Last Tuesday, Aug. 19 we moved out of our cozy little nest at the Mozen Lodge, the TLF, and into our very own house in the community – off base.  Chris didn’t want to spend a lot of time looking at houses so we picked the second one we looked at.  Actually it was a toss up between this one and a brand new house 9 km south of the base, right on the water.  After conferring with everyone we knew here (which is a very small number) it was a consensus that convenience is way more important than anything else.  So, here it is.

It’s way too big – so come on down.  There’s room for everyone.  Our household goods will arrive in another month so we now have loner furniture from the base.

And the kitchen.  It has lots of cupboards and almost no counter space.

The sink is 34″ wide and the oven is 8″ wide.  The Japanese must have an awfully small turkey at Thanksgiving.  This really is all there is.

Now for the bathroom.  One room has a big bathtub with a shower head next to it.

Then you go to the laundry room to wash your hands or brush your teeth.

And the toilet, the piece de resistance, has it’s own little room.

Notice the faucet on top.  When you flush the toilet, fresh water pours out of the faucet and into the tank.  Taa Daa   How ’bout that sports fans?  Very efficient use of water, right?  (More on that later.)

The most challenging part of living off base is dealing with the trash pick up system.  Everyone must separate their trash into mainly 7 different categories.  And the 7th category, Recyclable Items, must be separated into 8 different sub categories.  My favorite category is No. 11.  I hope I never have to use that category.

There’s a separate page to explain each category.

Then we have a color coded calendar to tell us which day each trash is being picked up.  As you can see some trash is picked up only once a month.

There are red plastic bags and green plastic bags.  We must write our names on the bags and use only these bags for our trash.  Combustible trash like food waste goes in the red bag and is picked up on Mondays and Thursdays.  Most everything else goes in it’s own separate green bag and is set out on it’s designated day.

This is making me crazy because if you mess up, the trash man will not take your trash and will leave you a note in Japanese.  And I really don’t want to have to deal with my trash a second time.  So I’d like to get it right the first time but it’s really very confusing – especially the plastics. There are Japanese plastics and there are American plastics.  I could go on and on and on but I’ll try not to.

Oh, and there’s one more thing.  Remember how efficient they are with water and the toilet faucet?  Well, we have to wash all our trash so it’s nice and clean when we set it out.  There are a lot of feral cats who get into the trash but also, the trash men open all the trash and sort through it to make sure it’s the right kind of trash.  It’s quite amazing.  I watched them do it at the Mozen Lodge on base but there they can’t blame anyone, they just sort it and deal with it.

On a happier note, guess who we saw at the library yesterday?