Niches and football

Today was a day to never forget.

I started off by heading off to meet up with the real estate agent. I was dead certain, even after she was 40 mins late, that I was really at the south exit of the Shin-Kobe subway. Eventually the person who'd come to meet me came and explained she'd rung back to the office to say that I'd not turned up but found out then that she'd actually been at the wrong train station.
So... I was feeling wrong after a few drinks the night before on an empty stomach (yes, only a few) but that pang in my head faded anyway. Empty stomach and beer is so easy to avoid too...

I checked out this apartment and I think it's fantastic. It has everything I need including a fridge, air con, stove and balcony as well as getting a washing machine and the internet rigged up as a bonus (and a sink/hole in the kitchen floor). So I'm thinking that saving 13k-ish yen a month (probably around $AU145) as well as living by myself, having only a 15 min walk to work (or 5 min by the subway, but I'm not that lazy yet) and no '11:50pm curfew due to trains'. I really can't see a down side to any of it. The bathroom is what you'd expect to find in an aeroplane, but it's not bad.
So my meeting later on with Yoshiko had every request granted without costing me anything and they'll actually have it available after the 21st of this month, which means I've now got a date to negotiate with Nova about waiving the 30 days notice for moving from here in Takarazuka. (My boss told me that they're really short on Nova accomodation and he was going to get some guy to call me and tell me how early I can move out.) Once I confirm my moving out date, I can settle my moving in date.

I've a small issue with cash at the moment, since Nova head office lost my bank details and so can't give me the salary advance I requested for yet. And also for advance rent for my new place, once I move in, as well as some extra payments up front that isn't key money...
I'd prefer to leave what's left of my savings in Aus, but I've no option other than to take up Duncan's offer to loan (which I don't think I'll do). He actually mentioned this well before I'd made any mention of moving from Takarazuka and was just a genuine offer if I ever needed it for anything.

So from the real estate agent's office I headed back to Sannomiya and simply went for a few hour walk where I found the 'old' memorial park for the Great Earthquake of 1995. 'Old' because parts of it were relocated to a museum a while back. The park has a very eerie feel to it; lots of water used throughout it as well as lines of trees etc. A really beautiful park though.

I had gone out for drinks last night before with a few people that then set up the plans for today. Monica had messaged me, wanting to go out for drinks because she didn't want to come back to Takarazuka and be bored. So she came into Sannomiya, since she works a few stops away, and we went out with Duncan. Mike from work there also, as well as 4 Aussie guys (2, at least, from Melbourne) and a few others who turned up as the night went on.
So anyways... Duncan invited me to the football, Gamba Osaka vs Cerezo Osaka, which was on today but only if we could get a hold on some tickets (else the plan was to distract the guard and have me dive through this known gap in the fence). Sounded great fun (as long as I didn't have to dive through the fence), and have come away from it very content. Good stuff, but back to earlier today.

So today, after doing my apartment inspection and my self tour of parts of Kobe, I met up with Duncan around 3pm then found the others and went for lunch.
Getting to Osaka from Kobe had us change about 3-4 trains then 3 monorails before we finally got to the stadium. I'm in debt to Wes for using the fact that he's Japanese to negotiate a ticket out of the scalpers for me. It was funny to see 5 of these scalpers just standing there at the monorail exit waiting for people, but I'm very thankful they were there. And I ended up getting the ticket cheaper than I'd expected to too.

It was an awesome game. We were for Gamba Osaka (whose home stadium it was) and so I simply adopted it as my team. In the end, it didn't feel false to have just taken it up as 'my' team by mere circumstance as everything, and everyone, just kind of went with the flow. I also wasn't the only one coming to a football game for the first time. I actually bought a Gamba scarf/towel/thing too.
Wes and Hiro, the Japanese guys, as well as being just great guys in general, stood out as being really close mates most notably with Duncan but it's just great group all round, oddly mostly Aussie (else Scotish, English, Kiwi or Japanese; there were 9 of us today).

If you look really hard, you still wont see us in the middle. 1-1 at halftime with Gamba being unlucky to not have saved the leveling header. The 2nd half ended 3-1 Gamba, where Gamba truly just had the constant offense. I really couldn't described this evening/night without it sounding wrong. So just simply, it was an awesome night for which I owe more to the guys than the game/adventure itself.

I hope this is the niche I've found myself in this infinite country.