completely free! I was so shocked and all I could say was "for free?!" Apparently they've never done a "Perfect Straight Perm", they call it, and they said that if I would be be their guinea pig, basically, that it would be free. And me being the poor starving college student that I am was like, "Heck yes!" So Monday night at 6:00pm Tokyo time I will be begin the journey to a new me! Well at least a new hair style. I'll post pictures of before and after for you guys and you can tell me what you think. I'm so excited! God is so good!

And this brings me to the rest of my day. While this was going on I was actually late for my meeting with Kimi at the school so that we could take the train and go see a Guest House in Iidabashi which is not to far from the school. So we get there late and then we can't fnd the guy and then we get to the Guest House, which is in a nice part of town. We walk inside and up the 5 flights of stairs with the paint peeling off the walls and the sticky hand rails because there isn't an elevator and we get to the top and the smells smacked me right in the face. There was a medium sized table taking up the entire space and it was covered with junk from DVD and game boxes to trash to who knows what else. Then the manager opens up one of the dorms and we walk in and it is tiny. A 4 tatami mat room for two people. (Rooms here are measured by tatami mats which are the bamboo mats you see on tv in traditional Japanese houses. An average Japanese room is 6 tatami mats and that's small...) Then he tells us that we have to share one shower with the entire floor and that it's 100 yen for 10 minutes of hot water. Then he shows us the kitchen which is not that bad but is still a shared kitchen with the entire floor. And to top it all off, the only washing machine for the building is 200 yen a load and, is on the roof.

Needless to say Kimi and I will not be moving in there. But it was a good place to see to get an idea of what we would be living in if we were going to be extremely stingy with our money. I think we'll be a little more liberal from now on.

But God is good and when I was at the Johnsons house giving Hailey her guitar lesson Leese, Haileys mom, gave me a copy of one of the English magazines called Metropolis which has a nice section of available apartments. Now apartments and Guest Houses are two totally different things. Apartments are like apartments back home. Bedroom(s), living room, kitchen and sometimes a dining room and they're not over our budget so we will be going to see some of those which I hope will be much nicer then the place we went to today.

And so the quest continues...