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A furnished living room... The couch is supposed to have a connecting piece between the sofa and the love seat making a 'U' couch, however, put together, it literally was flush against the wall on the right, pushed against the wall behind the sofa (which has big cabinets that were rendered useless) and the other end of the sofa was flush against the wall on the left. I worried that this would lead to mildew, so we took out the connecting piece, tied cord around it and hoisted it up onto the roof of the sun porch, and through a window to put it in our bed room since it's the biggest room in the house and has plenty of room for a seat...
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The dinning room as it is now. For those of you who know us, yes you are seeing some new furniture. We probably could have used our tax return to get ourselves out of a pile of debt, but instead we decided that rather than sit on the floor, we would buy a new couch (the old one literally fell apart on it's own before the move) and since a really nice one was hardly more than a cheap'o one, we went for it. The table, well, our only excuse for that is that the movers lost all the hardware to put the old one back together again. I know, pretty feeble excuse, but that's all I've got, lol.
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A play room for DD. DH insisted that we buy this playhouse for DD, and my arguments were short lived, so our tax return is officially depleted... The 'cool' little foam mats with the little animals on them are really only cool in theory, because as soon as an 18 mo old realizes that they come apart, they are all over the play room and being chewed on constantly!!! Luckily they were super inexpensive at Livin, cause they may soon find themselves on their way to an ebay listing or something.
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Glass doors leading to the bathroom suite as I like to call it. This is located on the ground floor. Once you walk through them, the shower/Ofuro room is on the left, in front of you is the mirror (which with the touch of a button heats up to remove fog) and drawers with washer and dryer just beside and to the right is the toilet room with the super high tech toilet (not the one pictured in the last blog, that is just a regular toilet with the only amenities being heated seat and hand sink atop the tank). The toilet in this room is equipped with a seat warmer, bidet, some other kind of spraying option, plus an air dry option as well as some other buttons that the housing agent told me 'don't touch', so I don't know what they do. The only down fall to this area was that there were no towel rods, but a quick trip to Livin and about 1000 Yen later, I was ready to install them myself!
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One of our two kerosene heaters. These are AWESOME! They make alot of heat for relatively inexpensive cost. These are pretty nice models of the heaters, and I guess they are probably pretty expensive. I don't know though, because they are on loan from the Navy for the duration of our stay here, as are our dishwasher, washer and dryer, fridge, and a couple of power boosting transformers.
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DD's room, still not put together...
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My sewing room. With doors leading into the master bedroom, and shoji blinds on the huge windows which lead out onto the balcony. This is where we brought the other part of the couch in... This room has 4 1/2 Tatami (ta-ta-me) mats.
The MASTER!! The biggest room in the whole house by far! There in the corner is the rest of the couch... The unit on the wall up in the corner is a heater/dehumidifier/air conditioner, and was finally installed about 3 days after we moved in.
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Here's one of 7 closets in the house (only half is visible due to the sliding doors). 6 are this size and one is only the top and middle section, that's where I'm sitting, lol. The only downfall is none of them are tall enough inside to hang a dress... But I guess if that's as bad as it get's I'm pretty stinkin' lucky huh?
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The 'Man Room', after DH had a go at it. He's not done decorating yet, as we still need to figure out how to hang things on the walls without making the paper/sand mixture coating crumble and fall apart...
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Tatami mats in the man room.
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our house from the back side.
And with the rain shutters closed. There are 7 panels that slide across to enclose the house. Closing these at night would also help to keep the cold out, however, opening the doors to do so lets in alot of cold all at once, so I haven't yet decided which is better...
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The little hole in the wall used to push the panels in and out of their storage area (pictured below). The panels slide into the holding area and then must be pushed forward to make room for the rest of the panels, then to put them back out, they must be pulled forward and then slid out of the little slot and across the doorways. There is also a little wooden sliding door to close this little hole to help keep the cold out.
well, I sure haven't been brave enough to try it yet, lol! So I guess we'll see when I brave up and give it a go...
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the photos. So glad you are enjoying your house and I want one of those tubs that recirculates my water and a system to call to the kitchen! :0)
ReplyDeleteAll that specialty stuff makes me think WOW!!! I love love the new furniture...how's little miss enjoying her new play house? Ok well enjoyed the tour although some is quite confusing since I can't see how some of it works...looks like a mansion compared to what we have though...definately super cool!!!
ReplyDeleteThe kerosene heater looks just like the one we used wheb we were in Kimitsu. Coes it have auto shut-off if the carbon monoxide bets to high? In Kimitsu the fire dept drives around all night ringing a bell once each hour to remind people to open a window for a few minutes. It was a grear comfort to hear the bell and know that you hadn't yet succomed to CO poison.... or Saint Peter was ringing his bell calling you home.
ReplyDeleteYou do realize how unusual it is to have an oven don't you? Most homes have a 3 burner instead of just two,tho, I think, at least on newer homes.
It might be good to check with the property manager before you attach anything to the walls. dad
yes it does have an auto shut of, and beeps like crazy if you even set a teaspoon on top of it. We don't have the local CO patrol though. From the different houses we looked at the info for before we checked into this one, it really was rare to have more than 2 -3 burners and if you were lucky a 'fish grill', so yes, I am super glad we have an oven and though it's tiny, it has been a huge help thus far in keeping us fed. Are you mentioning about attaching things to the walls due to the risk of electrocution, since there is a much different logic used in their wiring plans?
ReplyDeletemissy, yes, little miss LOVES her playhouse, especially the fact that it has it's own doorbell that makes like five different sounds. She laughs and squeels and her eyes open up huge as she says 'WOW!!' Her other favorite thing to do is stand in the window that leads out to the picnic table and hand things out like it's a drive through... guess maybe we made too many trips through McDonalds on base during moving week.
ReplyDeleteAs per attaching anything to walls, the idea of repainting or repapering to redecorate or repair minor wear and tear on ones home doesn't seem to have been discovered, so in more prosperous times they would tear down and build new every 10-15 yrs. From my observation all wals are covered with some type of vinyl, wallpaper or panels that are perfect reproductions of knot-free wood panels, as these cannot be repaired with a dab of putty and paint they may not allow nails in the walls to hang pictures or other decorations.
ReplyDeleteIt is highly likely that your house has no more than 2 inches of insulation if any at all, and every wall extends down thru the floor and is open into the crawlspace allowing air from under the house to circulate up thru the walls to the attic, this tends to make a house difficult to heat and why they don't heat bedrooms but do heat toilet seats, my guess this makes potty training of children much easier. dad
Our house is actually about 32 years old, and I have certainly seen what you mean about not just repairing things, though the walls here are for the most part good, some of the doors have been damaged, and 'fixed' with tape or any other random sticky sided something that could be found at the hardware store, ie weather stripping, lol. As far as our walls, they aren't wood paneling, but instead many are covered in a strange mix of paper, sand and pigment. If greatly damaged, large pieces will begin to chip off (previous damage in my sewing room) though saturating it with glue, while not pretty, seems to keep the whole wall surface from crumbling. The wall in our laundry/mirror area of the bathroom is on the lower half a much more large grit of sand, while the upper half is much more paper than any of the rest and looks a bit more like drier lint, if you happened to toss a bunch of glitter into the drier with your clothes. our bedroom has dark wood paneling, running crosswise rather than up and down, and a few rooms have wall paper, which if torn or damaged, they have just glued parchment paper over...
ReplyDeleteHmmm... It does sound like you have an old home for Japan, sounds like the walls may be traditional Japanese plaster, made from rice and sand,tho it may be of more modern ingredients. It looks like most of the rooms have a wood board at the wall ceiling line or at the top of the window line that maybe some small hooks could be attached and wires or string could hand down to whatever height is needed to hang pictures. Oh, by the way, I am not weary of the pictures you've posted of the house. Just curious, do the light fixtures plug into outlets in the ceiling with a twist lock, which is something that we should do here in the states as most everyone is able to change light fixtures as you don't have to mess with wiring. dad
ReplyDeleteyeah, most of the walls do, which is how I planned to hang most things. I was also thinking of trying those things that stick to the wall but pull off, but was afraid that they might just pull all the texture stuff off with them... that would be bad... The lights do indeed unplug, which I think is fabulous and appreciate you mentioning, as I didn't know that and now I know a much easer way to clean them than what I was planning, since everything is so dusty in here. That among other things is definitely something the US could benifit from copying. I think we could gain alot from adopting many of their traffic safety laws too, for instance one drink will put a person over the legal limit for driving. The way they punish crime is also actually a deterent rather than a little vacation. And while the garbage sorting is a little confusing at first, it really makes alot of sense and I think I'll be disappointed when I get back to the states and can only recycle 1 kind of plastic, some metal and a few kinds of paper (unless you're in an apartment where they only recycle two kinds of paper and nothing else), and here they recycle all plastics, all metal, glass bottles, all kinds of paper (unless it's soiled with something nasty or flamable) and even milk cartons and styrofoam have a home in recycling. I actually don't feel like I'm burdening our world by my very existance. Okay, well enough of my soapbox... LOL I just think we could learn alot from this place.
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