TheManInJapan

This is my room at the Hitotsubashi International Village, which is in Kodaira, which is in Tokyo. More specifically, I’m in building C, room 402.

I’ve even cleaned it for you. Kindof.

Approaching my room

My very boring door

And without further ado, this is my room.

On the left is my bed. In the back you see the curtain of the dwindow (It’s a door, really. It leads to the balcony. But it’s my only means of getting air from outside, so that makes it a window. A door-window. A dwindow.) My towel’s hanging up there too. On the right is the big desk (which came with the room) where my laptop is propped up. In the lower-right is the fridge (also came with the room).

If you look down, you’ll notice something distinctly Asian: the shoe-place. I’m sure there’s a better term for it but I don’t know what it is. Anyway, the Japanese have a thing about wearing your shoes inside. (Actually “inside” is an elastic concept, as you can wear your shoes inside a store or something, but not inside somebody’s house.) The shoe-place is a section of concrete floor inside the room which, for the purposes of shoes, counts as “outside”. (Not every room has it like this; for some rooms the shoe-place is actually outside the room) You’re supposed to take your shoes off here and walk around the room in your socks (or just barefoot). But honesty, when it comes to my room, I often ignore the rule.

shoe-place

If we spin about 150 degrees to the right, we find my laundry bag, a cabinet-thing (which I’m told is for shoe-related items), and the umbrella that I fetched out of the trash. On the left you see a bit of the closet-thing. (I dunno, maybe it’s more of a wardrobe?)

stuff

All the furniture came with the room.

Inside the closet-wardrobe-thing

Next we see the fridge-freezer, the corded phone, and various things on the desk.

Right side of desk, plus fridge

They provide a corded phone, but it doesn’t call to outside numbers. (Unless you arrange to pay for a phone service). You can use it to call other rooms on campus, and it also works as an alarm clock.

top-right of desk

Another uniquely Japanese feature is the presence of anti-earthquake tubes. These were also provided for me. They stretch from the ceiling to the tops of tall things so that they don’t fall over if there’s an earthquake.

Anti-earthquake tubes on top of the desk. On the right, birthday stuff from home. On the left, four tissue boxes, because they sell them in packs of 5 around here.

Left side of the desk, including random medicinal things I got from America, 'cause I realized I don't read Japanese well enough to trust myself to use their medicine properly.

My laptop perched on it's cool posture-improvement stand. (I use an external keyboard)

Random junk by the desk.

Here's where I stash the comforter (which I REALLY don't need during the summer)

My bed. With only one sheet. Though I think it only came with one sheet. Probably.

Looking back at the door, we find a light above the bed, together with lightswitches and the A/C remote.

Looking back at the door

Behind the bed is the bathroom.

Door to the bathroom

bathroom

Thankfully, the toilet is western-style.

yay

Also, there’s a built-in air conditioner/heater above the dwindow

A/C

It’s controlled by this remote:

(The top two buttons change the desired temperature, the red button turns it on and off)

Turning back to the dwindow…

Dwindow, with curtain, in the daytime

You can plainly see that the curtain doesn’t do a very good job of blocking the light. But I’m rather nocturnal, and I don’t want the outside world waking me up at the unnatural hour of 8AM or 10AM or whatever, so I typically use the comforter-thing as an additional curtain, like this:

Macguyver!

Anyway, here’s the view from the balcony:

Big dusty soccer field

That weird red triangle sticker came with the dwindow

It’s actually a government thing. Every residence needs to have this sticker on X% of its windows. By law, you can’t have any furniture in the way of a window with this sticker on it. So if there’s a fire or whatever, the firemen can tell which windows offer the most effective evacuation routes.

This is the floor of the balcony:

da floor

That cord has been sitting there forever. I have no idea what it’s for, if anything.

The balconies are isolated from each other by walls, but they’re removable walls, in case you need to evacuate.

(though actually, I don't know how to break down the walls. It apparently requires a wrench and some spare time...)

And going into uncessarily further detail, here’s some views from the balcony:

looking to the left

looking forward

If I could change one small thing, I’d put grass on that soccer field, instead of dirt. As is, there’s always a chance of dirt getting picked up by the wind, giving my room a vague dirt-like smell unless I close the dwindow in time. Actually there’s an automatic sprinkler system to water the dirt and keep it down, but it’s not perfect. (Note that this is only a problem for the residents of C Building. Other buildings do not face soccer fields)

By the way, I’ve seen a lot of soccer practice from my room.

looking to the right

And that about wraps it up for the room. It’s a pretty nice place.