My apartment: Part 1

Since I haven't made a Blog post in a couple weeks, and golden week is long gone, I thought I'd do a few posts about my daily life in japan, starting with my apartment!

From the outside our apartment is fairly typical: The exposed concrete stairs, the tiny elevator shaft, the bike parking port. Like most japanese buildings of this size and purpose, the outside is primarily raw concrete and tiny tiles. What made this effect so popular in japan? I probably will never know. (Actually I'll probably look that up when I'm at school next year with access to a large architectural library)

Because bicycles are such a popular method of transportation in Japan ( I estimate the bike population of Japan to be something like twice the human population, and I'm being conservative here to avoid sounding like I did no actual math)
Every apartment building ha some sort of bicycle parking. Ours is very simply a roof to keep the rain off. The thing is always full of bike, but you can tell that only a handful are ever used because most of them are covered in the brown dust that floats over from China.

Going up the little elevator you reach our landing at the third floor:

Our hallway is directly exposed to the elements if the door is left open. It's usually stifling hot if its left closed.

Entering my actual room , it looks much like any Japanese Room. There is a little area for me to take off my shoes, next to my laundry and garbage. 

 I have a nice little japanese washing maching. Its maximum capacity is pretty small, but I suits the amount of laundry I need to do.

The catch with Japanese laundry machines is that they don't use hot water. At least mine doesn't. When I do whites I usually fill the thing up manually with buckets of hot water which,  thankfully, is extremely hot in Japan.

More over, the washer has a really loud and violent rinse and drain cycle. This usually involves knocking over my brooms and umbrella.

You can see my collection of plastic bottles and milk cartons in the bottom right.

My bath room is again, fairly typical. A small plastic walled room, separate from the toilet, and raised further above the rest of my floor. The tub is pretty small, but very deep, and the shower is  naturally much too short for me to stand under it. I have a small mirrored cabinet above my little sink to store my things. The funny thing is, I can remember now when this was all very small, but after living here for three months it feels quite natural.

The kitchen area is pretty minimal. A tiny sink that I can barely fit my pans into, and a small electric element sit below a little storage shelf. The counter is about up to below my crotch, so I usually kneel when I do dishes.

My little appliance corner. Along with the ubiquitous fridge and microwave/ oven combo, I also a have a rice cooker (most useful kitchen appliance since the electric stove) and an insulated electric kettle. I was luckily enough to land a toaster when I came here, and  in spite of the relative strangeness of Japanese bread, it has served me well.

To round the team out, a broken VCR to add some height to the microwave and cut my back 4 inches of slack. Lord knows the ball height kitchen counter isn't doing anything for me.