Dear Prospective teacher,

The "Matty's Dorm" is not like a university "dorm".  It is actually a shared Ｊａｐａｎｅｓｅ　house.　 It is located less than 1 km from the office. It is a very big house.

There are four bedrooms, a large kitchen (with two working stoves), a living room (with a television that has a bilingual option). There are two toilets (upstairs and downstairs) and one bath room (both shower and a traditional Japanese tub). The room feature traditional Japanese decor and there is a Japanese style bed. This means that the beds are lower than in the West and a little shorter. Matty's provides you bedding and the all dishes & pans are for sharing.

The utilities are calculated by Matty's and divided by the number of occupants in the house. In the winter, utilities are around 10,000 (yen)/per month/person, but are greatly reduced in the summer. Most teachers try to conserve energy and work out ways to keep the cost down. Cleaning and household chores are also usually left to the teachers to organize. 

The dorm is a good option if you enjoy cooking and having your own free time to relax. Because we have such varied schedules, you may or may not run into a teacher during the evening hours. 

Shonan-takatori is on the top of a hill. There is a local grocery store and post office about a one minute walk away from the dorm.  At the bottom of the hill is Oppama.  There you will find many restaurants, shops and internet cafe.  The internet cafe cost 400 yen for one hour and there are deals if you stay longer.

Oppama is about 30 minutes (express train) away from Yokohama and about 1 hour away from Tokyo.  I have done many day trips around Tokyo and Yokohama.　 In the opposite direction there is Yokosuka (a bit smaller than Yokohama).

My best advice is to plan to do sight-seeing to places like Kyoto and Na goya, etc...when there are three day weekends or longer breaks (IE Golden Week).  Then you can stay overnight and really explore other parts of Japan.   

Remember, you will have an entire year in Japan.  My best advice for you is to try to find a good balance between work and sight-seeing.