The apartment

One of my blog readers asked that I not show any photos of the inside of the apartment, so fair warning Wendy, if you are reading this post I told you in advance that there are photos of the inside of the apartment.

We expect to have internet at the apartment early next week which will make blogging much easier.

The photo below is of Bre cooking our first homemade meal in japan.  It is a vegetable and cheese omelet.  At this point we only had a pot for cooking.  Just yesterday we got a frying pan, so cooking will be much easier.

 I think it is funny how each egg has a code on it.  This is a photo of me holding an egg up to the camera so you can see the code.

 Below is our little gas stove.  This is apparently the standard Japanese stove.  It has two gas burners and a little oven that is for frying fish.  You could also use it as a toaster.  It is not really big enough for the type of baking that you would do in an American Oven.

Below is a closeup of the buttons on the toilet.  It has a heated seat and a motion detector so that it knows when to turn on.  There are several bidet settings.  Since it is in Japanese it is a little challenging to understand.  I know the stop symbol, it is the one at the end of the menu.  There are two types of bidet.  One for women (with the symbol for a woman) and one for your bottom (with a fountain of water in a shape that looks like a bottom.)  In the second photo of the toilet you can see the very efficient hand washing system.  It pours the water into the toilet reservoir for the next flush through a spigot so that you can use the water to wash your hands before the toilet uses the same water to flush.

 Here is the washing machine.  It is also very efficient.  The menu is a little difficult to use, but we figured it out.  You set the size of your laundry load and it washes the laundry in the regular way.  Once it is done washing you can set it to spin and air dry you clothes for a certain period of time.  It doesn't dry them all the way, but gets them very close to being dry so that you only need to hang them up to dry for an hour or so before they are totally dry.  It has a hose that allows you to connect it to the bathwater.  It has a pump in it and you can pump the used bathwater into the washing machine to be reused.  I have never heard of this before.  I asked Tanioka-san if there is a reason why you have to be so water efficient.  He said no, in Hokkaido water is quite cheap.

 Here is our "instant" gas hot water system.  It does heat the water pretty quickly.  It requires a little time to clear the line of the water that has already cooled down and then you have your hot water.

 Here is a wide angle shot of the bathroom.

 This is the shower room and bathtub.  Just as the toilet is in a separate room, so is the bathtub.  It has a mirror that is down very low.  I am not sure what the mirror is for.  The feet you see in the mirror are my feet reflected back.

 Here is Bre in front of the kitchen.

 Here is the living room.  The apartment came furnished with all the furniture that you see in the photos.  It is very convenient for us to have a furnished apartment.

 Here is another photo of Bre in the apartment.  This time it is looking the other direction so that you can see towards the bedroom, hallway, bathroom and foyer.

 I got a lot of comments on the mold.  I want to let everyone know that It has been mostly resolved.  We asked the landlord (through Tanioka-san) for help cleaning the apartment.  He sent the cleaning company back and they cleaned up all the visible mold and gave us Japanese Drain-o for the sink.  The smell is mostly gone.  We have done some cleaning of our own and we have the dehumidifier running to keep the place dry. 

 These photos are of the shortcut we found to get to Bre's work by going through the farm fields on a muddy path.  The farm fields are used by the agricultural college of the university.

 I like the juxtaposition of the city buildings and the tilled field.

 We found a nuclear fallout shelter.  It is next the shortcut.

 I am not sure what building this is, but I liked the way it seems to float in the air.

 And here is Bre's bicycle among the sea of other bicycles.

In my next blog post I will tell you about how we got our second bicycle, made new friends, and whatever else comes along.

Cheers,

Kyle (and Bre)