Every Day Living - Our New Home & Area

Our apartment has 2 bedrooms – want to come visit? The kitchen is well supplied, including a refrigerator with a reversible door on top (open from the left or right); and 2 drawers below – the bottom one is for fruit and vegetables and the middle one is the freezer. 

We cook with gas – when I turn the oven on, I have to wait quite a while for it to light – at home my oven would light immediately, so I’m concerned about gas. However, it’s not a problem here.

We have a washing machine in our apartment – the dryer is in the next door off our porch. Each washer is very smart – they weigh the load and decide how long the cycle will be. We were told one of the machines washes and dries – but we haven’t used that one! (All directions are in Japanese…) So far clothes dry very fast in the sun.

Garbage is a major issue – we have over 6 categories that we need to sort things into. And there are different days when it gets picked up. And there are different times of day various ones get picked up. So, the “regular” garbage is to be put out at dusk. It gets covered with a net so the birds don’t get into it. The next morning we fold the net up for the week. We buy special bags for burnable & food garbage – that’s how they cover the cost for that category.

Gardens – in riding the bus to church on Sunday, we noticed quite a few small gardens in the middle of town – several were vineyards, but there were vegetable gardens, too. In a crowded city of many people, it was interesting to find gardens – well tended – and Rita told us theft of fresh items is not a problem. In fact, theft is not a problem at all. (Rita is our teacher and good friend now!)