My apartment…

I think I posted some pictures of my apartment when I first moved in but I thought I’d post some more since these were taken about a day after I cleaned. This is probably the cleanest it will ever be. Speaking of clean, the ALT that lives above me drops by once in a while and one of his first comments is always, “wow, you’re apartment is so clean!” I never think it is but maybe it’s clean relative to his.

In any case, here is the first picture.

This picture was taken from my little entrance way/mud room kind of thing where you leave your shoes. My English vocabulary is shrinking since I have to use basic words and speak very slowly when I speak to the students. And the teachers. Anyway, on the left we have the fridge, microwave, sink and stove. Then the entrance to the toilet and the bathtub is behind the blue curtain. The center doorway is the entrance to the tatami room. I’m in this room whenever I’m not cooking or using the bathroom. The last doorway goes to the living room. Between those is my messy kitchen table. The floor in the kitchen is some kind of laminate. If you leave something on it too long, it leaves an imprint but I think it springs back up eventually.

This is a picture of my door. In the bottom left hand corner, you can see my garbage. And there is my paper-filled fridge. I will get to those later.

My fridge. On the bottom is a calendar that tells me which day to put out what kind of garbage. The red circles are “burnable garbage,” yellow is “bottles and cans,” green is “unburnables,” blue is “toxic and oversized,” purple is “paper and fabric,” and pink is “plastics.” The papers on the fridge tell me what to put in each kind of garbage. When in doubt, I stick things in the burnable trash because the bags are yellow and they can’t see into them. I am environmentally unfriendly. On top of the fridge is my Japanese microwave, which doesn’t heat things very evenly. It also has a toaster function, or so it says in katakana: “to-su-ta.” I’ve been meaning to buy a toaster but haven’t gotten around to it. In the bottom left corner, you can see my pantry. Some cereal, tomato sauce, garlic, oyster sauce, tea, tuna, salad dressing, canned tomatoes and canned pears.

Here we have my garbage. I separate things using these bins my predecessor left me. And I put down those little foam tiles underneath to add some colour to the room. They were also left to me.

This is my kitchen table. It’s really tiny and it’s hard to prepare food on. There are a couple bananas, some raisin bread, my oven mitt, my little $3 jar of peanut butter, salt, pepper, elastic bands, oregano, starburst from the airport when I left, honey, and my telephone. And the rice cooker, which is plugged in, so I must have been cooking rice.

Not much to note in this picture. The gas stove heats up quite quickly and I have two burners unlike most of the other JETs I know. And there’s pretty much no counterspace for cooking. I usually move the dish drainer onto the kitchen table and use that space for cooking.

My western style toilet, with the added feature of a faucet at the top so you can wash your hands with the water that will fill the toilet. I put a soap dish in there because I was planning to put soap and a towel in there so I could sort of save water and wash my hands in there. But it’s too strange so I don’t.

My tiny bathroom. What I don’t understand is why the mirror is of a decent height (I have to bend down a little to see my whole face) but the sink is for midgets. It’s actually below crotch level. And there’s no shower curtain, so if you use the shower in the conventional way, water gets everywhere. I’ve been forced to shower Japanese style, by sitting on a shower stool and holding the shower head. I miss real showers.

Here is my washing machine. It only uses cold water. I don’t think it does a good job on my clothes but maybe I’m using it wrong. Also, I asked one of the teachers if there are washing machines that wash with warm water. He said that usually Japanese people, after they’ve taken a bath, use the warm water for their laundry. That’s like washing your clothes with dirty water. But I didn’t say anything.

My tatami room. My dirty laundry on the left, my night table in the back, and my kotatsu table on the right. At night I push the brown table closer to the wall and throw my futon down perpendicular to the tables in between. I also have those red curtains, but they are just there for colour because I always keep my storm shutters closed to keep out all the light. I am a mushroom. Also, opening and closing them increases the chances of bugs getting into my house. I hate bugs.

My night table. The family picture from Mexico on the left, a picture of the cousins in the middle, a cartoon picture of me behind those, which I got the first week I was in Japan, and the friends on the right. And then a picture of my dog. Just kidding.

This is in my living room. My $200 dehumidifier (excellent investment), my storage bins, and my modem and wireless router.

There’s my TV, which is not plugged in because I don’t watch it, my jackets, my karate gi, and my gold couch.

More of my laundry hanging, and my purple couch.

That’s all for now. I’ll post new pictures if I buy anything new.