Konban wa!

We have finally got the house looking a little like a home.  Huzzah all round and cheap sparkling wine as a treat.  Many of you have been enquiring about the parlous state of our parlour so here we are, the very first Virtual Guided Tour...

The Entrance and Dining room

The door opens out, clocking the visitor in the face.  After that's been negotiated, we move on through past our makeshift shoe rack which is just a wire vegetable holder.  This is where you have to kick off your shoes to come into the house.  This is a right pain in the arse generally, because there is about enough room to walk through rather than actually mess about trying to manipulate objects.  Once barefoot, we look out on a vista of...well...a rug and furniture jammed together.  That's a little harsh, we have a giant 'Japanese chipperfield' sort of thing.  It's probably preposterously expensive and really dominates the room, but in a nice sort of a way.  Notice that light hanging down from the ceiling?  That's about as powerful as the Sun, which is good because there's little or no natural light in most of the house.  Annoyingly, the lightswitch for that one controls both the bedroom and this room.  That's really fun for those sleeping in while the other person is up at silly o clock.  Anyway, it's nice to have a table at western height and we can sit up and enjoy food and work and things.  Moving on, we slip through the door frame with no door to...

The Kitchen

We briefly glance at it before going to...

The Bathroom

Which contains a super deep bath.  The bottom of the bath is actually at floor level, which feels very odd when one steps in.  However, it's quite short so we can't stretch out.  Ho-hum, one should never bath at home when Sento is so close I suppose.  Turn on the shower and it'll take your skin off.  It's regulated at about 70 megatons of pressure per cubic mm.  It also gets the whole room either soaking or damp or both.  We have little hyaku-en sorters all over the place.  We also have the crowning glory of the house, our washlet.  We can heat the seat, have two seperate bidet-style functions etc etc.  It rocks...but we must out and away...

The Kitchen (again)

Immediately to our left is some sort of water heating thing that yells things at us every now and again.  It appears to control the amount of hot water we have.  It's all in kanji so we don't understand.  Also here is our new kitchen unit which is nice because it's our only surface for chopping etc.  After that we slide the back balcony door open and gaze out at a stone wall.  Which is 3ft away and much bigger than the house.  It's a sports thing for the school behind us.  On this balcony is our washing machine.  Which is probably safe, we hope.  It means lots of beasties can wander through though.  Coming back, we pass the gigantic mega-fridge which is large enough to house another family.  Coming around the cape of the fridge sees us looking at our 2 (two) hobs and no oven.  We have a mini-grill that does toast in under a minute.  So no cakes.  Huzzah!  We have about a cubic centimetre of storage and lots of hooks we've suctioned on to the wall.  Great fun.  Until they get damp and fall off.  The eco kettle is refusing to work at 100V which isn't too surprising, so we're stuck with the hob kettle for now while we decide how to replace our kettle.  We're thinking about a hotel style boiling water reservoir thing.  Back out through the door-that-is-not-a-door then?  No!  Witness the power of Shoji doors.  With a nifty slide, the back wall becomes a doorway.  We can jump through the portal into...

The Bedroom.

This is our first tatami room.  To your left you will see a fabulous western size double bed.  We have floor cushions for pillows cause they're better than our pillows and because we're lazy.  Our duvet is super warm and we have a small antique cabinet for a bedside table.  We have no power points (none in the dining room either), so we're planning on having minimal electronics in here.  We'll probably get some robots later though.  Under the bed lives our spare bedding and three Japanese trolls.  We have not much space due to the size of the bed taking up about two thirds of the floor.  But we have three sets of Shoji so we can get to the bedroom from everywhere in the house pretty easily.  One leads to the kitchen, one to the dining room and the final pair to...

The Front Room

Our favourite.  A full three-slider se of Shoji means we can isolate it from the rest of the house or open it up to various other spaces.  We live at a shockingly low altitude.  The futons are literally just folding frames which are padded.  So we spend our time essentially on the tatami.  Once you're used to it it's good fun.  Also, the furniture can be moved about really quickly cause it's super light and slidey.  We have an entertainment wall to the left with a massive TV, the computers and music.  Also, we have here our books and all our games and what-have-you in the cupboards.  On the other side is the kotatsu table (30cm high).  This is one of my favourites, it was free from a guy leaving Tokyo and it has a heat lamp underneath so when we're cold we can put a blanket over it and warm ourselves up.  We haven't tried it yet but in a month or two we will for sure.  We have our wardrobe/cupboard in here, not the bedroom.  Really, we should be super-authentic and sleep on the futons in here and use the bedroom for something else.  It's really cosy in here.  It also has the only heating/aircon in the house.  It is inefficient and pretty ugly but it works.  One of Em's colleagues provided a translation of the remote so we can be warm.  Of course, we pick up pins and needles every ten minutes and have to walk around to get warm and get the blood moving too.  Overall, though this is a great room and really Japanese.  From here, it's almost a disappointment to go out to...

The Verandah

Which is a balcony really, but we're on the ground floor.  It's concrete and dull but it holds the bikes nicely and looks out into our amazingly busy garden.  Struggle through our drying and you'll see stone lanterns, Japanese azaleas, some statues and of course, our Sakura (cherry blossom) trees.  Come April this should be great.  At the moment we have some kitschy xmas decorations too.  And thus concludes our wonderful tour.  Any questions from the cheap seats?

Oli