Tarto in Japan

After a month and a half, I'm completely satisfied with my new job! The boss seems to particularly like me and I'm not gonna complain about it. At the beginning I thought it was because of some pride about having a French guy in the company, but actually there is a sensible reason behind. The boss wants to extend the company's activities abroad and since I'm the only human being in the company who can speak English, he's counting on me. And trust me, if there's an opportunity to seize, I'll be there! Surprisingly enough, I'm not the only person who speaks French, since the director of Tokyo's branch office lived for more than then years in France and is totally fluent! He just doesn't seem interested in a potential francophone market.

Besides, and this is purely coincidental, there is an anti-aging congress in Paris in april 2008 and I'm supposed to attend it. However I won't take it for granted until I see the actual flight ticket. Still, I have a good reason to believe it, and that reason is related to my apartment search. I'm moving in to a new apartment on saturday, after a procedure that took forever. Let me explain: I started to work right after coming back from Okinawa at the end of october, so it was too short to find an apartment and move in. So instead, I found that kind of hotel where rooms can be rented on a weekly or daily basis, with two major advantages: rather low rental fees and no procedure to move in. Show your passport, pay and you can move in the next minute. On the other hand it's kind of special, I won't explain why but it might as well be a money laundering place with some Chinese (yes, Chinese) mafia pulling the strings. So I quickly started to look for a "real" place to live and eventually found that nice apartment conveniently located right in the center.

Then it got tricky. Picture that: I have a job with a sufficient salary, I have relatives in Japan that were acting as guarantor for me, and in spite of that my application was rejected! Either because I've only been working for a couple weeks, which I might be able to understand, or because my name doesn't sound Japanese...one of the rare instances where being French in Japan has a negative impact. Anyway I tried again, this time through my company. I don't know the legal details of that system but practically, the rental will be deduced from my salary. I still needed a guarantor...and the director personnally applied!!! That's the reason I was mentioning above: if he goes that far for me, it obviously means he wants to keep me, and hopefully give me more responsibilities in the near future. Wait and see...Anyway, the whole procedure for the apartment took a month and I'm glad it's finally over.

And to conclude, I have to say that my love life also goes perfect! It might disappoint some, but I'll wait a little before uploading pictures.