Apaato

I didn't really do too much last night. As far as I know, there wasn't even any baseball, yakyuu in Japanese, on the television, so I ended up just watching some other stuff. There was a documentary on Route 66, which was neat. They went through Carthage (IL?) and talked to people. Obviously, they did it in English, but they dubbed over the questions in Japanese. They subtitled the English responses, so it was a weird combination of stuff. Especially when they obviously asked, "How are you?" as Americans are wont to do, but dubbed over the question with "Ohayou gozaimasu" or something. The Americans would respond, "Good, how are you?" or whatever and it would be translated as "Ohayou" or something. Also funny when they asked some old guys what they talk about, and they responded "just bull," which was translated as "zenbu" or everything.
You see, in Japan, they don't ask "how are you?" as a greeting. Ogenki desu ka? is actually a question about your health, and a somewhat honest answer is expected. People only ask it if they have reason to believe you might not be well, such as you look sick or you just finished a long journey.
But, I digress, as I am wont to do. Since I don't yet have a camera and I know the hordes are clamoring for pictures of my life here in rural Japan, I've drawn up a diagram of my apartment.


It's actually pretty big, much bigger than I would have expected. It came furnished with pretty much everything, like a cute little Japanese refrigerator, a cute little Japanese oven, and an oddly normal-sized bed. They even gave me a mattress pad, which is strangely hard, but that works out for me because I think it is comfortable. I'm one of the few JETs in the area who doesn't have any tatami mats, and no futon to sleep on. I guess I am missing out on part of the Japanese experience, but I've done it before, and the western style bed requires less maintainance.
The oven is small, but certainly suits my needs. I've only ever used one burner so far, and that was for boiling noodles. There's a little compartment just for making Japanese style fish, but I'm not sure how to do that. Someday I plan on doing that for breakfast, but I will need to get a recipe first.
There are separate rooms for the toilet and the bath/sink, which is the standard Japanese way of doing things. I think that's a good system and I have no idea why we don't do that in America. The room with the sink has a washer in it, which is the typical Japanese small style. It works out, since I only have the clothes I could bring with me, anyway. I do laundry about every other day, and hang the clothes out on the balcony to dry. If it's raining, I can hang them in the laundry room on a rack that's in there. It's a little crowded in that room, but not really a problem. The room for the bath is connected to the laundry room. It's the Japanese style, which I dig. Half of the room has a shower, the kind you can move around, and just looks like a tiled floor, but there is a hidden drain somewhere. Once you take a shower, you can sit in the tub to relax. Japanese people in general love baths. They like the bath a little hot for me, though. I mean absurdly hot. It is nice, though.
The bedroom has a little air conditioner on the wall that I haven't used yet. It's pretty hot, but it's not too bad. There's no air conditioning in the rest of the apartment.
My predecessor left me a bunch of stuff, which is nice because I don't have to buy much, but she also left a bunch of stuff I will never use, so there are just boxes sitting around that don't do anything. Supposedly, before she cleaned, there was so much stuff in the apartment that you couldn't get in without crawling over boxes. So I'm grateful for the cleaning.
I generally eat my meals at the table while watching the tv. I like to watch baseball, but there's also a wide variety of absolutely unexplainable stuff on, and lots of travel shows which are mostly about wacky hosts making faces and eating regional specialties. I have to get a job as a Japanese television personality.