Jeanneabeck’s Weblog

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, so here it goes. Here’s a brief tour of my apartment.  I took these pictures during the first week so already it looks different. (more random crap on the walls, etc.) I am living at Takamori Town’s teacher housing apartment. Conveniently located between a department store and a home improvement store (think Wal-mart and Home Depot only smaller only higher quality) and a ~3 minute walk from a train station, while this apartment is a little ways away from downtown Iida City, the location in itself couldn’t be better.

My apartment has one main room, a bathroom and a kitchen. The main room is an 8 tatami mat room and the tatami is brand new. Except for the strip of wood you see here where the tv and whatnot is placed, the rest of the floor is tatami. The school provided the tv and vcr, I bought the dresser from my predecessor, bought the chair at Apita (the dept. store), and the closet/shelving/desk unit is the apartments.

My Apartment:Desk and TV area

My Apartment:　Kitchen Area

My Apartment: Kitchen Area

This is a view from the main room facing the kitchen.  The kitchen itself seems a little industrial, since it’s all stainless steel, but its easy to clean and won’t get dated looking.  I ’stole’ the range from another predecessor who left it behind, but had to clean it for an hour.  Except for the rice cooker, I bought and/or my predecessor gave me everything on the kitchen rack. I also bought a scale and kitchen/bath mats too. Also, you can’t see it but behind that little metal wall there is a washing machine.

My Apartment:Tatami Style

This picture was taken in the same location only facing the other direction, into my room.  Since clothes dryers are rare in Japan, every apartment has a porch with a pole in which you can hang stuff on to dry. Right now there’s an American flag hanging there both to show my support for team USA and show where the American is living.

Lastley, here’s a picture of my closet area and of my bed and couch.  This is what is left of the famous bed that I broke.  I much prefer sleeping on the floor; makes my room look bigger so I’m happy. My predecessor gave me enough blankets for a small army to sleep over so I’ll have no problem when guests come to visit, and I bought the couch and chair from her so people have places to sit.  Since I won’t use my whole closet for linen stuff, I threw the shelves up there to save space, along with my mirror, iron and ironing board, which literally is a small board. While there are a lot more posters and random stuff around my room, there is nothing on the sliding doors now.  Trying to remove the blue and white info sheet, I found out that while the sliding door paper is slick, it’s only paper and tape will remove strips of paper from the door. Yeah.  The wall paper is really durable though so no worries there.  I feel bad about the door, but I guess when you build your house out of straw and paper, things aren’t suppose to last forever. I was told tatami has a life span of about 10 years before you should get new.  Imagine replacing your carpet every 10 years.

I’m pretty happy about my apartment. While there are ALT houses available, they are not as new, as clean, or as conveniently located next to stores and a train station like this place. Plus, I think this place is safer; only teachers are allowed to live here and with several of the tennants being English teachers, I’ve got people to ask questions if any problems arise.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my tour.

My Apartment: Closet area

My Apartment:Bed and Sofa/Table Area