Kakinoki James

The apartment is decent sized for a single person. It has 1 bedroom, a kitchen, a storage room, a toilet room, and a bathroom. Most of the doorways are about 6 foot high. Since there are many doorways in the apartment I pretty much have to walk through the apartment with my head bowed down. So far I’ve forgotten to bow down once. I’m told that the apartment is around 20 years old, but it is in excellent condition.

The bedroom floor area is 6 tatami mats (a tatami mat is about 3 foot by 6 foot, but Kyoto style ones are slightly smaller) with the whole back wall being closets about 3 feet deep. It’s a very traditional style room, tatami mats on the floor (new ones!!), sliding doors (with a paper covering) to the closets, sliding doors between the kitchen and bedroom (the sliding doors have wooden frames, wooden crossbars every 8 inches or so and opaque plastic between the crossbars, and a big glass sliding door to outside. In front of the sliding glass doors are the old fashioned wooden sliding doors with wooden crossbars and white paper. Really cool looking. Lets light in, but gives a little privacy.

The kitchen has a 2 burner gas stove, little fridge, a table with 4 chairs, a small oven, and a toaster oven. I’ve never had an oven in Japan, so I’m looking forward to figuring out how to use it when it gets cooler outside. Can’t imagine baking in this heat. The kitchen has a linoleum floor and big glass sliding doors to outside. One reason for the sliding doors is to make it possible to get to the area beside the apartment to put my clothes out to dry.

The bathroom and toilet are separate rooms, which I much prefer. The bath/shower area is decent sized, so I can enjoy my showers without having to step around things or crouch down. The tub is 30 or 40 % bigger than the tub I had last year in Sawara (meaning I can take a bath without my knees against my chest), insulated, and deep. Winter-time when I’m freezing my tail off it will be nice to take a bath in that thing.

The storage room is bigger than I had been thinking it would be. It’s sort of like a walk in closet with a window and no shelves. Taylor left a clothes rack. It’s very useful, but will need to be replaced at some point. Currently it’s being held together with tape. Bill would be proud. It’s just big enough that if it gets really cold then I might drag my futon & heater in there to sleep in.