Our house! Bonzai House!

I just realized I haven't really done a post about our house. On June 8th, we have the appointment to sign the paperwork with our landlord and our Navy advocates (to keep everything on the up and up) and to get our "loaner" items from the Navy. The Navy will loan us our fridge, washer and dryer, and a bed if we need it. We're going to take them up on all offers but the bed as the bed has a 90 day borrow limit, whereas the washer and dryer and fridge we can borrow until we move away from Japan.

Then, on June 18th, we move into our house! Out of the hotel! YAYYYY!! Traditionally Japanese houses have names instead of addresses....while it's true they still don't have an address (our house has a section and street number, but no street name) many these days also don't have names. John and I have named our hose Bonzai House!

So, let's look at some pictures:

This is the front of the house. You can see the two balconies off the master and guest bedroom. Also, our house has a carport and a space in front of the carport can be used as another parking spot.

This is John staring at the side of the house. The road he's standing on is a two-way road.

This is the looking around the side of the house. There's a kerosene heater which is used to warm the water for the soaking tub.

This is the house entrance from the carport. The door is about 4 ft tall and 2 ft wide.

This is the first floor tatami room looking out into the small yard. The paper doors open side to side and up to down. Our landlord called them "snow windows" as you can move the bottom panels up to look at the snow in your yard or enjoy the blooming flowers.

This is the living room, you walk through the first floor tatami room to get to it. Plenty of natural light.

Off the living room is the dining room. Our house comes with a dining room table. John and I don't own a dining room table, so this is nice.

Here's the kitchen. This is literally it. Those are the only places to store your pots, pans, and dishes. The good thing about our place is that it has a regular oven. Most Japanese homes have a fish oven which is the half the size of a toaster oven in the place of where the large oven would go.

Bathroom. The soaking tub is about 4ft deep and 5 ft wide. It's set very low into the ground, much like a hot tub would be.

This is the entrance. The stairs lead up to the 2nd bedroom and then up again to the master bedroom and third bedroom. The door at the top of the stairs is a small storage space. It is NOT a bedroom.



This is the master bedoom. It was originally two room, they knocked down the wall between them to make one large (oodly shaped) master bedroom. There's a balcony off the bedroom.

This is the smallest bedroom. The dresser there is for kimonos and comes with the house.

Lastly, this is looking down from the top stair into the entry way.