The Photo Album

Well, I finally broke down and bought a new camera cable at the Shimoda Mall the other day. Actually, I bought a $22 CF card reader, just so I could get the digital connector to USB cable. Such is my dedication to bringing you folks photographic evidence of my adventures.

Anyhow, I can now give you all what you've been waiting for: A tour of my apartment!


This is the front of my building. The sign says "Sun Heights" (well, kind of). I live in the top one in the picture, apartment A-E.


This is what I see when I first walk in the door.


This is the doorway that I walk through. In Japan, you always take your shoes off before entering a house or school and in certain restaurants and arrange them so that they face the door. There's a cement place where you leave your shoes just by the door.


Look left and you see my bedroom. This is where the magic happens. The magic of me sleeping, that is to say. I swear, the pokemon drapes were there when I moved in.


This thing is in my bedroom. My boss tried to explain its function to me but I had no idea what he was talking about. Anyway, I soon found out that twice a day, the box beeps, plays music ("Somewhere Over the Rainbow" in the evening) and makes announcements to the town. One of the times it does this at is 6:00 am. I have since unplugged it.


To the right is the washing machine and various other things.


Just to the right of here is the toilet. Once again, I am not responsible for the pokemon decor.


Japanese toilets have this amazing feature: when you flush, it pumps clean water through this sink at the top (so that you can wash your hands) and then pumps the water that drains from that sink into the toilet bowl. Since no one really needs clean water in their toilet, this makes for an excellent way to conserve water. I don't know why more countries haven't adopted this type of system.


To the left of the toilet is the bathroom. There are no pokemon in here (at least that I know of).


This is yet another Japanese invention designed to conserve energy. Every time I want hot water (in either the bathroom or the kitchen), I need to switch on this box and set the temperature. I always forget to turn it off, which means that I'm not really saving any energy. Go America!




Walk through the hallway into the main room and on the left is my kitchen.


The plethora of dishes left behind by previous JETs. The wonderful thing about tiggers, is that tiggers are wonderful things. Their tops are made of of bottoms. Their bottoms are made out of springs.


I found this in my kitchen cabinet. I have no idea what it is but I've decided it's probably best not to fuck around with it.


This is my main tatami room where I generally sit around and complain about how persistently hot it is.




My primary means of transport, my beloved green bike. Almost all bikes in Japan have these cool locks on them that lock the back wheel and can only be unlocked with a key. You have to keep the key in the lock while you ride it, so it's kind of like a car. That always makes me feel cool, like I'm driving a car, or something.