Apartment in Japan

I was just looking through my photos of Japan, and I found some pictures of my apartment in Atsugi. I lived there six years ago.

In the summer, the mountain in the distance always looked hazy and indistinct, but one day in November, I went out and I could practically count the trees.

One of the buildings across the way. It might have been a business, I can't remember.

Another house across the street. I couldn't see the house, just the entrance.

I liked to say I lived next to the river, but it wasn't a terribly impressive river.

The inside. I was told it was six tatami mats in size. My futon is on the right. When I unfolded it, it took up the entire floor. This was the only place I've lived where I made my bed every day. It came furnished, and I didn't bring much with me, so it never looked that great. Now I'd make more of an effort to fix it up.

The spacious kitchen. On the right is the door to the bathroom. If I stepped back when I was doing the dishes, sometimes I would trip and fall backwards into the bathroom. It wasn't ideal. I wasn't the first person to live here, so there was lots of extra junk the other people had left behind. Sometimes it was great, I'd think of something I needed, look around, and find it buried somewhere, and other times it was completely useless. I never did use the size 13 men's flip flops. I realized living here that I didn't need much space to live comfortably. I should say I also had a decent-sized closet and a loft that I used for storage in the summer and slept in during the winter, so it really wasn't that small. I almost prefer smaller apartments now. I feel like I have to buy stuff to fill up the extra space in large apartments.