Our Kichijoji Home Sweet Home

We moved out of the Kichijoji Apartment Friday, August 28th, as Elder and Sister Yamashita were arriving late that night to take over the office couple responsibilities. We worked hard to leave the apartment clean, stock the fridge with a few things to tide them over, and left a little vase of flowers on the kitchen table. Elder and Sister Powell had made the apartment welcoming and comfortable for us, and we think we improved on it just a bit as we rearranged furniture and prepared for the Yamashitas arrival.

This is the toilet room. (I'm sure the Japanese have a way of saying that more delicately.) There is no separate sink in this tiny room, the sink is built in above the toilet tank, you can see just a corner of it here. When you flush the toilet, water runs from the faucet, and that water which you use to wash your hands becomes your next flush. Quite ingenious, really.

Here is the shower enclosure with the deep soaking tub. You clean yourself thoroughly with the shower and then get in the tub only to soak. The tub is heated and keeps the water at a prescribed temperature, so Japanese people leave the tub full of water for the next person to use, since they don't get into it until they're already clean. I'm still not convinced I'd want to share bath water with anyone!

This is a combination washer and dryer in one machine -- it can be set to wash only or dry only as well. It took great effort and help from Google Translate to figure out how this machine worked, but we came to really like it. The dry cycle is long and some things came out pretty wrinkled, so we learned to be selective in what we would put through the whole cycle. But overall, we thought it was a pretty great idea. Now if they'd just come up with a machine that folded the clothes as well.....

Here's the living room, small but functional and comfortable. Notice we have two clocks on the wall  -- one Tokyo time and one Mountain Standard time.

And here's the kitchen. That fridge is tiny!

Where the living room and kitchen meet. Not much wasted space here! The area behind the hutch is a closet, accessible from the living room, which holds the vacuum, water storage, two more kitchen chairs, and a few other miscellaneous items. There are sliding panels that can separate the kitchen and living room.

The bedroom, where you pretty much have to turn sideways to walk between the bed and the wall.

Here's the entry hall. The lower tiled area is the genkan, where you leave your shoes.

And here's the built-in cabinet in the entry hall, where you keep your shoes out of sight!

We've been very comfortable in this little apartment, it's modern and very light. We liked that it's a little distance from the Honbu and we got to enjoy the community as we walked to and from the office each day.