The apartment

Our new place must be referred to as "the apartment". If I try to call it home, the kids correct me and say "the apartment". So at least they know that we really are going home at some point in time!

This is our front door and just as you walk inside there is a shoe closet. Wearing shoes inside is a no-no in Japan.

So this is wear I don my Uggs slippers,
And as you turn to the left you look down the hallway. The first door on the right is our bedroom, the second door is the kids. On the left side of the hallway is the shower/laundry room and then the toilet bathroom. At the end of the hallway is the main living area.
Here is the shower/laundry room. Outside of the shower/bath area is the vanity/sink and also the washer/dryer (which I'm not fond of).
Just inside and to the right, you open the door into the shower/bath area. This entire room is waterproof with a drain at the bottom. This is my favorite part of the apartment. Traditionally, Japanese would take a shower and then soak in the tub, so the tub is super deep. I love that the kids can take a shower without having to worry about them slipping or splashing water everywhere too!
Here is our bedroom. It was quiet-time when I took these photos so the kids are reading in our bed.
And this is the kids room (you can see Tristan asleep in the pack and play). It was a bit disorganized when I took these photos but now we have an air mattress for the older kids and some baskets to put their clothes in.
Here is the toilet room. And that's just about all there is to it, besides the fact that the kids have managed to pee on the floor nearly everyday {sigh}.
This is at the end of the hallway looking back and you can see that I've closed the door, which is nice during naptime and at bedtime so that the kids are not disturbed by any noise out in the living area (you know, while we party it up every night). You can also see that the kitchen is off to the right.
Here is a full view of the kitchen:
I love the wide sink:
This is the stove-top and the fish oven. The stove top is ridiculously hot even at the lowest setting and I have yet to discover the usability of the fish oven.
Here is the fridge/microwave. Both are miniature versions than what I'm used to.
Here is our toaster oven, our only oven. But that's okay because I'm pretty talented with just a stovetop. And I've got some ideas up my sleeve for this fabulous toaster oven. The tray it came with (see top of oven) can probably fit about 6 enchiladas!
To the other side of the room is the dining room.
And looking out from the kitchen is the living room.
Here is our patio which isn't really good for anything except keeping dirty diapers out of the house until trash day. (You can only take out certain types of trash/recyclables on certain days - so no taking it out early since they all use the same bin.)
Out on the patio this is looking to the left:
This is straight out, you can see the major road that goes right next to our building, traffic is only one way down this road since the road was split for going thru the tunnel.
And to the right, that white-ish building in the left-background (the one with the diagonal roofline) is the train station.
In the left-bottom corner of this picture you can also see a cream-building with a red canopy. That is a very small local store with inconsistent hours, but it does sell ice-cream! I didn't eat the red-bean ice-cream that Chad bought me last time but the kids got something that looked similar to bon-bons, yum!

look who

Look who likes to stand up on his own!



And look who has his first loose tooth!

Let's backup a little - Nov update

With so much to do in the last few months, I have a lot bloggy catching up to do:

Preschool portraits

I took Tristan to get his pictures taken too when they took school portraits at Abby's preschool. I ordered the package with the cd, so if anyone wants to get any of these printed, I can send you the full resolution photo.

Disney on ice

Abby and I dressed up fancy and went out to dinner and a show.

Tristan's first snow

With so much to do in the last few months, I have a lot bloggy catching up to do:

Hotel Mercure

For our second night in Japan, we were still without a working key to our apartment, so a hotel was arranged for us nearby right across the street from the Daiei. We of course didn't want to bring all our luggage so I rearranged the suitcases and fit enough for one night in our smallest suitcase. We took that, our backpacks, and our pack-n-play onto the train. Trouble was, by this time our extremely jet-lagged children were thinking it was already well after their normal bedtime and getting them to walk anywhere was a challenge. So Chad took the two oldest kids and the luggage and took a cab the 1/4 mile from the train station to the hotel. I had the stroller and just met them their with Tristan. It was a nice hotel, but still, 5 people sleeping in one room is no fun.



Tristan, however, was enamored by the windows that went nearly all the way to the floor. He would crawl inside and repeatedly bump his head against the glass (it was very thick glass) to look outside. If you can see past the glare you can see our view, we were 16 floors up:

First day out in Yokosuka

The rail system map (although not really all that hard to figure out where you want to go if you're just going somewhere nearby). Each station has a map of it's line and a timetable, and most of it is in English as well.
Some pictures of the train:

A neighborhood park near the Daiei (roughly pronounced die-ay), the mall/food court/food market that is one train stop away and right next to the base entrance:
Tristan playing with my starbucks cup warmer (such a comfort to have something familiar):
Abby is so proud of herself:
Mister Donut: we got some great donuts here (twice now) and also got Ramen for lunch one day (weird combination - ramen and donuts?)

Since it's the new year most of the stores are offering these "happy bags" which are essentially grab bags at a very discounted price. And apparently these grab bags are not filled with junk!

The boardwalk park that goes from the train station to the Daiei: