Apartment Photos

I got a request recently for some photos of our apartment.  I guess I talked a lot about about the apartment hunting process, and showed a couple pictures of funny things about the apartment, but never put pictures up of the finally product.  So here we go.

You might remember my complaints about the marble all over the place.  But, I'm getting used to it (though every time I drop something in the entryway I'm worried the floor will break).  John was really excited to get the perfect stool for putting his shoes on.

Between you and me, he never uses it.

This is our bedroom.  We've had the hardest time figuring out how to hang pictures in our apartment.  Apparently apartments in Tokyo are really strict about putting holes in the wall and will charge you massive fees if you do.  And because we have a textured wall paper we can't use command strips.  In the living room we have a picture rail that let us hang a few pictures from the ceiling with fishing line, but there wasn't one in the bedroom.  We finally found tiny pins (the kind for displaying dead butterflies in a case) that make holes small enough they blend into the weave of the wallpaper.  This painting is just stretched canvas, so it's light enough for the pins.

We tried a couple arrangements in the living room before we settled on this one.  We like it because it does a good job of keeping the eating area separate from the living room area, and when you sit on the couch you look out at the skyline.

John organized our books by color

My plants.  The basil's been having a hard time.

The kitchen opens just past John's desk.   It's a really good sized space, and I've adjusted to not having an oven.  We might get one eventually, but for now this is working.

The set up I do have is 2 induction (IH) burners (and one that's not IH) as well as a fish oven, which I've been using as a toaster.   The IH burners are controlled by buttons on the surface, and the oven and non-IH burner are controlled by a little panel that pops out.  There are all sorts of intricacies I've learned though.  The non-IH burner can't be used at the same time at the oven.  And the IH burners can't go to high while the oven is on. 

The fish oven and control panel

I can read about two thirds of what this says!

 It's strange how quickly life here has become normal.  Now that we've gotten all our furniture and everything's set up this place really feels like home.  Before moving here I was so scared of living in a big city.  I felt like I might get lost between the skyscrapers and the crush of people.  Instead I've been surprised to find how much our neighborhood really is just a little neighborhood.  We have parks nearby, and there's very little traffic at all on our street.  It actually feels very calm and quiet here.  I recognize the cashiers in the supermarkets now and John has people he recognizes on his walk to work - like the old man throwing a tennis ball to his dog every morning.  (There are 6 different Starbucks with a 10 minute walk of our apartment though - that's different!)  Life has settled into a pretty nice routine.