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    収納用品
    The apartment is basically assembled now. There was no DIY that would pass muster as such at, say, Casa d'Alger, but I did manage to set up a kitchen in which you can actually cook.

    You know how it is when you find an apartment you like--there's always one thing so seriously wrong as to be a possible deal-breaker. Everything about this place was fine except for the kitchen, which has no counter space. I mean none at all. There's not quite a sheer drop from the edge of the cooktop into the sink, but the space between them won't even accommodate a dinner plate. By Tokyo standards, Atsushi's apartment was a cook's dream: task lighting; work space wide enough for your extra-long cutting board, a bowl or two off to the side, and your glass of wine; three burners; and acres of cabinet space. But then, it's a two-bedroom place, the assumption being that it will be occupied by a couple with children and that the lady of the house will not be satisfied with a kitchen she can barely turn around in.

    My new apartment was designed for a (heterosexual) single person, so the assumption is that there will be nothing more complicated going on than the warming of a bento from the convenience store. (Okay, fine. That parenthetical was a little unfair. I have gay friends who can't boil water, too. But even they recognize that you need room for fabulous equipment on the countertop.) The only solution was to eat some space from the living room and set up a counter of sorts there. I had an old set of steel shelves kicking around that cleaned up fine, and the manufacturer still makes modular wood tops in the right size. I had a piece of cobalt blue acrylic cut to fit at Tokyu Hands and fastened it on as a serviceable backsplash. It works just fine and looks, frankly, much better than I'd expected. In Tokyo built environments, better than expected often has to be enough.

    Still no plans to compromise on the throw pillows, though.
    Posted by Sean on 2007-05-21 11:54:55
    Alan (mail):
    You should see my place. I prepare my food on the five inches left on top of my refrigerator (the part not used by my microwave), or on the edge of the sink, or on the burner I'm not using on my conro.... It's a mess.
    5.21.2007 12:40pm
    Sean Kinsell (mail) (www):
    It's probably all a plot by government social engineers to keep us buying prepared foods--anyone track 接待 by Nissin et al.?
    5.22.2007 2:48pm
    Alan (mail):
    They need to bring in Tyson if they want to accomplish that feat.
    5.22.2007 2:57pm
    Andrea Harris (mail) (www):
    I just moved into a new place with lots of pluses and a few minuses. Pluses: lots of big windows, a complex shaded by lots of trees, a balcony, counter space in the kitchen (which is open, not the coffin stuck in the back like it was in my former apartment). Minuses: much smaller than the previous apartment though laid out in a way I prefer), upstairs (though just one short flight), creaky floors, elephants apparently live in the apartment above...
    5.23.2007 10:51am
    Sean Kinsell (mail) (www):
    Alan:
    I guess I've lived out of the States long enough not to know that Tyson makes anything but frozen chicken. Their dinners are good?

    Andrea:
    What are these "trees" you speak of? We occasionally hear the word uttered by visitors from Lands Beyond the Sea, but they don't exist here in Tokyo. I'm glad you have some if you like them, though.

    I'm jealous of the open kitchen.
    5.23.2007 12:29pm
    John:
    "they don't exist here in Tokyo"

    Yes they do, they're just all Japanese cedars planted after the war because they grow quickly. Unfortunately they give off more pollen than giant goldenrods, and force everyone with allergies to walk around with surgical masks three months out of the year. Good for the H2 blocker business, though.
    5.23.2007 1:58pm
    Sean Kinsell (mail) (www):
    Oh, honey--doesn't your inner pharmacologist ever take a nap? : )

    For anyone who's reading and hasn't spent time in Tokyo, what John's talking about is the massive program to replace natural growth with Japanese cedar, which (as John says) grows quickly and is a good industrial resource. In Tokyo, there are trees in stands in select parks, but there are very, very few tree-lined boulevards of the type one associates with most world-class cities. (Omotesando Avenue is one.) And many of the trees that do exist elsewhere are regularly pollarded to near death so that they look as if they were in the advanced stages of leprosy.
    5.23.2007 2:44pm
    Alan (mail):
    I don't think they make proper frozen dinners, but for college students like me, frozen chicken is good enough. Was.

    BTW I loved Seoul precisely because it had greenery and easy access to nature. I cannot get over the fact that Tokyo's governments think a park is a flat concrete slab paved right up to the trunks of trees, no grass, or that the once-a-year-for-two-weeks-only sight of sakura somehow constitutes environmental preservation and beauty. Maybe Tokyo is full of government plots, Sean - no kitchen space to prop up mom-and-pops and nothing to actually compare sakura with to, you know, make sure everyone looks forward to them every year.
    5.23.2007 3:22pm
    Andrea Harris (mail) (www):
    Well, Orlando has its own version of the Japanese cedar -- the ubiquitous laurel oak, which is semi-evergreen, which means it sheds like a dog in February and gives off clouds of pollen. But they grow fast and give good shade... We have lots of live oaks too, but they don't grow as fast.

    After the succession of hurricanse that blew through this area in 2004, we had quite a bit of involuntary pruning. Still not the complete destruction of vast acres of trees as happened in Miami after Hurricane Andrew, but it was still quite a cleanup. But stuff grows fast in Florida...

    PS: I thought all trees in Japan were no higher than my knee, so they could fit in those tiny gardens. ;)
    5.23.2007 6:49pm
    submandave (www):
    It's been a while since I've been to that part o fthe city, but I seem to remember a Yanagi Dori as a pleasant stroll. But the odd thing is I don't think it was the one in Ginza, but further north (near Shin-Okubo?). But I may be wrong. After all, it was more than ten years ago.
    5.24.2007 5:43am
    Sean Kinsell (mail) (www):
    Near Shin-Okubo? Hmm. I have a friend or two living up there, but I don't really recall any good places for a stroll. I certainly don't recall anywhere with a treeline of willows, though I'm hardly intimately familiar with the area.
    5.24.2007 9:20pm

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