My Apartment in Okinawa

Anyone thinking of relocating to Japan needs to be prepared for a not inconsiderable dose of culture shock.  Having previously lived in a two hundred year old cottage in with a Kent peg roof I was fairly under whelmed to find myself back renting a small concrete apartment with paper-thin walls between rooms.  The apartment was described as 3LDK.

This refers to what rooms a particular house contain:
3 = 3 bedrooms
L = living room
D = dining room
K = kitchen

It is not a spacious living area but then my lifestyle has changed dramatically. The apartment is located on a hill.  You can see the sea from the adventure playground next-door.  The apartment building is sandwiched between a large hospital and a University medical school.  It’s a nice place to live with some excellent eating and drinking places just a short stroll away.

One of the first essential improvements consisted of installing an industrial sized air conditioner.  Okinawa is hot and humid most of the time apart from a few months in winter so having a powerful and reliable air conditioner is a real essential.   Another essential purchase was a drier.  This is basically a dehumidifier that blows dried air out of the top.  I particularly like the drier as you can leave it on in a sealed room and when you return your books are no longer soggy and your clothes are dry which makes them a lot nicer to wear (initially) and stops you smelling like a damp dishcloth too.   Another essential purchase was a very large American style fridge freezer that caters for most of the cooling requirements in the food department.

Starting in the kitchen.  A useful find was a large plain pine table with a bench one side and two chairs the other.  This was very reasonably priced considering that it had been shipped all the way from Ikea in Sweden to land up at the local Makeman DIY centre.  I looked it up in the Ikea catalogue and found it was £10 cheaper than in Ikea in Essex. I sorely missed my wonderful Ikea kitchen complete with a lovely Smeg cooker in Kent.  Most Japanese Kitchens have a double burner (big camping stove), a toaster and a super duper microwave oven thingy that I haven’t a clue how to operate.  After scouring second-hand shops I found a pine counter that now serves as a worktop and also a cupboard with drawers that acts as a microwave stand.  There is a big stainless steel sink and a few metal kitchen units with rubber seals to keep out the larger insect life.  Storage space is at a premium.  I am quite pleased with the kitchen and it not only serves as the dining room but also my main work area. Opening up sliding doors effectively gives a sense of airiness and space in otherwise cramped quarters.

Both the bathroom and the toilet are located next to the kitchen.  Both are tiled and you just walk in and the whole bathroom is a shower room with a large drain in the centre.  I really wonder why this is not more common in the UK as it is really convenient if you happen to have kids who need showering en masse.  The toilet is similar and to clean you just hose it down and scrub with a small stiff bristled broom.  This is essential for example when you have young boys who have poor aim. Mould or ‘kabi’ is a constant enemy in every home here so it is essential to de-mould frequently and air bathrooms and the toilet as much as possible.  Every inch of space in the toilet is utilised giving just enough room for use.  I really want a ‘must have’ robot attachment thing that washes your bottom.  I am sure that they would catch on in the UK.  More about that later.

There is a Tatami room where you can sleep on futons.  It’s great fun for kids and much better than western style beds in the UK.   During the morning futons are hung over the balcony to air.  Outside I rigged up a washing line but the main drying facilities are washing poles.  Getting things aired and dried is a real problem here.  The washing poles are safer in the typhoon.  More about that later…

Most of the rest of the apartment has a hard wood floor that is relatively easy to sweep clean.  It is essential to keep the crumb level down is essential to prevent encouraging ants and other creatures.  There are two basic kinds here that I have dubbed micro and biting.  In one year only two cockroaches have made an appearance and these were terminated with an insect spray that must be subject to a section of the Chemical Weapons Convention.  I have only seen a local Asian cockroach once in the school where I work but the large brown cockroaches here are like vampire bats.  I read somewhere that they are in the Guinness Book of Records – I don’t doubt it.  Even some locals are terrified of them.  They go for you!  I will post some pictures later and also the resident fruit bat.  Other wildlife includes little geckos that help keep unwelcome insect life at bay and also moths that like to munch on your feshly imported clothing

The TV/Family room has the oblgatory TV and a dark brown corduroy Muji sofa. The rest of this room is filled with my Muji storage boxes and bits of computer equipment.  One of the early priorities was to get a 100mb/s broadband connection up and running with a wireless link.  This was no problem at all in high tech Japan and made broadband connections in the Uk seem like dial up connections used to be like.

the main bedroom is Muji with Western style sleeping arrangements.  Although I like Western style pillows (available from Muji) most people have a pillow filled with what looks like cut up plastic straws. Actually there is a good reason for this unless you quite like the sell of damp feathers.  No quilts, just a cotton sheet or an oversized bath sheet suffices as you will never complain of being cold again.  The one real bedroom luxury was an extremely large second-hand chest of drawers with a whopping great mirror.  I have never been a great fan of mirrors but it doubles the size of the room and I am quite fond of it now.  This was initially built to military specification in the United States for US Navy Officers accommodation in Okinawa.  It weighs a ton.

All the main windows have mosquito nets and the bars on the bedroom window (for protection against the typhoon) often remind me of the cell I occupied in HMP Pentonville for several years whilst doing my time as a prison probation officer.  Don’t let me get started on mosquitoes.  You would not believe how many different kinds.  I think there are something like 5000 known species of mosquito in the world and 1000 of these live in Okinawa (presumably somebody has counted them).  There is a tiny one with black stripy feet that really hurts and one that is like a small crane fly not to mention the one that sounds like a single engined aircraft circling your head once the light goes out.  Luckily you can buy some stuff called Muhee that, after you are bitten, numbs the entire area. Okinawans, some of which shun airconditioning in favour of getting used to the heat, swear by mosquito coils.  Some are made in China and I am not convinced that they are safe or even tested.

Post arrives downstairs in a small stainless steel box.  No one steals mail so you don’t need to lock it.  I have a parking space for the tiny little orange plate car.  I park my Honda 50cc scooter underneath the apartment in the car park there.  In Okinawa a parking space undercover is much prized in temperatures that make cooking an English breakfast on a car a real possibility.

Waste disposal is a whole story in itself.  Suffice to say rubbish is strictly separated and woes betide anyone who does not get it right.  It’s a good system and I think folks in the UK should do more to separate and recycle rubbish.  I have sometimes found perfectly functional computer equipment in the street as a result of the Japanese disposal system some of which has been recycled in my school.

Thats about it about the apartment.  I will take some pictures of it when it is particularly tidy.