Living Conditions in Japan
I’ve been in Japan for a bit now, and as I’ve subtly alluded to, I’m not sleeping on the streets. Previously, I’ve mentioned that some sort of apartment exists, but I’ve not really gone into more detail than that. The purpose of this post is to shed some light onto the nature of my living conditions. To that end, this post will probably be pretty short because the apartment is small and generally, apartments are not very interesting. This post will be divided up into 4 short sections: my room, the kitchen, the toilet, and the bathroom.
I’ve already shown you a picture of my room in my first post about Japan. It still looks like that. It’s quite large by Japanese standards. I have a western style bed (with a sorry excuse for a mattress), a desk, 2 shelves and a bunch of hanging racks. It basically serves as a place to sleep, eat meals, and hang my clothes up to dry.
The kitchen is small with a stove, fridge, and washing machine. I’ve only used the fridge and the washing machine thus far, but I’m sure the stove is fine as well. I use the fridge to store my bottle of water, and that works for me. I don’t have any other use for such a place.
The toilet is essentially a closet with a toilet in it. It’s fairly small, but I can fit inside fairly easily. It’s one of those robot toilets Japan is famous for: heated seat, bidet, etc.
The bathroom, which contains a shower and a bath is much larger than you might expect. This is probably because in Japan the bathrooms sole purpose is taking showers and baths. It’s somewhat convenient and much better than the shower stalls I’ve seen at other places.
I have pictures of all these places but they’re inaccessible at the moment. I’ll try to put them up soon.
Ooh! I tried one of those toilets for the first time in New York last weekend. They tickle. A lot. D:
Comment by Stephie — August 1, 2008 @ 1:47 pm
I am back from Bogota (Saturday)Big city, more like being in New York City or Chicago than the tropical “margaritavilles” I have been
in before. Lots of men in suits roaming about purposefully. Chilly low 50’s in the morning, 5 degrees north of equator but 8000 feet
high. 24 hour electricity and filtered running water. Prices high as US (gas was $6 a gallon)Spanish comprehension was better than I
expected but my answering, the formation of syntactically relevant sentences, not so good, especailly at speed. I think I will concentrate on Mexican
Spanish. When are you coming back? D-lirious
Comment by Darrel — August 12, 2008 @ 4:58 am
Oops! forgot to comment on living quarters-toilets that flush are good enough for me-we had to carry our own TP and no seats on
any john. Heated splashes were not coming from the toilet (grin) Did you find a chair to accomodate your American giantness? The apartment
layout sounds like the Chinese apartment that Jay Brown lives in (he is in school there)He posted a picture of it. All the appliances fit in a 2 square foot area. D.
Comment by Darrel — August 12, 2008 @ 5:03 am
I don’t understand how the no seats thing works. Are you supposed to not ever sit down?
It’s maybe not as bad as China but it’s definitely space efficient.
Oh, I mentioned in an earlier post that I just bought a chair for 10 dollars at the pawn shop and it’s done wonders. The problem was mainly that they were giving me crappy chairs.
Comment by Erek Speed — August 13, 2008 @ 9:23 am
Have lived in Japan for a while and have gradually gotten used to sitting on the floor! Must say you’re lucky to have a separate bathroom and toilet, a lot of the places I’ve lived in have them together (called a “unit bath”). Heated toilet seats still creep me out for some reason though 🙂
Comment by Hugo — September 7, 2010 @ 11:46 pm