Thoughts on Japan

Accommodation

Our little house

I must say that I have really enjoyed my time in Japan, it is nice to have a space of our own to come back to at night and relax. Our little house is just that - little. Downstairs we have a bathroom and kitchen/living room and upstairs 2 bedrooms. The house is furnished, but this being Japan, it is sparsely furnished, but we have all the necessary equipment:

A washing machine (cold water only - apparently this is a common feature of Japanese washing machines. Believe me you need hot water, if you don't scrub off any stain from clothing before putting it in the machine, it will still be there when the cycle finishes - it is also a top loader, meaning all your clothes get completely tangled together - you would think that in such a technically developed country they would have fantastic washing machines not so, well not in this house anyway).

Telly (not yet been switched on)

Internet connection (what would we do without that?)

Microwave

Fridge Freezer - unfortunately not an all singing all dancing one that I get very excited about in electrical stores.

3 gas hobs (only 2 of these work) and little grill, but no oven

The biggest sink you have ever seen and the smallest work surface for a kitchen possible

No chairs / sofa etc, but a low table which we sit around (on the floor) for meals and working at night etc (we had to buy some cushions to put on the floor to make sitting on the floor more comfortable - but we still suffer from dead legs and bums and ache every night when we get up to go to bed - I guess we need longer to get used to sitting like this).

Here's a little video taken in the lounge / kitchen.  

I have done a full video tour of the house which will appear in the holiday DVD.

A single bed, Tom has this. It doesn't have a mattress - but he has the bottom part of his futon on it as a mattress and the top part of his futon acts as his quilt. Matt and I have a futon each in our bedroom. I would like to stress that a futon in Japan is very different to a futon in England, there are no uncomfortable wooden slats - just a thick sturdy quilt on the floor which acts as a mattress and a duvet on top. I must mention pillows at this stage. Pillows here are stuffed with beans, hard beans, and yes stuffed with them, meaning you can't make a hollow in them for your head. Tom and I manage to put up with them (just), Matt can't cope with them and instead uses a pillow we 'borrowed' from Air France.  Believe it or not, the futons are very comfortable and Matt and I are sleeping much better here than we do at home.  So much so that we are almost thinking that it would be a good idea to take some home with us.

Oh and there are no lights upstairs - very strange, I don't quite understand why not, it's not a huge problem we only sleep there so bought ourselves a battery operated light which suits us fine for reading in bed.

The bathroom is a basic Japanese bathroom: ie a wet room with shower and deep bath. In Japan you shower first, with soap and shampoo and then once you are clean you get in the bath. Being a wet room, water can go everywhere and Tom has loved this - he has great fun splashing like a looney and filling up bottles and cups with water from the bath and emptying them over the side of the bath. Think we may have trouble when we go home.

The toilet is in its own cubby hole. Another simple idea, when you flush the loo, water fills the tank as usual, but comes out as a fountain on top of the tank so you can wash your hands in it before it fills the tank - this negates the need for a wash basin.

There is no heating but we have an air conditioner downstairs which we haven't used - there are still electrical shortages in Japan following the tsunami last year so we are trying to use as little electricity as possible. The windows are single glazed all of them are frosted (I think to stop people looking in - people live very close to each other here - pretty much everyone is overlooked in some way)

Storage: this being a Japanese home, you take your shoes off at the door and there is a shoe cupboard to store them in. Sounds good? no messy shoe mess by the door, yes, but with this being Summer, our feet smell, which means the shoe cupboard smells. In fact it is overpowering - when you open it you are knocked back by the smell emitted by it. I guess we should have looked for a foot odour cancelling spray but feel that there no point now we are in the later stages of the holiday. The kitchenette area has cupboards but they aren't practical, they are high up on the wall - so high that I can't reach the top shelves, and I am taller than the average Japanese woman - I guess they must use steps, but I can see no need for them to be fixed so high on the wall.

Anyway, once we had paid a visit to a 100 Yen shop to buy bits and pieces to make ourselves more comfortable, we have grown to really like the place and feel very at home here.

Children

The children here have a lot more freedom than back home. Often you will see elementary school children travelling on their own in buses and trains - we are talking 7 year old children. I think I would have social services around if I let Tom do that at the same age in England but here it is seen as normal.
As you know from blog posts we regularly go to a local park to play football with Tom. We see the same children again and again. 5 and 6 year olds go to the park on their bikes by themselves - sometimes their parents will turn up, but not always.

Also I saw a 'walking bus' going to an elementary school one morning. In the UK, if that was to happy it would be manned by adults, who have all been CRB checked, here it is manned by children - older elementary school children, but still children.

I think they have it right here, everyone in the UK is so paranoid about their children that they really have very little freedom and little chance to be responsible for themselves. I do my best to give Tom freedom, but he will never enjoy the same freedom as the kids here, which I think is a shame.

Toilets

Urinal in the ladies toilet

You are never too far away from a toilet in Japan, which is good when you have a 3 year old. They have 2 types of toilets here: western style and Japanese style. Japanese style is an elongated squat loo, not a problem for me, but it took me a couple of times to work out the best way for Tom to negotiate them. If you straddle his legs across the loo they are at full stretch meaning it is then impossible to pull down his shorts and pants. This means if he is to straddle you need to take all his lower clothes off - not easy in a small cubicle. I could hover him over the basin of the loo, but then his spray could go absolutely anywhere and I wouldn't have a hand free to help direct it. My solution is to have him standing by  the side of the basin and then help him direct his stream into the basin. This isn't trouble-free - sometimes we don't direct things as well as we should but it is the only way I have found that sorts of works.

The smallest toilet I have ever seen

Most of the time though, there is a western style toilet so I don't have that problem. In some ladies' toilets I have even come across a urinal - I assume for use by little boys going to the loo with their mum. The first couple I came across, I was too shy to use it wondering if it really was a urinal, once I even dragged Matt in with me to show him and he confirmed it was definitely a urinal. I asked Michiko about them when I saw her but she hadn't seen one. Anyway I have got a bit braver now and get Tom to use it when we come across it. Makes sense, means no misfires going on in the adults toilets. I still haven't seen one being used other than by Tom yet...

And in some places we have come across toddler toilets: mini sized toilets especially for toddlers, with miniature urinals and miniature basins - these are fab, all shopping centres and supermarkets should have these in the UK - would make life much easier.

Here's the children's toilet we found in Namba Parks Shopping Mall - brilliant!

Aioi
Matt, Tom and I have really enjoyed our time in Aioi. It is a sleepy little town, population approx 30,000, most of whom seem to be old. We have only seen one other foreigner since being here and that was dragon boat racing day, so we might be the only foreigners here - we like that. Tom certainly stands out and has been called Kawaii (cute) many many times. The pace of the town is slow and as a result Matt and I have definitely slowed down, so much so that we are almost walking backwards! It has a waterfront, an onsen, a couple of parks (of the gritty sand version - no grass here) and a couple of supermarkets - so everything you need. Best of all though is that the railway station is literally 4 minutes walk away, a godsend when you return home tired from a long day out. Tom can see the train tracks (both local trains and Shinkansen tracks) and a level crossing from his bedroom window - what could be better for a train mad 3 year old, first thing he and Matt do in the morning is watch trains from his window.

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Location:Aioi