My neighborhood garden walk

Here in my neighborhood, only a few meters away from the ocean, we’ve gotten very little spring weather this year. It’s either been terribly cold or almost steamy-hot outside. May is the segue-way month into summer, and also into the rainy season. Already the stores are displaying summer-themed goods, from beach toys to grilling sets. However, for the last few days we’ve been getting nothing but drizzling rain. Anticipating summer is exciting, but the rain is a real annoyance. During May, many people are already mold-proofing their houses, myself included.

Traditionally, May 5th was known as Tango no Sekku, or Boys’ Day. It’s a national holiday in a series of holidays known as Golden Week. However, a few years ago it was renamed Children’s Day, Kodomo no Hi, in 1948. However, Girls’ Day is still celebrated in March and Boy’s Day is still celebrated in May.

Children eat Kawashi mochi, which is a sweet rice cake filled with the ubiquitous red bean paste, and wrapped in oak leaves, kawashi. Oak leaves are symbolic of parental affection because the old leaves wait for the young leaves to grow before falling. Many Japanese sweets, wagashi, are symbolic in form.

Chimaki, a sweet rice cake wrapped in bamboo, is another such. It is said to represent the “warrior’s spirit” because of its gun-like shape. I personally think it looks more like a backyard firework.

The most well-known symbol of Boy’s Day is the Koinobori, or carp streamer. The carp is a symbol of success and health because of a Chinese saying about carp swimming upstream to one day become dragons. Perhaps there are variations on this, but this is the version I always. Several days before May 5th, many of my neighbors with young boys set up a fukinagashi, or five-colored streamer, topped with a yaguruma, a pair of arrow-spoked wheels, which drive away evil spirits. My neighbor’s yaguruma spin in the wind, which I am pretty sure is a recent thing. It’s terribly fun to watch and listen to. On the very top is the  kagodama, which is where the kami, or gods, descend.

A somewhat bad attempt at stealthily photographing my neighbor's carp pole

May, although having fluctuating weather, brought about beautiful foliage. I cannot properly tell you how the smells of citrus, jasmine, freesia, and myriad other flowering plants are floating around in the air. Coming from the Southwest, I am totally unaccustomed to so much moisture, pollen, and fragrance hanging around as if it were nothing whatsoever. It’s serious business getting plants like these to bloom in the desert. It’s completely intoxicating walking around the neighborhood.

A look down my street from our upstairs window

Another Boy’s Day tradition is  Shoubu Yu, a bath sprinkled with iris leaves, which is believed to fend off evil. This is actually easy to make at home if you can obtain some iris leaves.

1. Get about 5-7 leaf stalks. These are purchasable from places such as green grocers in Japan.

2. Wash them and cut them into small pieces.

3. Place into a net bag, such as a tea bag.

4. Place into a large bowl and pour boiling water onto the bag, just like making tea.

5. Pour the bag and the water into a hot bath.

or: Simply tie the bunch of leaves beneath the tub faucet and fill with hot water.

May is also the month of Hachijuuhachi Ya, or 88th Night. This event dates back many years ago before the use of the Gregorian calendar. Today, the date is May 2nd. This is supposed to be the best day for picking tea leaves, as they are purportedly good for long life and have a delicious taste.

Tea leaf picking

The last event I’ll go into detail about is Shiohigari, which is clam-digging. The equipment for clamming is very basic. A bucket, a rake, and a plastic bottle for sea water to keep the shellfish alive when brought back home. Spring is an excellent time for clamming, due to the Spring tide, which recedes very far and leaves a huge beach to dig about in. It’s a popular family event and many people make an entire day of it. The origins of this activity are very old, and apparently Shinto in origin, surrounding a purification ritual. Later, people came to enjoy digging for clams as well.

As always, Japan is brimming with amazing amounts of sea life. What could we expect to find?

Bucket full of shellfish

In this bucket, we have jack-knife clams, short-neck clams, hard shell clams, a hen clam, and a (probably) enraged prawn. Short neck and hard shell clams, asari and hamaguri respectively, are extremely popular in Japanese cooking.

I know I haven’t updated in nearly a millennium, but I haven’t had time to adequately research how to use my Mac. For instance, I didn’t know how Mac handles photos with iPhoto software, and wasn’t able to post directly from my file library. Most of my writing centers around photo-taking, and this was a huge block for me. However, now that I’ve spent time to learn my Mac’s software (I haven’t touched a Mac since 1994), more posts will appear on this blog. For instance, now I can post photos taken from hundreds of feet up in the air, panicking during a windy night on the MM1 Ferris Wheel! See above.

Pumpkin flan for Halloween, made with kabocha pumpkin from Hokkaido.

The Japanese already have a fondness for pumpkin during the fall, Hokkaido being the notable pumpkin prefecture, but I have heard on occasion that they have no great love for cinnamon, nutmeg, or allspice. A teacher of mine once commented it “tasted too much like bark.” I wondered if he’d been given a stick of it in apple cider, or if he had only tasted it ground. So, although many pumpkin flavored desserts abound, they are not spiced.

The Halloween motif on the package struck my fancy.

The pumpkin pudding tasted like very fresh kabocha, which is the green-skinned, smaller pumpkin of Japan. It has a very similar taste to the orange pumpkins we use in the states, but is very hard to cut into. The puddings were slightly sweet, but the bitter caramel sauce wasn’t a good match with the delicate kabocha flavor. I also have plans to make Halloween sugar cookies, but the effort required to do icing decoration is daunting me.

Cookie making materials are gathered and ready.

I’m also really starting to feel the cold weather at night, the house gets down right icy when the windows are left open. During the day when the sun is shining, the weather is heavenly, but when left open after dark, it’s frigid. The house has pretty good insulation (despite what I’ve heard over and over about Japanese houses being poorly insulated) but we like the air circulation from the outside breeze, so we just put on our pajamas and snuggle under the feather comforter and the duvet. If I do manage to make those cookies, I’ll post the results.

The sunlight and the air has a very crisp, autumn feeling, which is invigorating after the stultifying summer heat. I have terrible circulation, which improves no matter what I eat, wear or how much exercise I take. I simply have icy mitts. One of the little pleasures during the winters in NYC, I discovered one-use heating packets, which can be slipped into a pocket or mitten. Some of them also have an adhesive side, to stick to clothing (but don’t stick them on your skin, they’re much hotter than the muscle-heating pads sold for aches and cramps) They’re extremely popular in Japan, and I was thrilled to find a Relakkuma packet pouch. I’m sitting here  like a complete louse, in my cheap Uniqlo hoodie warming my stomach with the pad as I write.

Here's the package the pouch came in, along with two heating packets. This one is the neurotically fastidious Korelakkuma, wearing sheep jammies.

Just looking at the wooley pouch makes me drowsy, although the warning on the packet says to not sleep with this... yeah right.

Since I’m so geared up for Halloween this year, I’ve made a list of movies, musics, and TV shows which are must-sees for me. Here’s the run down:

Halloween Playlist:

• This is Halloween – Kingdom Hearts II: This is a nice rendition of the original melody
• This is Halloween – The Nightmare Before Christmas: I don’t think you can really beat this for fun
• Night on Bald Mountain – Mussorgsky: This is actually pretty scary, it freaks me out at least
• Time Warp – Rocky Horror Picture Show: Rocky and Halloween go together like peas n’ carrots.
• Head Over Heels – Tears for Fears: From Donnie Darko, which is somehow a Halloween film for me
• Hellsing OST: A few tracks from this give an atmospheric feeling, and a few are a little devilish
• Don’t Fear the Reaper: Blue Oyster Cult: This is a nice, ghostly song. I have two other covers as well
• Devil May Cry 1 & 3 OST: Some of the creepy BG music sets an October mood for me,  some “devil rock” in the mix
• Dead Souls – Nine Inch Nails: A little ghostly, and a little creepy
• Monster’s Halloween Party: One of those cheesy, haunted house albums, but this one is more cute than jarring
• Every Day is Halloween – Ministry: Well, a little more 80′s stuff to remind me of Halloween’s past
• Symphony of the Night OST – Michiru Yamane: Gothic and creepy, very very elegant.
• Love Will Tear Us Apart – Joy Divison: Another from Donnie Darko, more 80′s nostalgia
• Cry Little Sister – Lost Boys: My favorite song from the Lost Boys, my favorite vampire movie
• Under the Milky Way – The Church: More Donnie Darko nostalgia
• Bela Lugosi’s Dead – Bauhaus: Reminds me of Uncle Ray’s gothic dance and skull belt
• Libra Me – Interview with the Vampire: Very eerie and gothic, probably more so than the movie
• Living Dead Girl, Dragula – Rob Zombie: These are fun to hear again once in a while
• Mephisto Waltz – Lizst: Well, the titular character of this is obviously the reason I like it

Some Must-See Movies:

1. The Nightmare Before Christmas: This dual holiday movie I never get sick of every Halloween
2. The Shining: This movie is just creepy, because Jack Nicholson is creepy
3. Donnie Darko: This movie captures October back in the 80′s for me, perfectly
4. Sleepy Hollow: A sick sense of humor, beautiful sets and atmosphere
5. Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Ribald, tongue-in-cheek, and tons of fun
6. The Fearless Vampire Killers: Nearly silent, beautiful and eerie, yet dementedly humourous
7. The Lost Boys: Death by stereo

TV Shows & Etc:

1. X-Files: Some of the supernatural and ghostly episodes are freaky, great sense of camp humor
2. Castle Ghosts of England, Ireland and Scotland: This show scared the heck out of me as a kid
3. Ghost Watching: A YouTube channel with hundreds of mostly British ghost TV shows, the Tube one is great
4. Anything Ghost: A podcast featuring matter-of-fact retellings of personal experiences submitted in by listeners
5. Castlevania: Nothing like a good vampire hunt to kick off the season.
6. Devil May Cry: It’s hard to be too freaked out by demons and ghosts when you’re Dante

Over the course of the last weekend, we did some touristing around Yokohama and went to one of the larger attractions, not far away form Minato Mirai, the large amusement park, called Sea Paradise, or SeaPara. I’ve always liked going to aquariums, and this one was purported to be fairly large. We headed out on Sunday, which is generally the most busy shopping day here. In general, most Americans shop on Saturday and tend to rest up for Monday on Sunday, but in Japan Sunday is the big, super busy day. Most of the schools in Japan are on a 5-day week (back in 1992 it was a big hurrah when schools gave students off a single Saturday every month). Plenty of private schools still cater to the “education mama” crowd by retaining the six day week, however. Additionally, some companies run a six day week, and I’ve heard tell that some even run a seven day week. Obviously, retailers stay open during weekends as well. At any rate, the weekend isn’t the holy institution it is in the States. We have the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to thank for that.

So, while Saturday may be less busy due to school and work, Sunday is more crowded and busy than ever. This was perhaps not the best timing to visit something like an aquarium, but it had rained heavily the day before. The weather was heavenly on Sunday, which also probably increased the traffic.

We hosted a small party the other day in hopes of meeting some of the people Darrel works with, and also as something of a house-warming party. We’d originally planned a cook-out, but the weather is just too nasty for outdoor entertaining. Plus, we don’t have any outdoor seating arrangements. In fact, I’m not even sure people entertain in their backyards like we do in Japan. One, it’s very noisy for such small quarters (a lot more intrusive for the neighbors) and two, there’s little space in the yards for lingering and milling around. My observation is that most people entertain inside, or more likely, they choose to go to a watering hole or a restaurant for parties. The sakeba, or drinking spots, abound near train stations, and at times there seem to be more sakeba than people to fill them. Sakeba fulfill much of the same need as Irish and English pubs do, as well as cafes in France. They are a second living room, where you can come to relax and leisurely eat and drink while socializing with friends and neighbors. I’ve read that one of the quintessential points to understanding socializing in Japan is knowing when to invite friends and colleagues to these drinking holes.

However, I’m accustomed to receiving guests in my home, so we spent the entirety of Saturday cooking and preparing. I made Japanese-style potato salad, avocado club house sandwiches from one of my favorite Japanese cookbooks, cranberry spritzers with orange, and spicy mayo chicken kara-age. Okay, the kara-age was a store-bought impulse purchase of Darrel’s, but I’m darn proud of the spicy mayo, which is something my mother invented back in Tuscon on her quest to replicate spicy California rolls. It’s divine on a lot of things. There’s a lot of mayo in these dishes, but Japanese mayo has less cholesterol than most American brands, plus it is much less sweet and more eggy tasting. I used the popular “Kewpie” brand, which comes in a 1/2 calorie variety I rely heavily on. It’s occasionally available in American supermarkets. The Japanese are very fond of mayonnaise, and in fact it become something of a trend. People started calling themselves mayola which is short for mayo la–ba– which means “mayo lover.” This is similar to calling someone a “something-or-other-mania.” Mania here meaning “freak,” “maniac,” or “die-hard.” Some people even carry around mini bottles of mayo in their bags, which is referred to as my mayo or “personal mayo.” I personally find this bizarre, but suffice it to say, expressing enthusiasm for an individual passion seems to attain rare heights with some people. This seems similar to BBQ sauce freaks in America, one of whom I knew liked to put it on pasta.

The spread.

But, no one showed up to our party. I was really shocked. Actually, two people did come after about three hours, but the food had gone very cold.

Our bedroom, windows to the south and west.

This is the second part of the open house, which is all photos of our second story. I apologize that the photos aren’t that great, I was running out of steam and often got a terrible shot. I thought about reshooting everything. However, I know myself well enough that I’d never get around to it, so in the spirit of moving forward, here’s the last few areas of the house!

Upstairs, the largest room is our bedroom, which has a lower ceiling than our last bedroom, and although larger, feels smaller because of it. Since the windows face east, we don’t get hit with sun in the morning, and the room stays bright in the evening. There’s nothing remarkably Japanese about it, other than the large, deep oshiire closet.

This is our little reading chair.

This chair is rather hard, and more frequently becomes a clothing receptacle, and we often curl up in other parts of the house to read, rather than sit here. Darrel suggested I jump on the cushion to soften it up. I’m trying to find a small area table to put my hidden Big Ben Moon Beam clock, which is sitting on the floor. A reading nook tends to need a small table and a lamp in order to function properly, but I’ll have to hunt down just the right ones.

My wardrobe, and the door leading into the upstairs hall.

The bedroom receives a lot of light, but we don’t spend much time in it except to sleep. I used to spend a lot of time reading in my bedroom as a kid, but all my efforts to encourage this seem destined for failure, as I wander off to fiddle with something in another room. The computer is largely the culprit.

Our bedroom affords a lovely view into the Kogawa's carport.

Here’s the view onto the street from our south window. The street below is where our front door faces into, and you can spy on door-bell ringers from this vantage point. Other ex-pats have commented on this, but during the day, the door bell rings frequently. My first experience with this was during our first week a woman rang and I hopped out, expecting it was someone related to the move-in, like Tokyo Gas, etc. She balked a little when she saw I was foreign, but smiled and said she was offering cleaning services, and indicated a flyer. She had a satchel full of them. I asked her to wait a minute, but by the time I’d returned with shoes on, she’d vanished. I was a little offended at first, mostly because I was very sensitive to the constant avoidance, but I realized she was simply making her rounds and wasn’t really there to do anything besides greet people and stick stuff in mailboxes. Anyway, these rings come frequently enough now I find them annoying. We don’t have a peephole on the door, so you have to come out of hiding in order to see who’s at the door. Normally not a big issue, but I’d unfortunately given false hope to two Japanese Jehovah’s Witnesses, who handed me a Watch Tower and said they’d come back. Which, to my surprise they did, and somehow managed to keep Darrel stuck at the door for at least 10 minutes, and loaded us up with more literature. I felt bad because I think I’d been a little too nice when they first came, whereas I think Americans would have picked up on the classic “I’m not interested, but I’m not offended by your offer” politeness. I’m still having a hard time mastering Japanese body language, and common custom.

The shoe-box sized upstairs bathroom.

This really is a water “closet.” It seems claustrophobically small at first, but later you begin to realize it’s plenty of space. Another thing I may have not mentioned is the sink on top of the tank. When I first saw this fixture, I was living with my host family in Yokohama in 1997. I had a small feeling of disgust at the concept. This was probably due to my not fully understanding where the water came from, or how toilets worked in general, but I didn’t like the idea much. I overcame the feeling, though, and once I’d sussed it out, began to use it (albeit with a feeling of trepidation). The water comes straight from the pipe in the wall, and when you flush, the fresh water comes out through the tap for you to rinse your hands with, then drains down into the tank. This water then is used for the next flush, and so on. I’m over my toilet-sink fear, but am hesitant to use soap (I don’t know how it might affect the plumbing), which sort of defeats the point of the sink. I need to ask someone about it.

These glossy blue tiles are common in Japan.

There’s two small windows in the bathroom areas which look directly at the Ebihara’s house, and my childish first thought was “You could climb out onto the roof from here!” Except the tiles are so slick you’d probably slide straight down and be dumped onto the promenade path. I’ve always loved these blue roof tiles, you seem them all over the country adding a splash of blue to the greenery. Somehow, they’re definitively Japanese to me.

The upstairs sink fixture.

This is similar, but newer, than the hi-tech sink fixture downstairs. It also has a mirror defogger and two “konseputo” or outlets. There are fewer electrical outlets and more gas outlets (even in bedrooms) in this house, so the sink comes pre-made with outlets and built-in lights. The basin is really large, you could easily make a baby bath there. This one is mostly mine, and Darrel sort of owns the one downstairs. Behind the mirrors are shelves and drawers, which have a sort of modular “space station” feel to them. These funky sinks seems omnipresent in the houses we viewed, but this house had new, clean, hardly used ones.

The Don Quixote kao-moji cup.

This really is just to feature a mug I found at Don Quixote, the famous 100 yen store. The cup has a kao-moji or “face symbol” which is Japan’s equivalent of “emoticons,” but due to the different glyph sets, they are able to type out some fairly elaborate expressions. They far way beyond the obsequious smiley faces we pepper our emails with here, and are a little more “cutesy” than the staple ones we use. This is a common expression, which some people think looks like either a dog or a pig. I used these things a lot when I had some Japanese chat friends online, and they are still very much in vogue for phone mail messages.

The perilously steep staircase.

I can’t express how much I feel I will probably end up killing myself on this staircase. We saw a lot of narrow stair cases, but this one was the steepest and narrowest of them all. It’s easier to climb it on all fours. I have terribly balance when I wake up (I often smack into door frames, for example) and this doozy is right around the corner from the bedroom. Another Japanese space-saving device, the stairs here are steep. In one house I visited overnight during my homestay, a somewhat affluent family had a wooden staircase that folded down from the ceiling, almost treehouse style. It was the coolest thing, and I wish I’d been able to go up it.

The upstairs study.

This is the other “washitsu” room, although again the tatami were removed. It has shoji screens which cover a small alcove, which leads out into the balcony, and the door is so small Darrel has to duck to come inside. He’s bonked his head on it a few times. It also has sliding fusuma doors covering the oshiire closet, and the same wall paper as the downstairs washitsu room has. Darrel intends this room as a guest room, but we haven’t purchased a mattress or sleeper sofa for it yet. We’re hoping to get rid of the old sofa and get one of the slick-looking sleeper sofas we’ve priced around town.

My desk.

My desk is in the corner here, and two large book cases are hidden behind the screens. Yes, hidden. Because they contain lots of comics. This room, above the living room, receives a lot of light in the morning because it has an east-facing window, and the balcony doors to the south let in tons of light. It has a nice view of the garden and the Tougi’s house, and the other window has a view of, er, the Takahashi’s windows. I tend to keep the curtain closed, but I notice nearly all our neighbors keep their draped closed, and many of them keep their typhoon shutters closed. I would imagine it would make a room feel like a subterranean bunker, but I’ve been told they do it on account of the heat. My first thought was that it was a privacy thing, but we’ll see when it becomes winter. A majority of the neighborhood is retirees, and I know that elderly persons often become light-sensitive, so it could be that, too.

The laundry poles.

Last, but not least, are the laundry poles. It would seem most everyone here prefers to hang-dry laundry, as both a mildew-fighting technique and as an energy saver. We’re finding that these days, electricity is not that expensive as they might have you think. Since Americans are paying more than ever for electricity, the old “electricity in Japan is astronomically expensive” is a little outdated, prices have sort of titled the scales into balance. In fact, our first bill has led us to believe that we may be paying less than in Hawaii, where we forked over as much as $350 a month. There are many different laundry gadgets, including huge clips for hanging out rugs and futons, which you seem to see every day, draped over balconies. We just have a set of four poles, with little hanging clothes pins, and large blue clips to hold the poles in place in case of winds. There are also several hanging gadgets, which can dry socks or hold clothes hangers. The white clips can clip a hanger to the pole, but we chucked all our plastic hangers and replaced them with wood ones a while ago.

There’s still several more areas of the house, mainly the exterior I’d like to include here. Hopefully, I’ll have time to shoot a neighborhood section, in addition to smaller posts.

Our Kitchen

Notice how the sink and counter is entirely metal, rather than plastic, tile, or stone. When house-viewing, we found every house had that feature. You can also barely see the little trap doors beneath the island, which is a floor pantry for dry goods. We put MREs in there for fun (okay, for typhoon season actually).

New cupboard... but we couldn't find the doors to go with it at Ikea...

My mismatched dishes are no longer hidden away in a cockroach-ridden cupboard, but on nice display and within easy reach. Having room is really nice.

The elaborate garbage sorting center.

We’ve been pretty quick to get with the garbage sorting program, which is one of those touchy subjects when foreign neighbors move in. The reason, often overlooked, for this is because someone’s house has to be sacrificed as the garbage location for the block. Each block has its own trash cage and net, to keep raccoons and crows away. Someone also has to be the person to set up the cage and net. If you make a mistake, the garbage men put a label on your bag and leave. Imagine how you’d feel if you came home to find a sack of trash left in front of your house because someone was too lazy to wash it. Pretty steamed, I’d bet. A lot of foreigners complain about being scrutinized or reported as prejudicial behavior on the part of the neighbors, but it’s pretty easy to tell foreign trash, since it’s filled with stuff you can’t buy locally.

The garbage sorting calender alongside my kitchen calender. Yikes.

I still don’t have the days memorized, and the little piece of yellow paper is filled with a tiny list of what goes where. It’s sorted into burnables, non-burnables, bottles and cans, and plastics. The only stuff that goes to the landfill is non-burnables. So far, in two months we’ve only produced a bag of landfill trash the size of a soccer ball. That’s not a lot of landfill space, especially compared with how much recyclable waste I’ve had to throw out because there was no recycling program where I lived in NYC.

The little cactus family above my sink.

I have big plans for our decrepit-looking yard, but so far these are the only plants I have. Our yard is probably the shame of the neighborhood, heh.

Our tiny laundry room, complete with miniature washer and dryer.

The laundry room is actually one of my favorite rooms. The soft light that comes in is very peaceful, and it stays an even temperature.  It’s off camera, but to the right is a small door that leads to the back of the house, and has a small foot well in front of it. The back of our house actually faces the neighborhood garden promenade, so we seldom use this door, and do not store anything outside of it.

The would-be washitsu (Japanese room), complete with fusuma (sliding doors), shoji (paper door screens) and oshiire (futon closets).

This room we don’t use a particularly great deal, the tatami floor had been removed because the previous tenants had dogs. They also had covered the brand-new wood flooring with carpet, which was so ugly that I didn’t want to take the house at first, until I discovered the carpets were essentially large rugs that could be pulled up, revealing beautiful wood flooring beneath. Lots of homes in Japan have one washitsu room, a few we saw had a couple. In fact, we have another washitsu room upstairs.

Hanging screens to add some texture to some blank wall space.

These screens were pretty inexpensive (although required some effort and planning to assemble). Ever since I gave up pinning band posters to walls after college as my only form of wall decoration, I’ve never really collected much in the way of framed pictures. I don’t like buying pictures of stuff that don’t have a personal meaning, like framed pictures of river rocks from a place I never went, etc. But these screens seemed fun, so we grabbed two.

A view out into our garden.

You can see out into the garden, and although the sunlight is obscuring it, there is a small wooden ledge right outside of the doors which you can sit on. It’s a little weather-beaten (most of the outside of the house is a little worse for wear) but it still will be a nice little perch when the weather permits opening the windows. The étagère shelf in actually in what was probably the tokonoma, or display alcove. The raised ledge was probably removed when the house was remodeled, but it’s very clear what it was for. I’d like to add a light above the shelf to help re-establish the space as a display space. The idea the previous tenants may have used the space to put a dresser bugs me a little, but it also bugs me when a fish knife is used instead of a fruit knife. Frank Lloyd Wright compared the tokonoma to the fireplace in Western homes, and that thought is comforting to me for some reason.

Our living room, which is connected to the kitchen.

One thing I always hated about our old place was that the kitchen was tiny, dark, and filthy. Plus, it was blocked off from the living room by a low partition wall, meaning you could not see the other person, or watch the TV. It made cooking sort of like a chore rather than a social activity. I really enjoy being able to watch the goings-on in the living from this kitchen.

A sad portion of my library; most of my books are in storage at my Mom's.

I think I have something like 30 (or was it 60?) boxes of books back at my Mom’s in New Mexico. One of these days, we’ll have enough space to shelve them, but I always worry they’re going to be terribly damaged by the time I get them out of storage. I have a lot of trash reading, but I swear there’s a respectable library packed away (this is actually a source of embarrassment and guilt for me).

More of the living room, which I am hoping to get a rug for.

Just the entertainment center. There is a Wii Fit stashed under the couch. I sort of don’t like to spend time in this room because it feels too “open.” I think an area rug and some floor pillows would warm it up immensely. Darrel’s shot down all my rug choices so far, darn him. I also tried to get a funny picture on the TV, but no luck. I don’t know about Darrel, but I really enjoy Japanese TV. I watch a lot of Space Shower, which is a satellite music video channel that, gasp, actually plays music videos.

This is the biggest room in the house, Darrel's desk is also here.

The washitsu room is actually right next to the living room, but you have to go into the hall to get inside. It’d be cool if they were connected, but they aren’t. I think Darrel likes having his desk down here because he can rock out on Guitar Hero with total abandon, and I can hide from the racket upstairs.

If you look outside this door...

I should have moved the Guitar Hero junk, but I already did quite a bit of “interior design magazine” tidying up. Normally our house is way more strewn with magazines and dirty pajama pants.

...you can see our tiny little box car.

Yes, this is our ridiculous little Nissan Cube.  I should also mention squeezing this already-tiny car into this tiny parking space requires a co-pilot, two air traffic controllers, and a guy with a pair of light sticks. Once you get it in past the gate, there’s room to move around it.

This the entrance way, or genkan.

Although this picture is flattering, our genkan isn’t one of the more attractive ones I’ve seen. The shoe cupboard is in dire need of replacement, and made horrible squeaking noises until I used a bar of soap to wax down the doors (an old trick my Mom taught me for squeaky wood drawers). So far we haven’t run into the house with shoes on, but we do run out the front door in bare feet, and also put on our shoes in a sloppy fashion. Japanese folks are really careful not to touch the floor with socks or bare feet at all, and do this sort of shuffling back-up to the ledge, slip the shoes off and then carefully hop up onto the floor. Darrel and I never wear shoes at home, so this wasn’t much of an adaptation. I just hate cleaning dirty floors. Another odd development is that Darrel loves house slippers and I tend not to.

The shoe cupboard, or getabako.

I had to Photoshop most of these photos, but none so much as this one. The color of the wood is really garish and ugly, so I fiddled with the hue and saturation until it was the color I wished it was.  On the other hand, this shoe box is really a nice way to keep shoes from piling up in a heap at the corner of the door, like we used to do.

Our not-so-fancy toilet. As funky as this thing gets is a seat warmer.

Here's the sink, which is a sort of neat contraption. The mirrors have defoggers.

The bathroom is the last room downstairs, and is actually a really nice area. It’s super new and clean, so that even areas behind the  toilet (which were nightmare zones in our last place) are sparkling. It gets a lot of natural light, similar to the laundry room, and it faces north onto the garden promenade, and shaded by the trees growing along the path.

Our bathroom! This is another room which gets really nice natural light.

I’ve actually only taken one or two baths in here, I mostly use the hand shower. It’s really nice being able to just sit down and leisurely clean your face, shave, scrub, etc. The shower stool and basin are actually from MUJI.

The tub is a newer model, which is big enough for two people, and it's deep.

Here you can see how deep it is, there's a little seat too.

Yes, the lovely tub! One evening I actually found Darrel in here with the lights off, and he said he’d suddenly become paranoid people could see him through the window, so I had to go outside and check (you totally can’t see anything)! I have some little cherry blossom decorations on the window, which are sort of hard to see here, but look really cute up close.

This bizarre little control panel runs the bath tub.

It’s blurry, I know. I’m having a hard time with my new camera. This panel, and one almost exactly like it in the kitchen, controls the hot water level and temperature for the house. It also automatically fills the tub, and an automated woman’s voice announces when the tub is ready. You can turn her off, but I enjoy yelling at her. Some people have tubs that they can fill from work or the car on their cellphones. I’m sure to be using the tub more in winter.

Yes, everything is in Japanese, even the TV guide. Argh.

So, this is all for now! I’ll be doing our upstairs next, but this post has already taken me three hours to complete because of the amount of time I have to take in Photoshop correcting all these too-dark photos. It’s bright as the dickens in here, so I was appalled my 60-some photos made the place look like a dark rat’s nest. At any rate, the next set should be up in a day or two.

Our kitchen!

Okay, so it looks like WordPress is going to be quick for getting the photos on here. Now I just have to edit some of the screwed up light on the originals, which I might not have time for today. Apparently my camera isn’t smart enough to know when I’m shooting indoors unless it’s told, because a lot of them came out near black, despite it being a sunny day.

Speaking of sunny days, despite the announcement the rainy season was over in the Tokyo area, hah! It’s pouring again today. It’s now August! I feel like the rain must’ve come expressly for my arrival, and I appreciate the gesture but for the first time in my life I am sick of rain!

Oh yes, I also get my new glasses today! Apparently years of constant reading and writing has left me slightly near-sighted. I’m an official member of the Stanton clan now.

More updates to follow, as well as photos of the new house.

Darrel passed his Japanese driver’s test today, and so we went ahead and sealed the deal on a Nissan Cube we’d called about last week. More about driving  in Japan and our car later as well.

I hope to begin adding photos and really fleshing out the posts, as it is, we’ve been in a week-long orientation all of last week (which I probably could have skipped…) called the “AOB” or Area Orientation Brief. The week concluded with everyone taking their written driving exam, which I passed. I’ll be taking the actual driving part this Friday.

It was an overwhelming week for me, and I didn’t get a chance to settle down and post. I’ve been rushing around doing everything like purchasing Japanese rental insurance, studying for my driving exam, filling out medical applications, etc. I’ll maybe touch on a few points next week, but it’s likely to be busy this week as well.

I’m just very happy that I figured out how to use my phone and the Yahoo Keitai services, let alone drive a car, sheesh.

Our place looks awesome btw. It’s two stories with a yard and a covered parking slot just 5 minutes from an ocean boardwalk, grocery store, and train station. We’re also immediatly next to a park and a flower garden “promenade” (path) that runs through some of the neighborhood. Photos soon!