Our House

"Our House, is a very, very, very, fine house"

- Crosby,Stills, Nash, & Young

But it is small. And so is the neighborhood.

We live on a nice corner lot on narrow street, that is somewhat of a through street from one side of town to another. At all hours of the day or night, cars come flying down this street:

We have an extremely narrow driveway which barely fits our Odyssey. The Fit (which you can't see in these photos) fits nicely. (insert drum lick). The front door is hidden behind the nicely sculptured trees to the right of the driveway.

This is a view from our front door. You can see the path to the gate and backyard and our palm tree.

This is a closer view of the back of the house. You can see the upstairs balcony, which only serves as a place to mount the satellite dish, and to hang laundry to dry. Kim, the laundry expert, will post more about laundry another time. To the left of the glass doors on the first floor you will see a gigantic shutter. Each window and glass door has a shutter which is closed every evening to help keep the cold out and the not quite as cold in.

And finally, here is a view of the back yard, complete with large rocks, hilly swales, more sculptured trees, and during warm times, lots of huge spiders and webs. More about them in the spring. When I first saw this house the grass in the yard was about 4 feet tall and I didn't know that the rocks were there until we moved in!

On to the inside. Downstairs, we have a kitchen, Dining Room, a toilet room, a bath/shower room, and a tatami room. The tatami room is a Japanese traditional room which exists in every house or apartment. The floor is covered in woven rice grass mats and the windows and doors have wooden frames and are covered in paper. The ceiling is covered in wood paneling. There is also a small alcove where Japanese put their most sacred objects and according to Japanese tradition you are never supposed to wear any footwear in a tatami room. We covered ours in a rug and use it as a family room.

This is our kitchen. It looks fairly normal, however, the counters are 4-6 inches lower than U.S. type counters. It made the first month or so of dishwashing quite a pain in the back. To the left is the stove and underneath the small grilling drawer which is used to grill fish, but not by us.

This is the fridge, only slightly larger than my old college dorm one. Actually, that's not true, but it is small. The top door is the main refrigerated section as is the second drawer up from the bottom. The other two are the freezer sections, with the left half of the upper drawer an ice maker. However, the ice maker is not plumbed to the house and there is a small tank inside the fridge which needs to be filled in order for ice to be made. As with seemingly every other electronic device in Japan, it beeps to let you know the door is open and has buttons for ice making and flash freezing. At least it doesn't have a remote!

Upstairs, we have 4 bedrooms, one of which we use as a play room/toy room which we many also use for guests. Patrick and Kevin share one room, and Gracie and Daniel another. Our bedroom is another tatami room and has access to the balcony. There is also a small toilet room. The toilet room downstairs has the special heated seat and bottom washer, and both have sinks in the top of the tank which run only after flushing.

Finally, at the top of the stairs is a beautiful stained glass window. The owner worked for Honda many years ago and had been in the US. When he returned to Japan in 1984 and built this house, his friend made this window for him:

That's basically it for the house right now, later we'll post some more info and pictures about the Bath/Shower room, the Potty, laundry, the spiders, and who knows what else.