Making a Home (Theater!)

    I've never really had a home in Japan, for whatever reason. I've had apartments, but they were generally just places to dump my stuff and sleep. My last apartment was really big, but I only ever really used the corner of it -- that's where I put my futon. I always sat/laid there while I used my computer and that was all I needed.

    Sure, I got a sofa bed and put it in the other room of my old apartment, but that was more of a concession to impending visitors from America and Britain than anything else -- just like the table I bought. When I wasn't expecting visitors, my apartment turned into a giant dump.

    Literally.

    I'm not kidding. I would just dump my stuff on an empty space on the floor, lacking the furniture or some other more organized place to store it. As far as I was concerned, the apartment was just a giant storage shed because I never did anything else that warranted... well, anything else.

    That changed this year.

    When I moved to Fujimi, I moved into a new apartment that has three discrete rooms: a kitchen, a room with a wooden floor, and a room with tatami mats. I sleep in the tatami room since that's what it's for; the tatami is softer and it's easier to sleep on. Until last week, I'd just been using the other room for storage. It held all of my unpacked boxes, random knick-knacks I hadn't put away, and my table.

    In short, it was a mess.

    Two weeks ago, I decided to change that. I've dedicated myself to staying here for a while, so I don't feel bad about buying large or otherwise annoying-to-move things. From experience, I know that if I do well at this school (and I will), I can stay for three years.

    Three years is a long time to live without a home.

    So I'm going to turn my apartment into a home. One of the ways I decided to do that was to create the classic TV room, but with a high-tech twist! It is me we're talking about, after all. So I started looking into making a Home Theater PC (HTPC) setup. The first thing I did was buy a new hard drive (2 TB) and a big, 27" LCD monitor that was on sale.

    The monitor was the last one left, so I felt like I had to jump on the deal! It was incredibly cheap too, especially for a 27" monitor. It was huge -- even compared to my laptop, which is over 18". It's been a long time since I've seen a screen that large. Check out this comparison!

    With the screen ready, I just had to find something to hook up to it. I really didn't want to use my primary laptop for a number of reasons, one of the main ones being privacy.

    One of the most appealing pre-made systems was the Acer Revo, but I had a lot of qualms about it as an Atom-based system. I wasn't planning on doing anything especially hard, but 400 dollars seemed like a lot for what looked like a gimpy computer. After thinking about it, I decided that I also wanted to be able to do video game emulation, which made me feel even less confident about the Revo. On top of that, rather than having a billion enclosures, I thought it would be nice to have a bunch of hard drives INSIDE a computer.

    After looking around on Sofmap's site for a bit, I realized that there was a small desktop PC being made by eMachines, but I had doubts about that too -- the specs weren't very specific, so I didn't know how much room there was for a real graphics card (necessary for 1080p and emulation) and I didn't even know if there was room for one. Or power.

    I spent a while thinking about it and looked around; finally, I found a small graphics card that was good as well as low-priced; I thought it would be a great fit for the computer I'd picked out, but it was just a few millimeters too large. Go figure.

    At this point I said "screw it" and built my own computer for about 60 dollars more. It had everything I wanted and more; an i3 processor, 4GB DDR3, GeForce GT 230 1 GB DDR3. I bought an Antec case made for HTPCs, which is what pushed the price up a bit more. In addition to all that, I also popped for two wireless Logitech controllers and a 5.1 surround sound system. Of course, I'd need something to put all of that on, so I bought a TV cabinet as well... and then a sofa.

    Yeah, I went all out. I really wanted a nice living room, not some half-assed computer with a monitor and a couple of folding chairs or something. I'm 24 years old and I live alone; I'm not in college anymore and I want my home to reflect that. It cost a fair chunk of money, but it was something I was willing to pay in exchange for having a room that I could be proud of and have people over in.

    That was a major point -- having people over.

    In college, it's fine to have people over and then sit on your bed or at your desk or whatever; that's what you're stuck with. But when you've been living on your own for three years, with your own place, you really want something more respectable. So that's what I made.

    But first, you have to see what I started with...



    Disgusting, right? Crap everywhere. I can just hear my mother saying, "Scott, I don't know how you can live like that! What a pigpen..."

    Well, it's true. It was just a room I walked through to get to my bedroom, where I really lived. The big box in the back was the box my monitor came in; I'd just left it back in the corner for a lack of space. It's hard to throw away cardboard in Japan; you either have to tear it down into small pieces and toss them into a garbage bag or take them to a special place. Annoying.

    My stuff started coming in and I ran out of space very quickly. For example, my sofa was one of the first things to come in; it was flattened in a very large box. I didn't really have anywhere to put the box, so I just stuck it against the wall.



    The box looks gigantic (and it was), but the sofa was a bit less gigantic with all of the sides folded up. It was just about wide enough to (un)comfortably sit two guys. I wasn't very happy with it, but that was pretty much the standard for Japanese furniture and I didn't have a whole lot of money to blow. The sofa, as it was, was a little over a hundred bucks.

    On the other hand, since it unfolded flat, it was a perfectly acceptable guest bed for people under six feet. And it didn't look half bad for the price!



    The way I'd ordered, with all of the packing/shipping delays, my stuff ended up trickling in a bit at a time, with a little more coming in every day. The first day brought me my sofa and the second featured my remote control kit...



    I mean, no home TV system is complete without a remote, right? Even though this wasn't really a TV system, I wanted a convenient remote control to be able to browse movies with. I did a bit of looking around and the iMon looked like the best system available to me here in Japan that worked well with xbmc, my media center of choice. I'd also decided to get a wireless mouse for my main laptop since the cable on my regular mouse had started crapping out on me.

    I was getting SUPER antsy, though. Even with stuff coming in every day, the main event was the last thing to come in. I had all of these accessories and stuff, but no computer to hook up to my monitor!

    When it finally did come in, I spent all night setting it up. The computer case, parts, sound system, and stand all came in on the same day.



    The first order of business was to put together the TV stand; I wanted somewhere to put the computer case while I worked and the TV stand was as good a place as any.

    While I'm not much of a handiman, I do enjoy putting together these kit things and I always have, all the way back to Lego sets. If it doesn't require many tools and I have the time, I can just sit back, relax, and enjoy the simplicity of fitting parts together to get a nice, finished product.

    The TV stand was a perfect example of this. It came in a flat box, like so.



    It took a while to figure out between the Japanese instructions and the lack of distinguishing features on parts that had to go in different places, but I did eventually figure it out. Time just flew by and I had a lot of fun getting the thing together. The way it was made, the only tool required was a screwdriver; there were a lot of twisting parts to lock pegs into place and a few plain, old-fashioned screws.



    The hardest part of the entire process was getting the glass doors aligned just right in their hinges before I tightened the screws holding them into place; I failed and the doors are just barely noticeably out of alignment when they're closed. It bothers me, but I try to ignore it -- I doubt most people would notice unless I pointed it out.

    I think it's a very handsome-looking TV stand, especially for its price. Design sense, anyone?





    After the TV stand was up, I forged onward with the computer. The Antec case was just as gorgeous as it had looked online... and just as heavy as I had expected it to be, since the descriptions had indicated that it was made from rolled steel.

    I spread out a lot of the packing paper to keep my precious, brand-new TV stand from getting scuffed or scratched, then plopped the case down. It was a lot smaller than the kind of cases I'm used to working in; it was designed to be smaller in order to fit into a TV cabinet. Unfortunately, I had mismeasured and it wouldn't be fitting into mine... but oh, well.



    The main problem I ran into is that it's been ages since I actually built a desktop from scratch. It's really not that hard since all you do is screw things into place or plug things where they go, but it's a bit disconcerting when the only instructions you have are a bit scant and in a foreign language, to boot.

    It took me a while to squeeze the motherboard into the case (a tight fit if there ever was one!) and then to get everything moved just into place so I could screw the motherboard in, but I got it.



    After that, it was a cinch to put in the processor (basically pinless, much to my amazement!), the hard drive, RAM, graphics card, and all that jazz. Unfortunately, since the case is so small, I had a hard time getting the cables wrapped around and in the right place -- especially for the DVD-ROM drive and the iMon console.

    Speaking of the DVD-ROM drive, I'd ordered a cheap, used Sony DVD-ROM for the (very rare) silver bezel, which I'd hoped would match my case. It matched, all right, but I hadn't been prepared for the fact that the rest of the drive would be a nasty, beige plastic. Go figure.

    The drive was also IDE, with a broad ribbon cable that was hard to squeeze into place. I doubt the case designers had really intended for anyone to be using a broad, relatively inflexible ribbon cable in the confines of that case... but I got it to work out in the end.

    Yes, I did.



    Even so, my room was a mess. What I'd done, essentially, was shove all of my mess out to make a working space, and then covered it up with giant boxes. Lots of them.



    Sometime after all of that, I went to show my friend around some recycle shops -- places where Japanese people sell their old stuff for a bit of money... and where other people can pick up some really nice stuff on the cheap. I wasn't sure what he was hoping to find, but I found a bunch of stuff!

    I put holds on all of the things I wanted and paid for them; they'd come in via delivery at some point by the end of the week. And sure enough, they came on Friday. There was only one person delivering them and I had to help him bring everything in... and there was a lot.

    One of the things I'd ordered was a large sofa that was made of four chairs (including a corner piece) that fit together. It was perfect for my room and much cheaper than the sofa had been. More importantly, it was bigger, so people wouldn't have to be kissing cousins to sit together.

    Of course, that meant my sofa was kind of useless, but oh well.

    When everything finally arrived, I didn't really have the space to put it! Between my junk, the boxes, and the first sofa, there wasn't any room for the new sofa. I ended up cramming two of the pieces in my shower/laundry room...



    The corner piece was just wide enough that it wouldn't fit through the door to the living room, so I just left it there, blocking the door... There wasn't much I could do without taking the doors out and I wasn't really in the mood to do that at the time.



    The last piece, I threw in the living room next to the sofa. There just wasn't anywhere else to put it, really. I was feeling pretty down about the entire project at this point because all it had done was create a lot of mess and clutter that made it hard to use my apartment normally. I knew I just had to buckle down and clean everything up, but I was just tired from work and all of the moving.



    But there wasn't anything else I could do, so that's exactly what I did. I "sacked up," as a friend would say, and took down the doors so I could move all of the new sofa pieces into the living room. I cleaned a bit, threw out all of the trash, and I managed to force myself to tear down all of those boxes. ALL of them. It's amazing how much space cardboard takes up in box form. After I tore them all down and cut them in convenient places so that they'd fold, I managed to squeeze them between my fridge and sink for safekeeping until I could get a ride to toss them somewhere.



    Finally, all of my sofa pieces were in the living room. Finally. Just in time for the weekend.



    I stuck the corner piece at the end because the guy at the end needs something to lean against to be comfortable, I think. If I'd done it the other way around, with the corner piece in the corner, the guy at the end would have really just been falling off.

    Despite all of my cleaning and moving crap around, though, the place was still a mess.



    There wasn't much I could do, though -- I was completely exhausted and I had a big weekend coming up, so I took a break for a bit before I went to a training camp for two days with a friend of mine who teaches old-style martial arts -- I was pretty tired of seeing that room and its mess... especially knowing that I had to clean it up. While I wanted to get everything shipshape, I didn't really want to actually do the work, yet.

    I took a lot of pictures at the training camp and there will be another entry on that soon enough. Hopefully.

    I'd ordered two other things from the recycle shop and they're both sitting in my kitchen, waiting to be pushed into a decent place; one is a simple gas range -- it's just two burners in a thin metal case, really. It's all I need to cook, though.

    The other is more useful -- a large kitchen cabinet for my dishes, microwave, silverware, and some other stuff. It'll finally let me unpack my kitchen (my next big project) without dumping my stuff into the nasty plywood cabinets where the spiders live. I'm a little paranoid about spiderwebs.

    Just last night, I got tired of tripping over the surround sound speakers I had in my room, still packed up in the shipping box, and started plugging them all in. I'd plugged in the minimum two necessary for sound before I left on my trip so I could play a little Tetris, but that was it.

    When I was getting everything set up, I realized that there was a problem -- there really wasn't any way to do surround sound properly with the way I had the sofa set up. So I moved everything around and cleaned up the room in the process.

    I also took that as an opportunity to redo my wiring since it would be visible for all the world (or at least everyone who walked into the room) to see. I redid it neatly and coiled up the loose bits to tie off. Everything looks much more presentable, though I'm still not happy with having the wires visible in general. I'm planning on cutting off the extra plastic on the ties... at some point. I feel kind of nervous about doing that for some reason.



    I'm not happy with the two cables that go back to the rear speakers, either...

    Those speakers actually made me compromise the chair positions, with the open-ended chair NOT being against the wall. I needed the corner chair in the opposite wall to have somewhere to put the rear speaker; the other rear speaker goes on the windowsill. My plan is to find or make something to put in the gap (rather than that box) as a place to put my wireless keyboard... That will also give the person who sits there something to lean on.



    But I did get it all done. Now all I have to do is organize my media inside xbmc, starting with my games. The plugin I'm using to open the games doesn't pull capitalization from the files, so I have to manually rename everything and the interface is pretty slow. I also have to use the interface to pull down thumbnails for the games, which is also slow...

    But at least it's working!