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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. ;)