Friday, February 18, 2011

Our Tokyo Apartment

Again I've been terribly negligent about keeping up with the blog. I have been feeling very overwhelmed the last week or so, and have had difficulty getting my thoughts organized and into blog format. I realize that I probably need to keep the entries a little shorter, so that I can keep my content more current. However, I have been working on this sizable post with lots of photos whenever life (and Matthias) would allow. Several people have asked for pics of our apartment here in Tokyo, so here we go...

When you enter the front door, there is an entry way with shoe closets. Very important since shoes are generally not worn in Japanese homes. You can't tell from the pic, but the open closet is full of shelves from left to right and the closed closet on the right side of the picture is also full of shelves. I think we would need a LOT more shoes to fill these babies up!


If you go through one door off the entryway, you will enter our amazing living/dining room: It is VERY spacious and has hardwood floors and windows galore!


We actually figured out that this room alone is bigger than our entire beloved apartment in the Clarendon neighborhood of Arlington, VA.


One of the best things about this room for the winter season is that the room can be warmed via radiant heat in the floor. It is wonderful to step on such warm floors when your feet are cold! Matthias likes to play on the cozy floors, too.



The kitchen is open to the living and dining area and has a very nice island. The cabinets and countertops are not my style at all (too contemporary!), but the kitchen is very functional and attractive, nonetheless.



Our guest room/office is also off the living room. We are hoping it is utilized many times by our family members and friends (HINT, HINT). It will soon have furniture when our sea shipment with the majority of our belongings arrives.



When you step of the sliding door in living room, there is a lovely deck with a view of other balconies and decks, as well as the outdoor paths and gardens. We bought some wicker chairs for enjoying this outdoor space, but are using them in the living room until our sea shipment arrives.



There is a powder room off the entryway with the first of our three high-tech toilets. These things crack me up. When you enter the bathroom, the lid lifts, a nightlight turns on, and the seat is WARMED.

After you do your business, you have multiple cleansing and drying options, and then the toilet flushes and cleans its own bowl. Here is the control panel for the toilet. More buttons than your average cell phone!


Ridiculous, huh? Philip calls them our robo-toilets.

Also off the entryway is a hallway leading to 2 bedrooms and 2 full baths.


Here is the master bedroom.

It is quite roomy with a nice-sized walk-in closet.



The view on this side of the apartment is not as picturesque as the one from the living room due to construction of another apartment complex. However, the construction has not been very noisy or disruptive to our lives thus far. I'm not sure if the walls are more soundproofed or whether this is just a quiet stage of the building process.


Here is Matthias's bedroom. I am so excited for our sea shipment to arrive so that I can recreate the nursery we set up back in Fairfax.



Here is the master bathroom. It is quite luxurious, with a wetroom with a shower and bathtub, double sinks, and another robo-toilet. The wetroom has controls to heat, dry, and vent itself so that you never get cold while showering, can dry out the room as well as dry hanging clothes (and diapers in our case!), and prevent any mildew from forming.




The second full restroom is very similar to the master bath, just a little smaller with different flooring. A sliding door leads to the laundry room, where we have two washer/dryers.



Yes, the same machine can do both jobs, but since Westerners are used to side by side washers and dryers, they gave us two. Having two is very helpful because the capacity is smaller and drying takes much longer. And let's face it, with a three month old I'm doing a bunch of laundry!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, wraps up the tour of our apartment. Right now we are sort of "camping out" with the bare minimum of stuff (basically whatever fit in our suitcases and air shipment boxes). We rented a couch, a coffee table, and a bed. We are becoming very creative during this process, doing things like ironing clothes on a towel on the floor, drinking out of plastic measuring cups, and using a Nalgene bottle as a vase for my Valentine's Day bouquet from Philip.


Living simply in the midst of our uber-luxurious apartment has been quite ironic and has made us realize how little we really need to get by. That being said, I am really looking forward to getting our sea shipment so that I can make this neutral, sterile-feeling place a lot more cozy and colorful. I am also looking forward to having more toys and books for Matthias. I only kept a few with us, because at the time we packed, he really wasn't very interested in toys. But now he loves to shake his rattles, look at and listen to stories, and chew on pretty much everything in sight. So, it's going feel like Christmas when we crack open all the wonderful toys and books we got for shower gifts. I hope you enjoyed getting a glimpse of our life here and I look forward to posting pics of the place when it has all our homey touches.



5 comments:

  1. Thanks for showing us your amazing apartment minus any of your stuff. It is fun to see how you guys are living. Miss you guys! Love to you and Matthius today! Kathy Y.

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  2. Thank you for showing us your de-lux apartment in the sky:) I love the super shower room, genius! It is good to remember how little we need but it will be wonderful when your sea shipment comes. Babies do enjoy a variety of toys when they get older. Elijah is now 7 months and calms down when we hand him a toy he hasn't seen in a while... Praying your shipment is there soon. So glad to see you are well cared for in Japan.

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  3. What a fun update! I am so impressed (and a little scared!) by the toilets-- I'd love to have just one that cleaned its own bowl. :-P

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  4. Love your apartment, Katie and Philip. Thank you for the photo tour. It makes me feel just a little bit closer (in distance) to you guys. Miss you lots! Love, Mom C/Grandmadre

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  5. Your apartment looks unreal! I'm excited to visit someday ;-) Looking forward to seeing furnished pics and more pics of Mathias for that matter! He looks so cute in his cloth diaper. I'm going to message you with more questions. I'm officially on board...

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