My Apartment

Or as Lauren affectionately calls hers, my shoebox.  If hers is a shoebox, though, mine is toddler-sized, or maybe one of those little boxes you get jewelry in. Don’t get me wrong, I like it – it’s functional and easy to keep clean, if rather unattractive, and there’s a nifty loft that will be very nice to sleep in once summer ends and the darn heat stops rising.  You’d be surprised how quickly you get used to preparing dinner in your living room on a table the comes up to the middle of your shins because the only space in the kitchen that is not burner or sink is the top of the microwave. 

…my kitchen is a little small.  But we’ve made peace.  I agreed not to badmouth it to the other, bigger kitchens, and it agreed not to toss my dishes off their precarious drying stack or hide things behind the refrigerator. 

It took me three days to get up the courage to go near the washing machine, and at the rate I was sweating through clothes the first week, it was no small pile forcing me to do so.  Japanese washing machines are mysteries of nature, lacking water temperature gauges and easily identifiable start-stop buttons, but possessing a plethora of kanji-labelled buttons and no apparent place to put detergent.  Two hours, many google searches, and a bit of screwed-up courage later, I had clean, wet clothes.  Clean, wet clothes.  And nowhere to dry them. 

Japanese houses, almost universally, lack one thing Americans find essential – dryers.  The attitude is very much “we have these wonderful things called time and a clothesline that together dry our clothes for us - why should we spend money and space on a machine to do it for us?”  So my apartment after laundry day looks like a transplanted Minnesotan’s autumn wardrobe fashion show – which is to say, a lot of long sleeves.  (Bad call on my part).  With the addition of an outside clothesline, however, life has gotten easier. 

And then… I got a bookshelf!  And a rice cooker.  Apartment complete.  Pictures later, after I’ve cleaned.  >.>