Apartment: Day 1

Yesterday, about 18 hours after landing in Japan and an hour and a half walk though and explanation of how apartments work in Japan, I was passed the keys to my new apartment. My new home in the neighborhood of Higashi-ku. Upon being handed the keys, I felt the same relaxed feeling I had when I moved from downtown Chicago to Lincoln Square, it's nice to live in a community again.

Today, first things first, when you get an apartment in Japan, things are usually missing. In my case it was the fridge and washer / dryer. Here is the kitchen before, no fridge:See that cutout on the floor, kind of near the sink? It's about 1 foot deep storage box, I have no idea what to put in there. Normally, you would have to bring your fridge from your previous apartment or buy a new one. But I was lucky and a friend leaving for the US gave me her fridge. I was able to hire a moving company to help, here they are moving the fridge into that pocket.They were really careful not to damage the wall paper.After they were finished, this is how the fridge looked. She also gave me a couch, there on the left.

Another funny thing, I'm still illiterate, can't read Japanese. But the relocation company found a way around this, simply put English everywhere. Below is the thermostat.This of course does not really help you learn Japanese because they put the stickers right over the characters, but for now this will keep me from being cold this winter. The building does not have a hot water tank too.Instead, it has point of use water heaters at each sink, tub and shower. and the box above controls the heaters. When you are not using hot water, you can simply turn it off. The box above is in the kitchen just right of the fridge. If you push that button, 'Automatic water fill-up,' the bath tub over in the bathroom fills up with water set to the temp seen on the screen. I'm not sure when I would need to fill the bath tub from the kitchen, but there must some sort of need for this.

I also want to start working on the garden soon, but I'm not sure what I can plant now, as winter will be here soon.If anyone has any ideas let me know. I assuming all those short green plants are weeds and will pull those out but I might leave behind the little trees.