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.  

Grocery Shopping

We have a grocery store a convenient THREE MINUTE walk from our house! Needless to say, it's very easy to go every day if needed. There is also a Daiso upstairs and other shops inside as well. 

I mentioned recycling milk cartons and trays at the grocery store before. This is the area where you do it. 

You need to rinse and cut the cartons so they lay more flat. There are instructions on the lid of the bin. Here are my cartons:

Here people grocery shop more, so a hand basket is standard. However, you can put it in a cart. 

These are the carts. I once saw someone put two hand baskets in the cart, one on top and one in bottom, but that was just once. 

These watermelons must have been popular! The store had been open less than an hour. Also, those are ice packs to keep them cool! I love the attention to detail!

Most produce, but not all, is portioned out into a set number in a bag. It's a good thing they recycle film type plastic here!

Lots of seafood.

Let's talk about milk. My family is big on drinking milk! My oldest son is 6'4.5" (~195 cm) and loooooves milk. In the states I would buy 5 gallons of milk (1 gallon = 3.8 liters, so about 19 liters) at the beginning of the week, and sometimes even buy another gallon to get us through the weekend to Monday morning. Well, milk is only sold by the liter (even at Costco it was two liters of milk wrapped up together). So....we are buying 2 or 3 liters of milk at a time. It's a good thing the store is only a three minute walk away!

Salad looks a little different here. 

There is a good sized ready to eat/prepared food section. We were eating lunches from here for the first few days in our house. 

🎶Sandwiches are beautiful sandwiches are fine. I like sandwiches I eat them all the time. 🥪🎶

My Animal Crossing friends: fruit sandwiches DO exist. It is white bread with whipped cream and fruits in the middle. 

My kids like oniguri! (Rice balls)

There is even a selection of western style food. We haven't tried these corn dogs yet, but someone must be eating them. I've noticed them several times. 

Body wash section. There is even an American brand offered! 

The check out process:

OR, you can cheat and do self check out where there is an English button on the home screen and she sounds just like the ones in the States!

Side note, but related. This is my refrigerator. It has a built in egg holder! Also, look at the eggs! They have individual stickers with the date on it, so when you buy more, you can eat the older ones first. Brilliant! 

This is far from a comprehensive review of a Japanese grocery store, so let me know if there's a section of the grocery store you'd like to see more of!

Orientation Day at International School

Orientation day at International School. First day of classes is tomorrow! We got to ride the "school" bus with the boys this morning. 

Beautiful view from the school. 

Our day consisted of lots of meetings where staff was introduced as well as the framework for the curriculum and expectations. The boys will be going on a retreat at the end of the month to the Japanese Alps!

Lots of green areas out by the school. It's kind of far out. We had a meeting after school and missed the school bus home (we were aware) and so we ventured to a bus stop, then to the train. 

It was rainy, then it got HOT. 

We were sweating bullets and the bus was a few minutes late! We waited about 20 minutes. 

On the train. 

We made it home! We were gone from 7:00am to 4:00pm. It was a long day.