Room 207

 

Around this time three years ago, I first moved out of my parents' house and into a sharehouse in Japan to begin my Japanese language studies. It's crazy when I think about how so much time has passed since then, and how it's already been a year since I came home.

It was in a quiet community somewhere in west Tokyo. I was a ways away from the main part of town around the station, but I was never too far from anything. On the days I went grocery shopping, I couldn't ride a bike like most people could, and so I was heavy lifting bags of groceries from the supermarket all the way back to the house. I can still remember how my muscles ached from the weight of what I bought, and how sore my hands would get from grasping the handles of the plastic bags, which felt like they were about to snap at any moment.

On a positive note, I had a lot of freedoms in my new home. For once I could freely decide what to eat, when to eat, when to sleep, and not worry about someone screeching in my ear about how I'm not awake yet or going downstairs yet to join everyone for dinner. Of course, I had the responsibility of going to school and studying, but that was only fair. And boy, study I did.

Best of all, I had the luxury of high-speed Internet, something I did not have living back in Manila. What took me a day to download instead took a mere hour. It was unbelievable. Many were the days I took full advantage of this fast Internet and downloaded games with massive amounts of gigabytes and I'd play Assassin's Creed games or GTA 5 for hours. I enjoyed it immensely until my last day there.

To pay homage to those times, I made this pixel art of my room in the sharehouse. I can still vividly remember how I arranged my room to accommodate most of my stuff because of how tiny it was. Like for example, I'd put a sack of rice on top of my luggage 'cause I couldn't afford to put it in my storage drawers on the first floor, since they were full of kitchen and cleaning supplies. Or I would keep a fairly large box I got from ordering on Amazon, and I'd put some stuff inside it to make up for my lack of space.

But don't get me wrong though; I loved the small space despite its disadvantages, and it felt cozy whenever I came home from a long day and I would just plop down on my bed for a nap, finding comfort in how clean and small and quiet my room was... Assuming it was actually clean, to begin with. Of course in this pixel art, the room looks a whole lot neater than it actually was. 😅

Here's a photo of what that white dresser in the back actually looks like, because I know people are gonna be confused as to what it is.