A few of you who have Skype have seen bits and pieces of our place here in Japan. However, I thought I'd give you a more comprehensive look at our place since 99.99999% of you will never be coming over for a visit. Sad for me! (I hold out 0.000001% hope that someone will stop by... you never know. lol)
So.... Welcome to our house! You will enter through the garage, and into the boot room.
Super duper exciting, I know. The door you see goes out to the garage, then we have a cement floor, raw wood shelved boot room. How serviceable! (As a side note - if I get any more shoes I''m going to have to start using Travis' shelf. hee hee)
From the boot room you enter the house facing the washing machine and dryer. (Hey, it's the back door - what were you expecting?) Notice the not one, not two, but THREE garbage cans? That's because we have to sort our garbage by plastic, paper, and cans/jars. If we don't the garbage men will stop picking up our garbage. I also have another garbage can under the sink for 'food-type trash' like carrot peels, strawberry tops, etc.
And when you turn right out of the boot room door you see the kitchen. A fairly decent size, it is the biggest I've had since living with my parents. The sink is HUGE - and it's all one big basin. No double sink for us! You could wash several small children in there at once without a problem... or you know, 3 watermelon... or just a lot of dishes. ;)
A view back into the boot room from the eating area. Our fridge is all by itself on that wall, something that I originally thought was weird - but have since decided is rather convenient and serviceable.
Here is the eating area. I've got the family calendar up on the wall - the first wall decor I hung when I got here! Our "backyard" *cough cough* is out those sliding doors. Our "backyard" *cough cough* includes a small patio for our BBQ - and about 2 feet of moss/grass before the fence. If you look hard you can see the patio railing, and the fence. Basically - no backyard. The cube in the bottom right of the picture is one of our heaters. They are room specific and run on gas. They actually work really well - but with the price of gas in this country, we didn't even turn that one on this winter.
This is the view of the living room when you enter from the eating area/kitchen. The dividing wall separates the TV from the fridge, and carries down until about the end of the kitchen table. We do have a tiny little air conditioner in this room (above the heater in the corner), but it really doesn't work all that well, so we have just been using the ceiling fan. Those bookcases became a necessity pretty quickly after we moved in - we have a lot of books! (I've got even more in storage at my parent's place that I haven't gotten up here yet, and I donated roughly 75% of my book collection when I moved up here.)
A view exactly opposite of the last picture - the entry to the left goes into the eating area of the kitchen, and the hall goes down to the bedrooms. In general, the house needs more artwork and pictures for the walls, but from this angle it looks like I've actually decorated a little bit on the walls! The cherry cabinet in the back opens up into a full bar and is from Korea. I love it because it is pretty closed, but really functional open.
This is our front door boot room. We never use it ourselves, but if people come over this is the door they would come through. Like our lack of front yard? That gravel is the road...
The wooden sliding doors on the left open to the front boot room, and then we have the huge sliding doors that double as great light for the room - and a great way to get big furniture into the house! Don't you love how the curtains don't even reach the floor? These windows didn't have any drapes or anything when we moved in, and since the road is RIGHT there we really needed some for privacy sake. Those were the longest ones the BX carried. (think a itsy bitsy teensy tiny Wal-mart.)
This is the view of the living room as you come in from the front boot room. The three cutouts in the wall look into the eating area.
Down the hallway... and on the first door on your left you will find:
The guest bathroom! In the back you can see the second door way the opens into the literal BATH room. The bathtub can be closed off to the rest of the bathroom - which is actually a little weird the first few times you bathe. It is a tiny little room.
The first door on the right down the hallway is command central! I think this picture is hilarious, because it looks like our chairs should be switched. Travis gets the big desk for his multiple monitors, and I get the big comfy desk chair. This room is suppose to be one of three bedrooms, but we use it as an office/computer room.
I also have my tower o' scrapbooking stuff right there if I get a hankerin'. The tackle box works perfectly to hold all of my little bits and bobs.
The second door on the right leads here. This is our guest bedroom. No takers yet, but Travis and I hold out hope. Don't you love the ugly blue blinds? They are yellowing on the edges! We have them in both the smaller bedrooms - such a fashion statement. Heater, closet....basic room.
At the end of the hallway is a big walk in closet. Mostly it has become a catch all - but I go in and organize every so often. Luggage, linens, paperwork... hey it's nice to have the place to put it all! Our new comforter set is still in its packaging in the closet - it is just too warm to be adding any extra blankets to the bed at the moment!!!
This is the view of our bedroom from the door. Travis' Nana made him the quilt on the bed. Notice above the bed another air conditioner. Thankfully, this one works really pretty well, so we run it at night and get a decent nights sleep. The green out the left window is over the fence of the "backyard" *cough cough*. Out my window is the house next door. The blinds stay down most of the time, but today was actually a bit cool and I desperately wanted to open the house up and get some of the fresh breeze in. We have had so much heat and humidity this past week that the house was beginning to feel stuffy. After today and this evening it should be much improved.
The room from the corner by the end of the bed. We share the drawers in that dresser... but I have 100% taken over the top of it with perfume and jewelry boxes. Oops?
Our walk-in closet. His and hers. :)
A view of the room from the dresser. The banner on the wall is something I picked up in China. The four characters in the middle say "Peace and Love follow you always" the artists signature is the series of characters along the left hand side, and the little characters running down the right say "to my Canadian friend Kristen Haver". The guy who made it for me ran a tiny art gallery in Beijing and when he found out I was from Canada he offered to do some calligraphy for me. Of course, after I accepted he talked me into buying the rice paper and silk banner that he did it on... and then asked for a tip! Cheeky man or good salesman? You decide.
Our bathroom is an en-suite, and considerably smaller than the main bathroom of the house. It works just fine for our needs though - and the shower totally makes up for the rest of it.
That's right, I took a picture of the shower... sort of. Its huge and walk in, and has it's own separate door. I couldn't figure out a good way to get a shot of it - but yeah. Yay shower?
So that's our house - I hope you enjoyed your tour. Also, I hope the tour made sense and you aren't completely confused as to how all of these rooms work together. Aside from the humidity and warmth of it during the really hot and sunny days we love it.
P.S. This does not get you out of coming to see it in person if time/money/logistics allow! Just an FYI.
LOVE YA!
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