My apartment in Japan

Some quick shots of my apartment in Japan. It's pretty tiny, so there's not much to show! It's plenty big enough for me though--I don't plan on spending too much time here unless I'm sleeping.

The genkan. You can store shoes inside, but I only brought two pairs, so I've left them on the floor. And I'm not expecting company.

Once you get past the doorway, you go in socks or slippers, like those provided for me here. I'm just going with socks so far.

The little kitchen. No oven: the Japanese do not do a lot of baking.

The bathroom. Which is mostly notable for this extraordinarily complicated toilet:

It has a control pad on the side!

I was advised to just not mess with this. It does heat the toilet seat though, which is a bit decadent. I have that turned on. :-)

The flusher has two directions: flush heavy, and flush light. When you activate either one, the toilet flushes and the tank is filled with this faucet, which you can also use to wash your hands at the same time. Clever!

So far it's the only toilet I've ever had that comes with a complicated set of directions printed on the underside of the lid.

Here's my bedroom. You can barely get around the bed to the balcony! I end up just stepping over it. I'm just grateful that the bed is more than six feet long, so I don't have to hand off it. I'll happy step over it for that!

My desk. Not many places to put things in here--I'm using the floor as a bookshelf and luggage storage. My one little closet is pretty much filled with the clothes I brought. I'm using the luggage as my dirty clothes hamper until laundry time anyway.

My view, such as it is, from the balcony. It's going to be nice for hanging laundry though. And you can see a bit more when you go outside:

I also found this odd box on the balcony:

Which proved to be a metal ladder, to be attached and dropped off the balcony in the event of an emergency!

More after I go exploring!