A few of you may remember my previous blog about how things had been turning around for me after quite a few bad years.

I'm happy to say that I think things have finally turned around 100%

I am currently holding a lowball to get rid of a bunch of unnecessary items and also to raise a little bit of money to help cover the costs of professional movers. Your heavy bidding is appreciated.

Until just today, it was up ni the air as to exactly where and when we would move, but we did know that we were going to be getting out of our current place no matter what.

A couple weeks back, I finally received the big promotion that I had been working toward. Amazingly enough, it was my 6th contract change and it was all worked out about 2 weeks before my one year anniversary with the company! (March 25th was my 1year anniversary.)

I'm pretty happy with the progress I have been able to make with this company, and my new position allows me to really dig in and start to change the way things are done. Not to mention, the pay is quite a nice increase, and this is why we knew we would finally move out.

To begin with, I would like to tell a tale of woe concerning our current apartment situation. It was outlined just a little bit under the spoiler in the lowball thread, but mainly just the issues with size were addressed. Here, I'll start from the beginning and then move onto our new apartment.

When we first moved in here, it was great for just the two of us. Plenty of space at the time considering that we didn't have much, but also some room to grow into. However, once we found out Ryu was coming, that really made us worry about fitting a third person here. We knew that we would have to start saving money to move, but it was much easier said than done with a new baby on the way and all of the things that needed to be purchased beforehand and all the ongoing supplies needed after the birth. Not to mention the hospital bills and such!

So, we ended up staying here through that entire period of time and that's also about the time this apartment turned to total $#!+.

We made it through the first winter here just fine although I had noticed that the walls tended to form condensation. I assumed this was due to Japanese housing having little to no insulation. It also didn't help that we are on the first floor, so the floors themselves would be freezing cold. There seemed to always be water dripping around the baseboards.

In the spring, I noticed that the back corner of the closet had turned a bit dark and, upon inspection, found out it was a patch of mold.

I was completely disgusted and cleaned the hell out of it!

Our second winter here was even worse as it was much colder. That just resulted in more condensation. We tried our best to keep it dry. Opening the house up when we left, I even bought a really big and nice dehumidifier, but although it would be dry through the day, overnight condensation would form again and everything would be soaked in the mornings.

Picking up as much as we could with towels and such everyday was OK, but by the spring, it was clear that mold was actually coming from inside the edges of the baseboards where we couldn't dry.

About this time I am so pissed and saying we have to get out of here, but something always came up (come on, most of you remember the many emergency lowballs) and we found ourselves with little to no money once again.

That summer there was an even worse issue if you can believe it!

One day I walked out to work and noticed that the inside of the building smelled quite bad. I didn't think too much about the cause, but just headed out to work.
Upon my return home, I was greeted with crap-water outside my door. It seemed to have flooded up out of a sewer cover on the first floor of the building. Unfortunately, there are multiple covers, one being DIRECTLY outside our door, another just a few feet away where we park our bikes and a couple others a bit further away.

Of course the ones belching out the most fluid were the two nearest our place.

I had my wife call the building manager and complain about it as it was SO disgusting. They said they would get someone out soon.

Luckily for us, they followed through, and just a few hours later someone was out to work on it.

The bad news is the smell didn't actually go away for a few days.

Over these last two years we have been here, the mold issue has gotten worse and worse. Every spring I pull everything away from the walls and completely wash everything down. I'm so tired of dealing with it.

Additionally, the sewer issue was never really fixed and it has happened three more times since the original issue. They are lucky that they can't understand a word of English and that my wife is so nice or I would rip into them so bad when we call about that. Unfortunately, my Japanese sewer vocabulary is just not up to par.

But FINALLY, today we signed all the paperwork and paid the money we needed so we are now guaranteed to move into the place we would like on the 29th of June!

The differences are as follows;

OLD - 36 square meters
NEW - 90 square meters (exactly 2.5x larger than our current place!)

OLD - Kitchen, Living room, Extra Room, "Balcony"
NEW - Kitchen/Dining, Living room, 3 Extra room, Storage room, Front balcony, Back balcony

OLD - 21 minute walk to the station
NEW - 8 minute walk to the station

OLD - 1st floor with no airflow
NEW - 14th and 15th floors (top of building) with superb airflow

OLD - Balcony view - dirty creek & back of the garbage area
NEW - Front balcony view - Osaka City, park and school areas
- Back balcony view - Osaka Port/Sea, lots of trees and greenery

Here are a few internet pics I found of the area:






Once we get in, I will get some pics of our view as well!

SO HAPPY!