| Union Square Cafe |

I love my apartment
March 3

Now, my one bedroom apartment in Manhattan is very comfortable, but not the largest out there by any means. My Tokyo apartment, including entrance way, bathrooms (separate WC), kitchenette, and bedroom would fit easily in the living room of my NYC digs. Ever feel like you’d love a chance to downsize and simplify your life? Well here I go. Only the essentials, all carefully organized. Some interesting touches here. The place is simply furnished, and includes a little machine that keeps hot water at the ready, and a small rice cooker. And a washing machine! Suddenly I realize the challenge I’ll have in figuring out how to run that washing machine, operate the remotes for the heating, both for the room and the hot water system, the television and DVD player, the programmable drying-exhaust feature of the bathroom (clothes dryers are less common), the outside door intercom, the microwave. Given that I am not terribly skilled at these things when they are written in English, you get a sense of what I’m up against deciphering the kana. My favorite is the Bathtub-Filling-Preset, which took some doing to understand. Experimenting with a few of the buttons, I was startled by a lilting female voice informing me of, well, something not yet covered in my audio course! I later learned that if one fine morning you’ve set off for a hard day’s work, having decided you’d like to come home to a nice hot bath, you can preset the tub to fill just before your arrival, to your temperature and water-level specifications.