Taking Things

(Big Danger in Little Osaka #4, 2008)

When moving overseas, you start to ask yourself the big questions. Questions that make you break out in a cold sweat as you lay awake at night, unable to sleep. Can I survive without The Office Complete box-set for an entire year? Will I miss my book of Monty Python transcripts? I finally have to decide which of my belongings are essential and which are not. And let’s face it, most of what I own is crap. When I went flatting I took the bare minimum of what I needed to get by, but over the years I somehow accumulated a lot of unnecessary things. Now that I’ve returned home temporarily, I am confronted with even more boxes full of useless stuff that I left behind. Why did I think it was a good idea to buy a robotic gorilla that danced the Macarena last time I was in Japan? Why?

Luckily, these days you can store a surprising amount of your life on your laptop. For example, I no longer have to face the agonising choice of which CDs to take ("will I listen to The Essential Spandau Ballet in Japan...?") because they’re all right there on my hard drive. So, that greatly cuts down on the number of things I need to take. Good thing, too, as my bass is going to take up half of my 20kg baggage limit. Now, this is not a complaint: it’s my choice to take an instrument to Japan and I shouldn’t be entitled to any more weight than my fellow passengers. However, what does irk me is that if my bass was instead a bicycle or another piece of sporting equipment, I would get an extra 10kg baggage allowance free of charge. Why are sportspeople favoured in this way? Why is it that a golfer can check in their bag of golf clubs for free, while your average fantasy speed-metaller pays $35 for each kilogram he goes over the weight limit? (Also, if I reserved my bass for purely competitive use, such as band competitions or porno groove-offs, could it then be counted as sporting equipment?) Strike one, Air New Zealand. Show a Wayans Brothers movie during the flight and things are going to get ugly.

Of course, my space limitations will continue once I arrive in Osaka. Yesterday I was given four apartments to choose from and they were all pretty damn cosy, the biggest having a floor area of 27m². They were all roughly the same design: a long, narrow apartment consisting of an entranceway/kitchen, a bathroom and a living room/dining room/bedroom. In the end I just went with the apartment that appeared to have the best view, i.e. one that wasn’t dominated by the neighbouring building. Of course, one person doesn’t need a lot of space anyway. In fact, I think having a small apartment will be a good exercise in minimalism: living in a single room with the bare essentials may help me attain a liberated, zen-like state of existence. Let’s just hope I can resist buying that orangutan that dances the electric boogaloo.