My Japanese Kitchen and Appliances

This is about my kitchen in Japan. By no means am I generalizing that all kitchens in Japan are like this; I haven't been in anyone else's kitchen. We have a galley kitchen. It is a narrow like a hallway, that doesn't even have room for a fridge. The bag next to the fridge has all our milk cartons and food trays that are waiting to be taken back to the store. 

Our microwave/toaster oven/oven combo, with the fridge behind and the burnable trash to the right. 

The fridge is tall and narrow with several drawers on the bottom. 

Inside looks pretty similar to my fridge in the states. 

The doors, however, have much different configuration. It seems that it is specifically designed for something, maybe sauces, but I am not sure if we are using it right. 

The egg holder is in the middle. I bought eggs from Costco most recently. They vary in size greatly and don't have the date stickers like the grocery store did. 

Not sure what this flat area with a sliding lid should be used for. 

This is the water tank for the ice maker. 

I have to fill it manually.

The ice tray drawer is nice! I love that it came with a scoop. 

This is a produce drawer. We use mainly frozen veggies. We have put a bit of produce here, but it is easily forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind. Or maybe I am just out of my mind. Ha!

This is a quick freeze drawer. If I were making popsicles or something I'd make them here. 

Here is the regular freezer. It has two separate trays above the larger drawer. 

Here is our huge sink. There is sink underneath the white dish draining platform. It fits our sink perfectly. 

It can also be changed out for the cutting board that fits the sink perfectly as well. 

I bought this blue basket from the 100 yen shop, Daiso. Some people in the States may be familiar with this store as well. This basket is to put kitchen trash in like eggshells, stems from produce, or fat from meat trimming. Otherwise we have to walk around to the trash can many times. 

Sometimes I put both the drainer and the cutting board over the sink. 

There is no garbage disposal. Under what looks like the disposal should be is a mesh strainer that catches food waste. It's pretty fine mesh and food it was hard to get all the food out. 

I found these bags at Daiso as well. 

They easily catch all the food and make it easy to dispose of. This is mostly oatmeal from breakfast. 

This is under the sink. On the right is our storage for rice. 

By pushing this button, you can select exactly how much rice you want. It measures for you.

Then you open the tray at the bottom to get the rice out. 

Here is our rice cooker. The relocation team labeled in English for us. 

Under the counter storage. 

There is more storage above, but it's not that exciting to look at. 

Our gas stove top. 

Pot storage under the stove. I bought the towel rack at Daiso. 

This is the most annoying part of our kitchen. In order to have hot water, this has to be on. It turns itself off automatically,  not sure after how long. I always forget to turn it on when I am washing dishes by hand. 🤦🏽‍♀️

Here is the mircowave/toaster oven/oven combo. 

We haven't used the oven feature on this appliance yet, but we have used it as a microwave and toaster oven.  In the video below I give a super quick overview of how to use those two features.  

The controls for the dishwasher.

 

As I mentioned before. It barely fits four of everything. The dishes we have are HUGE. I'm not sure how the relo (relocation) people fit everything at once. 

Here is my washing machine and dryer. It has its own closet, which is nice. You can set it to automatically go from washing to drying. It can take up to four hours to do both, depending on the size of the load. Many people hang dry clothes here. It dries faster on a sunny day, that's for sure. 

I bought clothes hanging goods at IKEA. That's one section they have here that they don't in the States. I have never used fabric soften before, but I do here because I might hang dry, or if I use the machine, there are no dryer sheets here. 

So there's my kitchen and most of our appliances.  Do you think you could cook in my kitchen daily? How do you feel about hanging clothes to dry? I have only done it a couple of times so far.