Unveiling the Mansion

After several requests from Christine, I am going to introduce our new condo in this post. As I mentioned before, we have really had to get our asses in gear to prepare for a housewarming party, so we did manage to decorate a bit more.

Let me first reveal that I often feel like we are the white trash of our building because this has been sitting in front of our genkan for over two months now! I am waiting for Suk to get around2it. I know I should have (or could have) called the garbage company myself, but there are just some things a man SHOULD do for his own home.

"Who lives here?"

"I don't know, honey, but they sure as hell must be white trash." (And this reminds me of my clip drive for my school computer, which always creates a folder called "trashes", and I nearly fell over the first time I saw that. I thought one of the Japanese teachers had put that on there for a joke.)


This is what you'll see as you're walking down the corridor to our apartment. We didn't expect that there would be a mini-forest down below, but you can see the major highway down below as well. Don't worry though because we can't hear the noise or smell the nasty exhaust fumes up here.

The view from the genkan. As my Slovakian friend remarked the first time she came over, "There sure are a lot of doors in this hall way." Yes, many doors. Not much room for embellishment. Any ideas?

On your immediate right is our bedroom, which looks pretty much the same as it did in our old apartment. Excuse the curtains, as they are from our old living room. I would like to get some curtains that match but am waiting for something to catch my eye first.

On your immediate left is Suk's room (until and if a baby comes along and stakes his claim on it). We bought the piano from a friend who moved to the USA recently, so in between blogging and cleaning up poop, I have begun to dabble again after 10 years of not playing at all. The couch is that nappy thing we had in our old apartment, but Suk is (god only knows why) attached to it.

And, this is the only part of the apartment that Suk gets to decorate all by his little ol' self. This display used to be in our genkan. Thank god it has its own room now.

Down the hall and on your left is the ofuro/laundry/dressing room.

Nothing special here...except for this!


Feast your eyes, people! Suk likes to invite people over just to bathe. He wants everyone to take baths during our housewarming party, and I had to break it to him gently that, actually, my foreign friends and co-workers probably won't be interested, but thanks anyway.



Down the hall and to your right is the computer/scrapbooking/reading room. I suppose we could call it an office, but that seems so dull. I am so happy to finally have a human-sized desk for scrapbooking.

At the end of the long, many doored hallway is the main area of the condo. The kitchen is to the left, and has an entrance from the bathroom as well.

This is the kitchen as viewed from the bathroom. I like it because we chose the option of dishwasher and "real" oven. So, now I can bake cakes and lasagna and it actually cooks all the way through to the middle! Yatta!

We (read, I) decided to have this extra counter top and cupboard installed for obvious reasons. It was a pain in the ass because Suk kept complaining about the cost, but when he saw the final product, he was more than pleased.


Beyond the kitchen, is the "conservatory," also known as Max's room. It is bright yellow, but I think yellow is a happy color, and I love it. We want him to feel cheerful, right? If you want to see the many transformations of Max's room, you can check my post on Puppy Love Love.


Here is the dining/living room, which I love. Our old living room was about 1/8 of this, and me and Suk were always arguing over space. Here is our love-at-first-sight dining room table. Our yellowish-green leafy curtains. And our awesome sofa, which because of its comfort level, I often wake up alone in the morning (Suk tends to fall asleep on it.). The office opens out onto this room as well, so if we have lots of guests, we can make a bigger space.


And the dining room table which I gushed about in a previous blog. The perfect combination of country-style and modern.

The veranda, with the bench that we recently bought at Unidy. We had to put it together ourselves. Can you believe that? We would like to add plants and a little herb garden, but haven't gotten around to that yet. We need to find a way to hide Max's poop garbage because it is unsightly.

Yup, another area I like to call "the unslightly white trash area of our veranda." Everyone in Japan has this area, I just know it. It is a place for garbage and laundry and air conditioners. It also manages to block our view when sitting on the bench.



The view from our veranda.