Tokyo has got to be the world's most misunderstood city. Many foreign journalists simply aren't here long enough to scrutinise, analyse or interpret the complexities of the megatropolis. The media arrive with visiting dignitaries and, as a side issue, make generalisations about Japanese uniformity. Thus, our opinions of the Land of the Rising Sun are probably based on exaggeration and hyperbole.

I certainly had ill-conceived ideas before I landed at Tokyo International Airport, with a Japanese-English dictionary tightly gripped in one hand. I've been here 7 months now, and, I must say, nothing surprises me anymore.

I work for one of Japan's largest English teaching schools. Which one, I won't say, but let me call it Big Brother. The only difference between Orsen Wells's novel and the company I'm employed by is the year. Despite working part time, Big Brother dictates much of what I do outside the classroom, including who I do and don't socialise with. Big Brother also graciously allows me to live in one of its apartments.

"Where do you live?" ask my students.

"Lions Mansion," I reply.

"Ooh, you must be rich!"

Well, not really. Yes, it is big: the three-bedroom ground-floor apartment I call home has a garden - a luxury few Tokyoites share. Also, the combined living room and hallway is long enough for me to kick a pair of socks to sharpen my footy skills. Even my bedroom has a walk-in closet, which, with a little imagination, could be used as a gamesroom.

Except for its size, it's like any other Japanese home.

In summer it's a furnace. The air conditioner doesn't reach the outer void of the living room, and sleepless nights consist of rearranging the portable fan with one hand and slapping mosquitoes with the other. Japanese mosquitoes are sneakier than the ones back home. I suppose they have learnt to become evasive in Tokyo because there are many more sweaty palms to evade. My white walls, though, are splattered with evidence of accurate swatting. They are my trophies, like that of an African safari. And, the tiny marks of blood and guts also serve as a deterrent to other mozzies, with little success.

Like most modern Tokyo apartments, it's very Western. Only one room has traditional tatami (bamboo) flooring with a sliding door. The rest of the apartment contains what we're used to back home in the way of mod-cons. But, most Japanese kitchens don't have an oven. There just isn't the room, and the Japanese simply don't bake anything. They eat copious amounts of rice, and so families proudly display the latest rice cooker on the kitchen bench.

Each of our bedrooms is furnished with a futon, which needs to be aired regularly. A futon set consists of a thin foam mattress, which lies directly on the floor. Above that is a shiki-buton - a softer mattress which you sleep on. To cover you when you sleep is a kake-buton, what we know as a dooner. At least once a week I grab my futon and hang it over the fence to air. Most housewives beat their futons with a special paddle to give it a good old fashioned shake. Deprived of this useful tool, I swing my baseball bat, beating into submission any bed creatures that might thrive in the humid cest-pool of material.

Most sunny weekends, thousands of huge apartment buildings in suburban Tokyo look like modern day sailing ships. Shiki-butons, kake-butons, sheets, blankets and mattresses are draped over fences and balconies, from the first floor to the fifteenth. The Tokyo-Yokohama suburban sprawl is the equivalent distance of Frankston to Geelong - one mass of concrete and high rises (remember, there ain't no quarter-acre block). I always wonder, if on a windy day, with all these "sails", whether the whole megatropolis would just fly off some where.

I share #106 with Alex Paccalet, a Frenchman, who was here when I moved in. He is a master of languages and wise beyond his years. Only 23 years old, he speaks fluent English and Japanese, and of course his native tongue. (He even knew German, having once lived there. But, he's lost the language now, he says.) He exudes a demeanour not unlike Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. Even his posture resembles Gandalf stooping in Bilbo Baggins's tiny hobbit home - leaning on his staff to avoid hitting his head.

I hadn't met Alex until about a month after I arrived at Lions Mansion. Back then, he had a girlfriend, at whose house he'd stay during the week. When we finally met, I remember he had nothing to talk about, even though he'd just returned from a visit to his homeland - a great conversation topic! Having to coax words from the mouths of my students at work all day, I had little patience doing the same thing at home, so my first impressions of Alex were pretty negative. But, first impressions aren't always accurate, and we've had some decent laughs over beers and wine since.

His wine appreciation is intense. Not satisfied with a little sniff and sip, Alex would swirl and swirl his wineglass after studying the label. He would eye the drop suspiciously before raising it to his lips. From here, the wine would be sucked like a high-powered vacuum cleaner, then tossed around like a washing machine. No matter the wine, he would always raise an eyebrow and say something like, "Hmm, it's okay." In comparison, I felt like a servant having dinner with the Queen.

Alex is very "particular". Learning another language forces a person to analyse each word in a sentence. Therefore, he's careful when he opens his mouth. Maybe that's why he doesn't talk much: if it's not worth saying, it's better not saying it - if only most people subscribed to that philosophy! Alex spends a lot of his time in his room, on his computer. He stays up until 4 or 5am, just as the sun peeps over the concrete we call the horizon. He starts work at 1pm in Ginza, so he crawls out of his cocoon at midday. He gets up at about 2.30pm on his days off. God knows what he does between midnight and 5am, but I'm sure for someone who can tell you to fuck off in 3 languages, he doesn't waste it.

My other flatmate is Brad Nakayama from Hawaii. He's only just arrived at Lions Mansion, and already I've borrowed his sneakers (without asking) to play a game of Australian football. I suspect he's writing his own little story about me. His recent claim to fame is as an extra in the action flick, Windtalker, with Nicholas Cage. Brad spent 3 months playing the role of the Japanese enemy who were fighting the Americans on the island of Saipan in WWII. In reality he was eating and drinking and piss-farting around while getting paid nicely for it. Brad's quiet, and polite, with a cool Hawaiin surfie accent, and laid-back like most Australians are supposed to be.

Brad replaced Greg Peters, a tall hairy guy from California, who started every sentence with the word "Dude!" Where do I start with Greg? Jesus, where do I end? I have known a couple of Americans, who don't resemble the stereotypical loud, overbearing, arrogant Yank I was expecting Greg to be. Greg had his days when he fitted the Septic mould, leaving me shaking my head and checking whether the word "subtle" actually existed in an American dictionary.

Greg and I once went to a nightclub in Roppongi, which is a part of Tokyo, infamous for sleazy expats picking up Japanese chicks. Of course, that's not why I was there. One Sunday night had us staggering from one bar to another to another, losing shitloads of money in the process on ridiculously expensive beer. In a bar called something like Blue Electric, two girls were giggling as we approached. They knew less of our language, than even the dozen words Greg and I knew of theirs. Language isn't a barrier, though, when you have alcohol as a translator. Within a minute, Greg thought he'd quicken cultural relations by planting his large hairy hand on the bum of one the girls. Less than half a minute after that, a boy who had been playing pool in another a corner of the bar, said to Greg, "Please do not touch." We were to later realise, understandably, that those were the only four words of English the Japanese boyfriend knew.

Greg may be as subtle as a sledgehammer, but you can't help laugh. He is honest, loyal, a good mate, but not so good a housemate. I've lost count the number of cigarettes I've picked up in the garden, dishes I've cleaned, and hair I've washed down the sink. But, with or without a few beers we could talk about everything and anything. Usually about girls with nice bums.

Our neighbours have managed to stay well clear of us, particularly after the night Greg and some visiting American friends let-off a round of fireworks from our garden at 2am. In the corridor where our mail is delivered, our Japanese neighbours fumble for keys or appear transfixed by the messages on the notice board so they don't have to acknowledge my presence when I pass them. "Konnichiwa!" I'd yell, knowing damn well they are sweating with the hope that I don't start a conversation with them. Ii tenki desu ne!: Nice weather, isn't it! But, I'd say this, even if it was pissing down with rain. Or I'd say "Good morning" in the evening. "Welcome!" when they were on their way out.

As revenge, I think these neighbours pay the Lions Mansion janitor. He looks like the father in the Steptoe & Son British TV comedy show, but with fewer teeth. Every bloody time I take out the rubbish, he corners me and tells me the rules of the trash - all in Japanese, all at a million miles an hour, and all the time showering me with spit from between the gaps of his teeth. Yes, I know the glass bottles, plastic bottles, aluminium cans, burnable rubbish, unburnable rubbish, books, magazines, cardboard boxes, home appliances, and vegetation all need to be separated and are picked up on different days. He's even gone to great lengths to stick English posters up in the trash room, which is why I know all this. Once, I found him sifting through the rubbish bags moments after dumping, mainly Greg's, #106 leftovers. I have resorted to jumping the fence behind our garden and going around the long way to avoid another incomprehensible, wet babble of words.

If that was all there was to worry about at #106, then life would be sweet. But, every Sunday morning, a utility drives past our bedroom windows, with a recorded message blaring from well-positioned megaphones. It roughly translates to:

"CDs, videos, stereo cassette players, microwaves, rice cookers, TVs, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, computers!! We take all old electrical appliances!!"

Despite the heat, the cramped buildings, the endless stream of people, the pollution, drunken salary men, infuriating bureaucracy, the language, crap television shows, and the janitor, I love living in suburban Tokyo. The delicious food, the sake, the ubiquitous convenience stores and supermarkets, parties, izakayas, temples, vending machines which sell everything from hot cans of coffee to highschool girls' underwear, manga comic books, Japanese commercials, and Tokyo Disneyland, all well and truly make up for living in one of the world's most disgustingly populated cities. I love it.