Already I am enjoying some of the new qualities of this apartment over those of the old. One is living in an auto-lock building. It just feels more comfortable knowing that people won’t knock at your door. Sure, they’ll buzz you from the lobby, but that’s not the same thing. First off, I can see them from the color video intercom without having to lean over the genkan and peer through a peephole, and second, even if I buzz them in, I still have a few minutes while they come in and take the elevator up.

That said, the elevators are not too bad. I have certainly tested them over the past several days, making endless trips carrying boxes and other stuff. You have to wait sometimes, but not that much. There are three elevators I can use, and it’s not common for all three to be busy. In fact, there is usually one near to where I am. And when you do get on, you don’t have to stop at many floors; so far, only one out of every twenty or so trips was punctuated by a stop at an intermediate floor for someone else. That is partly because two of the elevators are express elevators which skip the 3rd to 17th floors, and we live on the 21st floor.

The noise is also a lot better. I found out that there indeed is an election going on (the poster boards weren’t put up until recently, and are still not up in Inagi), and while I saw several loudspeaker trucks in Inagi while moving, I haven’t heard a single one here. Traffic noise is also very muted, and easy to even forget that it’s there.

I have yet to find a significant gripe that doesn’t involve normal moving or other startup woes. So far…

Update: Okay, a few small gripes, having just taken a shower: the water pressure, while acceptable, is not strong. And the mirror in the shower is chest-level, meaning that I’m going to have to squat on one of those little plastic seats in order to shave.

Still, the benefits still make themselves apparent at the same time. When dressing in the bedroom, I heard what at first sounded like the faint jangling of bells. But then I identified the sound as that of a jackhammer, extremely muted. The sound increased greatly when I opened the balcony door; the noise was not coming from the street, but from the top of the ten-story NTT building right below my balcony. Which goes to show how well the double-paned glass works.