Dorm Life in Japan -part 1-
It's been over a month since I arrived in Japan and here's my version of things about living in a dorm in Japan... more specifically, things about living in a girl's dorm.
- There's thousands of rules. So I might be over-exaggerating on the 'thousand' part but there's literally a rule for every single thing imaginable. I have a curfew at 11:50PM and if I stayed out too late, the door wouldn't open until 4AM (Students who stayed out too late without forewarning will have to write an essay in Japanese to apologize and read it out loud in front of all the residents in the next dorm meeting- something which happens once per month.) We have rules on when we can use the bathtub, hair-dryer, vacuum cleaner, washing machines, and etc. It might sound like a lot (and it is) but once you get a hang of things, it's not that bad...
- We have duties to do. This is something I find that is really different from staying in a dorm in America. At the beginning of each month, the residents staying in the same apartment/unit (in this particular dorm, it's 4 Japanese students and 1 international student per apartment. We each have our own individual narrow but neat bedrooms but we share a kitchen, a dining area, and the bathrooms and toilets) decides who gets which week of cleaning duties which basically consists of taking out the trash every morning before 8AM, and the vacuuming and cleaning of the entire apartment unit on the weekend. The cleaning consists of cleaning the electric stove tops, the mirrors and the sinks, the walls and floors and drains of the shower room and bath, the toilets, and so on.
- Trash. Let's talk about trash since I'm already on the topic of cleaning. In Japan, they take out different kind of trash(es) on different days of the week. They separate their trash into 3 main kinds: Cans, P.E.T. bottles, and combustibles (which also consists of plastic bags and everything else that doesn't fit into the first two categories.)
- Washing machines.
This is how we do our laundry. It's 200 yen for 4.5kg, which is roughly 2USD; it's 300yen for 7kg. I sometimes share a machine with my friends to split the cost. - Dryers.
The dryers costs 100yen/15 minutes but after using it once for 30mins and still was forced to dig out completely undried clothes, I gave up on it and just did the way other students do
by hanging it in our own rooms like this. It is suggested that you either turn on the heater or leave your window open for the clothes to dry faster. It usually takes around a day or two if it's sunny.
These are just a few things I took notice of during my first month. In America, there's more freedom when one lives in a dorm. No one really cares when we return (if we return), what we do, and how we do things in our room as long as we aren't disruptive but here in this Japanese girl's dorm I'm placed in, it gets a little suffocating at times. There's a lot of do's and don't's and they literally gave us two sheets of paper with all the rules written on them the very first day we move in... and they even gave us a dorm rule mini test at 11PM at night!!!
But as I've mentioned, these are my version of things in this particular dorm I'm at. I've heard of different experiences from other international students living in other dorms (and home-stays) and each has their own pros and cons.
That's it for now~
