KyuPugh: My New Living Quarters

Actually, I got this job at a pretty good time, because they were just finishing a renovation of the dorm when I arrived. Consequently, my room was not ready for the first couple of days, so they housed me in an apartment used for visiting international teachers and visiting clergymen and so forth, located in one of the academic buildings. That place was like a palace compared to what I'm living in now. I took some pictures just for comparison's sake. Sorry all the photos are sideways. I took these from my iPad because my camera used up its batteries and I didn't have a chance to get more within the first couple days here. So even though these photos are rightside up in my computer, apparently WordPress is really, really stupid. I might actually switch back to Blogger if I don't figure out how to deal [[editor's note: done and done]]. Anyway, this was a two bedroom apartment, but one of the bedrooms was locked to me. The apartment had a huge living slash dining room area and a decent sized kitchen with a stove, oven, toaster oven, etc. and a little laundry room. The genkan--the little foyer where you leave your shoes--has a cabinet full of Dior house slippers. Posh.

This is just the hallway, with the locked bedroom on the right (top), and my bedroom in the back.

The living room furniture is kind of ridiculous.

I think the dishrack-looking this is actually some sort of dishwasher, dish sanitizer, or dish quick-dryer. I didn't ask.

There were enough dishes to feed an army on, for some reason. In the living room above, you can see a whole giant cabinet full of dishes, plus there's this one in the kitchen. There was only one bed in my room, and I assume it's the same for the other one, so I don't know what they're thinking here.

Notice that even in the place where nuns and priests and stuff stay, there are cute things. It's Japan.

But the place was also kind of like a museum. There were glass cases in the bedroom and living room with all these figurines and stuff like that with little labels.

The bathroom had a Western bath/shower and toilet, but the toilet actually had a cover that not only covered the lid, but also the seat, so you sit on nice fuzzy cloth instead of on the plastic. Seems unsanitary, but I guess they only expect one person to use it at a time, then they wash it before someone else visits.

These photos are bit out of order, but you get the idea. Wordpress no bueno.

Here I made a little floor plan of my permanent room in the dorm with my iPad. Not to scale so much, but pretty close.

So the new dorm rooms are all IKEAed out, with no more tatami mat floor, just fake wood, and very simple but sleek storage closets and drawers, bookcases, cabinets, and desks. Also new light fixtures. Some of the rooms didn't get renovated and are now used for storage, and they look waay dated. I'm glad for a nice modern room. The only downside of the renovation is that the Japanese bath that I was so looking forward to in my bathroom was taken out. The reason for this, I'm inferring, is that apparently because Japanese people don't BATHE in the bath, they only soak with already clean bodies, so it's impossible to put the shower head over the bath, like we do. So the only other place to put a shower (imagine the bath taking up the lower third of the bathroom I've drawn above) where the "dirty" water won't get into the bath is in front of the sink, on the left wall there. So I guess that's what they did up until this year. But the problem with THAT, for Western teachers, is that on that wall is a window (which I forgot to draw), so the shower head is only at like waist height, under the window. So that's bad for us.

This is turning into a bathroom blog, but I'm interested in bathrooms, so neener neener. Anyway, the solution was to remove the bath and put in a new shower on the right wall. But let me tell you why that's retarded. The shower on the right--and by the way, as in my Korean bathrooms, this bathroom is just a wet room, with no separation between the shower area and the sink, no curtain/door, etc.--anway, the shower head on the right is set up at the right height for a proper Western shower, but it also happens to be connected to the building's main water supply, and the hot water is only turned on during the students' bath time, from like 7-9pm or whatever, and during the dish-washing time after meals. So the two teachers would either have to take evening showers and go against their Western routines, or take a cold shower in the morning. Because of teacher complaints about that situation in the past, though, they finally set up an independent water heater for each of the teacher rooms, but of course those are connected to the old showers, the ones set below the window. Ner. In my bathroom, however, there is a shower mount high up on the wall by the lower left corner there, and the independently heated shower head does reach over there, so that's how I manage a hot shower in the morning. I don't know what the deal is with Louise, the Australian teacher, but she was telling me she's had shower troubles so far. Hope she gets it all squared away.

Right.

So.

Pictures of my new dorm room.

The genkan has room for all my shoes, and having a clothes bar above it is handy, also, for jackets, and now I've got an umbrella hanging there, too.

The toilet is special. It gets its own room. We actually had that in my college bathrooms, too, but the students don't get their own bathrooms here. Just the two teachers.

So here's that whole shower setup I was talking about. You can see where the shower head used to be, under the window, but now I've got in high enough in the corner. That placement would not be acceptable in Japan if there were a bathtub underneath it. I assume. The other shower is on the wall opposite, but I didn't bother to take a picture. It's the same type of shower.

There is a seriousass amount of storage in this room. The two closets on the left are proper closets with a clothes bar in each one, and the big one on the right has a shelf in the middle, and it's got a vacuum and all my empty luggage in there, plus linens. And then there are drawers below the closets and cabinets above. Except for the drawers, these units are all wicked deep, like three feet back. This is not to mention I have a desk, a tall bookcase, and a little cabinet. There's no way I could ever have enough stuff to fill all this.

Two of the walls are floor to ceiling windows or glass doors that lead out onto the really narrow balcony that runs along the whole building. It makes it really bright in here, especially since the front wall (the short wall with the doors) is facing directly east.

Here are some views from my room. I'm on the fifth floor, so it's quite a view, especially of Mt. Sakarujima across Kinko Bay. It's one of the most active volcanoes in the world, and it spews ash pretty much daily now. More in the summer.