Welcome to our New(est) Apartment!

On March 28 we moved from our tiny apartment on campus to a bigger apartment 5 minutes from campus.   Gone are the days of no where to sit but on our beds and doorways too small for Kris!  Gone are the days of having to invite ourselves over to other peoples' apartments -- now we are the hosts with the most :-) We LOVE our new place: we'd like to welcome you in and give you a tour.

Entryway  

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Please take off your outside shoes at the door and put on a pair of guest slippers from the shoe cupboard.  You can hang your coat up too.



 

The Kitchen

Instead of 1 burner for a stove, we now have 2! We also have plenty of cabinet space and a full-size refrigerator (small for US sizes, but huge compared to our last one!).  And now we have room for guests to come over and eat too!

View from the kitchen sink.  The hall to the left is the entry way. Directly in front of you is the living room.  There are sliding doors to the living room so you can block it off to keep heat in the kitchen, or you can take the doors off completely to make it one big room.  The door to the right leads to the tatami room.

This is our microwave AND our oven -- doesn't look like I will be baking big batches of anything.  Pretty hard to use since it's all in Japanese!  The assistants are going to label it in English for us, though. 

Living Room



Living Room view from the sliding doors.  Notice our laundry drying on the porch the "Japanese" way?

Kris working at the desk.

Bed Room

Our bedroom is pretty tiny, but at least we finally are sleeping on the same bed now instead to 2 twins pushed together! (Duffy is enjoying having the whole bed to himself right now)



View from our window of the adorable kids in our housing area.  They are all over and they are so cute.  They say "hello" and "bye bye" to us over and over.  It's adorable.


Shower Room

I still LOVE my Japanese-style baths! You shower on one side of the room and then soak in the tub afterward.  I think the mirror and shelves are low because people in Japan will often squat on a stool to shower.



Toilet Room

Since this is Japan, the toilet is in a small room that is separate from the sink and shower.  I took a picture of our toilet to show you how it comes with a remote-control bidet!  And see the spout at the top of the toilet?  That's traditionally used to rinse off your hands.

Quotes from The Office make for good bathroom reading!



Our washer and dryer are between the shower room and toilet room.  Now you can see why we hang as many clothes as possible!  Otherwise, we are guessing at what the machine is doing!

Tatami Room

This is our traditional tatami room.  It has a nice window ledge and two huge armours for our clothes -- we each have our own instead of having to share one!