Monday, September 04, 2006

Apartment Tour


Since I've commented on many other Japan blogs that I enjoy the pictures they post of their places, I decided I should at least offer the option of letting people see what my place looks like. I also want friends and family who read this to have a look around if they'd like. For interested parties, I've posted a pretty thorough "guided tour" of the inside of our place. As I've mentioned before, the interior of the apartment is 20 years old though we've been here for only 17 of those years.

The .html still needs tweaking though so some display weirdnesses might occur. The gallery was automatically generated from Photoshop.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great post. I enjoyed reading your detailed descriptions and I must say that you keep a pretty clean apartment. Or did you tidy just for the photos? ;-)

I'm still debating whether I want to do the same sort of post with my house but some of the rooms are finished yet.

BTW, you mentioned some shopping at Costco. Do you rent a car when you go out there?

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the great post:) This is one aspect of Japan I never get to see while I'm there, just the outside of houses, so it's nice to have a peek inside:)

Shari said...

Roy: Thanks. :-) Here is a male/female perspective difference. I thought it looked pretty dirty because of age. I do clean pretty well for several reasons. The primary reason is that I have 6 private students who visit for lessons each week so it's like having guests most days. The other reason is my husband developed allergies several years ago and they cleared up when I started to vacuum and dust assiduously.

As for Costco, we used to go in for a van rental with my (now former) boss but it cost about 7,000 yen for our half. It's far cheaper to simply have all the items sent to us by takkyubin. Depending on whether or not you ship back cold stuff, it'll cost an average of 1300 yen. Cold shipping is 800 yen per box and regular 500 yen each. They pack things for you so it's not much effort to do this.

Sean: I'm glad you enjoyed the pictures. I thought it might all be "too much." ;-) Thanks for your comment.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the pictures. I agree with that it looks pretty clean to me. Thank you

Shari said...

Ah, leo, it's always nice to hear someone say your house looks clean when you're a housewife. ;-)

Thanks for reading and for your comment!

mitzh said...

You have a very nice place, so clean and organized.

Anonymous said...

Nice pics! It looks more like a house to me with wood frames. Is it an apartment tho? wow 20 years it doesnt look old at all!

Andy

Shari said...

Hi, and thanks for your comment. It is an apartment. The types of wood frames you see aren't uncommon in Japanese apartments though I believe they are less common in newer places than older ones.

Our apartment is relatively clean but it shows its age more than the pictures perhaps indicate. The flash on the camera tends to "blow out" the shadow detail enough to not show the Tokyo smog/soot-stained walls (which cannot be cleaned because vigorous cleaning makes the wall coating come off). I do vacuum the walls and floors relatively regularly though so it is as clean as it can be for its age. I also take a basin of soapy water to all the surfaces about once every two weeks to try and keep the dust under control on surfaces. It's not necessarily because I'm a clean freak but because it really helps keep my husband's allergies at bay.