So far this morning everything is going well with the packing company – well apart from me not knowing the word for “valuables”. I am finding it a bit strange having three woman in the house packing lots of things for me.

We had problems with the water when we moved into this apartment – as we didn’t know if was something you had to pay for. But someone arrived at the door one day and asked me when I had moved in and all the payments were sorted out. I’ll try ringing the utility companies in the morning – or I will cheat and have my Japanese teacher do it for me

Re: the moving company, my current apartment that I stay when I’m in Japan had the same restriction of only allowing one moving company, but I negotiated and was able to use another one. I selected the moving company by letting them estimate and did negotiation to get the cheapest price, before knowing the restriction and I’m not sure if it was any cheaper.

About utilities, you need to make calls to gas (Tokyo Gas) and electric (Tokyo Denryoku) to tell them you move. If you pay by credit cards or bank transfer, you don’t need to anything besides telling them your new address. You also need to make a call to water management office (Suido-kyoku) and they’re less flexible because they’re government based. If you move inside Tokyo that’s less annoying than moving to another, in which case you need to set up your account and bank transfer etc. again.

Hope the move all goes well