Apt Tour and Cow Guts

Kari Writes:

Hola friends!  As promised here is a little tour of our apartment:

Cool things to notice about the kitchen:  By the sink you can see a square outline on the floor.  This is actually a sweet trap-door for storing rice!  It's super airtight.  Also there is a step down to the front door. The floor is concrete and this is where shoes live.  Yes, even we Americans follow the Japanese shoe rules in our house!  So we get home, slip off our shoes and then step up into our house.

Our kitchen which is approximately the same size as our American apartment :p
On the right is our front door.

Our living room doubles as our bedroom (or vise-versa).  In Japan most people don't have actual bed frames or mattresses.  We have a closet full of "futon" mats and pads that we can set-up or hide away as we need.  We currently have it stacked three high for extra comfort.

From the front door looking in: This is our living room/bedroom.
When the sliding doors are open it connects to the kitchen for a nice open layout

 I call this room "the desk room" so I guess it's our office.  It hasn't really found its purpose other than being a  place to put our clothes and stuff!

The office. aka: where we put a bunch of junk for the time being.

 In America the bathroom is home to (generally) both the toilet and the shower.  Not so here in Japan!  If you think about it going to the bathroom and taking a shower are pretty opposite things - so why would you do them in the same room?  So we have an itty bitty toilet closet.  And the top of the toilet has a spout.  When you flush the (clean) water comes out the spout and then is used to refill the toilet bowl. Eco friendly!

The toilet room. Notice the spout on top of the toilet. 

So if you're looking at the toilet and take a left this is what you'll see:

The shower room

The sink/laundry area

We have a cute lil "egg style" washing machine over in the corner.  It does the job pretty well.  Though we have to hang-dry everything which can be a pain!

Then next door to the toilet room is the shower room.  You can see there is a tub but that is strictly for baths.  The floor of this room has a drain so you just shower away while standing next to a bath tub.  

Soooo that is our little house!  We're not especially looking forward to winter as we hear things such as "insulation" and "furnaces" don't exist here!

Yesterday we went with some of Ian's co-workers out to an apparently "world famous" Yakiniku restaurant.  Yakiniku is "Japanese Barbecue "  Basically you sit around a table that has a gas grill in the middle and they bring out all sorts of raw meats and veggies.  So you pop 'em on the grill till they are charbroiled, dip them in some yummy sauce, and enjoy.  You don't even need a plate - just your dipping sauce and chopsticks.

Yamane-sensei flipping the meat

There were some very interesting meats that came to our table.  Such as cow tongue and various intestines.

mmmm raw cow tongue!

intestines roasting on an open fire

 Ian and I both tried the tongue. The flavor was fine - but the texture was a bit difficult especially since we knew it was tongue. I would have much rather been oblivious about that one!  We both tactfully avoided the intestines.  That's still a bit hard to stomach (hahah get it?? stomach?? Oh I am funny).


Well that's all for now!  Feel free to comment on here or facebook if you have any questions that you're DYING to ask about life in Japan :)

-Kari