I'm finally getting around to putting up pictures of our cho! Now that I'm counting down the days until Alex's return home I realized just how much I have to do in the house to make it a home! It's been livable for me, but I'm still living out of my suitcase and with dishes stacked on the counter instead of in cabinets. Not exactly the way I want to introduce him to our new cho. So I'm getting these pictures out before I get too busy the next few weeks! ...
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This is the view from the end of our driveway / edge of the street. The house is built up on a hill so there's another foot or so of space between the bottom of the wall and the road. |
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This is a view (though not very good, I'll admit) of the yard. I was washing all the windows so I apologize for the ladder. Most of the "grassy" yard is concentrated off to the side of the house here. There are strips of landscaped yard all the way around the rest of the house with walkways. |
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This is the entryway (looking out) or genkan (in Japanese)! Every Japanese house has some version of the genkan. You can't tell from the picture but there's a step from the genkan into the main house. You have to take your shoes off in the entryway then step up into the rest of the house. Japanese people also use this area as a kind of waiting area... For example, when someone comes to your home, whether you know them or not, it is acceptable for them to ring the door bell, then open your front door and step into this area to wait for you. I saw a door-to-door salesman do this one day and was given that explanation. Needless to say I always keep my door locked.. |
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This is a geta-bako (shoe cabinet)! I'm not sure that every cho has one, but I think most of the larger homes have one. This is where the residents put their shoes away. Visitors leave their shoes in the genkan with the toes facing the door for easy access when they leave. |
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This is the very small front right room. It's about 171cm wide and 362cm long. Not even big enough for a double bed! I plan on using this room for a craft room. It has a whole wall (Technically speaking. All 61 inches of a whole wall) of great storage. And then my "junk" isn't taking up space in a usable room. I'm so excited to get my stuff set up! |
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This is the next room up! The front right tatami room. The floors are tatami mats, and since this room doesn't yet have a purpose, that's just what I call it. The shoji doors separating this room from the craft room have paper on the top half and textured glass on the bottom half. All the rooms in the house are great because they have the wall of built in storage. Who needs furniture when it's built in for you? |
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Isn't the carving beautiful? This carving and the fusuma doors below separate the front right tatami from the living room (which you can see in the background). |
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And this is the living room! As you can see it has some of the built in storage on the back wall, but that area is actually used to display expensive art and family heirlooms and stuff. |
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The shoji doors on the side of this room open up into a tiny sliver of a room.... |
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This area is not even big enough to stretch in. I know there has to be some purpose, but I have yet to find an answer for this question. So for now it stores original boxes for things like the TV... |
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This is Alex's office! Because of the way it's shaped I can't get a good picture. It looks tiny in the picture, but it spreads out to the left a bit. It doesn't have any storage like the other rooms besides the shelf that runs all the way around the ceiling. But I think (fingers crossed) our desk will fit perfectly in here with extra room for Alex's computer stuff! He's excited to have a room just for his tech stuff without my craft stuff crowding him out :) |
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And the bathroom / laundry room! SOME chos have a separate laundry room, but they're pretty hard to find. We didn't find any with this feature. It's not so bad because we don't have tons of laundry to do and the washer's small enough that I couldn't do a ton even if I wanted to. It's the perfect size for us; plus the door at the back leads to the back porch with a beautiful view where I can go straight from the washer to hang up clothes to dry! As you can tell in the pictures there is a dryer, but it takes forever to dry stuff. While it's still warm outside I am taking advantage of the breeze and saving some energy |
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This is the shower room. In the pictures above with the washer and dryer you can see the door to this room on the right side. There are two shower heads on opposite side of the room... I guess they double up on the showers? I haven't figured that one out yet... Either way, it's nice to have a big shower in a separate room. It seals off the steam from the rest of the bathroom so that the drywall doesn't get wet. Genius. |
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This is our view of the city and the mountains from the back porch. |
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And it's hard to tell from the picture but we have a view of the harbor / ocean from here. I love laying in bed at night and in low visibility hearing the sound of the ships horns. Two prolonged blasts, three short... Alex has been teaching me what they mean so I feel like I'm being let in on secret ship code. I'm just happy to be able to see the water and the ships during the day! |
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And I'm sure you were probably wondering when you saw the pictures of the bathroom above if we had a toilet. Yes, fortunately we have a toilet. AND it's fancy. Like heated seat fancy. |
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And the kitchen! It's a mess right now. I'm not sure that they cleaned after the previous tenants, and I'm not so sure the previous tenants ever cleaned. So I have stuff sitting on the counters until I get everything satisfactory. The kitchen table is "loaner furniture" until ours arrives. I like having the open space in the kitchen so I think I'm going to put our table in the dining room instead. |
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Kitchens in Japan are very different from America. They don't use ovens! They just have these two burner gas stoves and a little fish broiler that you can see pulled out in the second picture. |
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I did break down and buy a little countertop oven at the Navy Exchange. Though it will take me about 3 hours to make a two layer cake with only one shelf! :) |
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And our fridge! The top looks like a normal fridge and the middle drawer is like a vegetable crisper. the bottom drawer is a freezer. |
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And for those of you with long attention spans who are still reading, this is our room. Loaner bedding, hideous curtains and all. I'm excited for my stuff to get here so I can make it feel like our room again! Although I know it doesn't look like we have much storage in the picture the closets are actually really deep. The one on the left hangs two rows of clothes deep. and on the right I've put in drawers to organize the shelves. We have some space left over.... at least until the rest of our stuff arrives :) |
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And the dining room... or for now, the "catch-all" room. While I figure out how I want the house to be laid out and places for things, all the stuff sits neglected in the dining room. It's the biggest room in the whole house! An excuse to get a big beautiful Japanese dining table, maybe? Alex...? |
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I just love the dining room ceiling. The Japanese don't spare details anywhere! This light is even fancy enough to have a remote to dim and put it on a sleep timer! |
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This is the side porch and how I dry clothes! It's right off the dining room in the main yard. |
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And the last room is the front right tatami room where I currently have a spare bed. Anyone want to come visit? It, like the other rooms, has a whole wall of storage! I was worried about space when we left Norfolk, but now I have so much I don't know what to do with it all! |
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And that's the tour of our cho! We live in a cute little neighborhood. At the end of our street is an elementary school. I love walking to the grocery store and hearing the kids playing outside during gym. Though the one thing I still haven't gotten used to is the lunch bell. At the beginning and end of lunch they play (no joke) an air raid siren... followed by a muffled voice yelling urgently into the PA system. It can be heard all over the neighborhood (at least). The first time I heard it I was terrified! I was sure there was a tsunami on it's way, and since I couldn't understand Japanese, I was going to be the only one unaware of what the siren meant. Come to find out it happens every day at lunch time, and someone explained to me that it's the signal for lunch! Just one of the few quirks living in a Japanese neighborhood. I have many more and I will post them in time. I've been working on some projects around the house and yard so maybe in the next few days I'll put up some more pictures!
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