The frog's apartment

Sometimes it is good to be ignorant, because being ignorant means I don't realise that I don't acutally live in a 1K but a 1R+.  And neither did my friend until she booked herself into a 1K AirBnB in Osaka.

I always thought my room is a 1K, but apparently it seems that to be a 1K, there is a door between the genkan and the bedroom area.  So neither me nor my friend live in a 1K, due to the missing door!  I insist on calling my room a 1R+, simply because it was more liveable than those crumbling 1Rs that do not even have unit baths within the room.

I think the aparto was built in perhaps the late Showa/early Heisei era.  It does not have the security system nor parcel collection system that new mansions have, but there is a lady at the ground floor who will accept parcels on behalf, so there is no worry about missing the TA-Q-BIN, although she does remind me of a Soviet floor lady, because from her little window, she can see who comes in and goes out of the aparto.  

The one single thing I am most thankful for the aparto is that the entrances to each unit within is sheltered.  I don't quite appreciate having the cold air enter my room each time I open the door, as how some apartos have corridors are open.

In my 1R+, there is unit bath after the genkan with a sink that eats into the space of the tub.  Thankfully there is a shower curtain so water does not splash out during showers, yet this also means I have to take extra care that the shower curtain dries out and does not grow mold.  There is a ventilator fan in the unit bath that can be switched on, but it doesn't have the fancy Rinnai system that newer apartments are built with, where the shower room can be converted into a laundry drying room with different fan speeds and humidity levels.

There isn't a lot of space in a unit bath, so all bath items are placed at the washing machine stand when they are not in use.  The toilet is unfortunately not a latest Toto washlet, but thankfully the seat can be heated.  The taps for the sink is not a mixer tap but separate hot and cold taps, which can be troublesome to mix the water to the right temperature for showers during winter.  I'm quite afraid of mold in the bathroom, so I try not to have too many things in the unit bath that could encourage mold growth, and keep the door opened when it is not in use.  Once a week, I open the window opposite my room across the corridor, open my door midway and the balcony glass-doors for at least an hour to ventilate my room.  Even in winter and I sit by the door under my blanket.  I think it works because I haven't found any mold so far.  I only turn on the ventilator fan in the unit bath when I'm in the ofuro, so that I don't faint from all that steam in there.

There is a communal washing machine plus dryer room diagonally across the corridor, so there isn't a need for a washing machine in my room.  And I don't own an iron either because the dryer is just awesome.  A wet crumpled piece of clothing goes in and comes out hot and creaseless!  I don't even need to go to a laundromat or a laundry service at all (winter jackets are an exception - a laundry shop is still needed for them).

There is a closet (a real closet for clothes) next to my bed and a little nook between my bed and the wall where check-in sized luggage can be stored (it's either that space or the space above the closet which I have to climb on my bed to place the luggage there).

On the other side of the room is a table and chair where I work, study and eat out of my pot.  There is also a single-door fridge which has space for a freezer and crisper inside.  And next to it is a shelf-unit with a single-bowl sink and an induction cooker side by side.  There are shelves with doors above (for my pot and containers) and below the sink (that space stays empty - I find it odd that people would store anything there other than washing detergent).  There is no space for food preparation, so I either balance the plastic chopping board across the sink or sit on the floor with the chopping board.  Other than a kettle, there are no other kitchen appliances.  

So I guess my room really isn't a 1K.  It's not just because of a lack of door separating the kitchen and the bedroom.  One upside of this is that I can slide my chair and sit in front of the induction plate and eat my food shabu-shabu style.  The downside is that in order not to have the room (my bed and my clothes) smell of food, I can't do anything more adventurous beyond boiling food in my pot.  I can't even cook rice for myself because I don't have a rice cooker.  If I want to eat rice, I'll just buy a bento from Hokka Hokka Tei or Sendo.  

The space where a washing machine is supposed to sit is taken up by bath items and washing powder.  Next to it the first thing that comes into sight when the doors is opened is a shoe cabinet (yes, it is for shoes) where I use the top as my water corner, so there sits my kettle and mug and glass.  I try not to drink beyond the genkan in case I spill water in the room.

It seems I missed out my TV in the sketch.  It sits on a two-drawer bed-side stand between the table and the fridge.  Thus the only place I can watch TV is on my bed next to the closet. 

Although the floor is wooden, I have a kakebuton which fits really nicely in the space between my bed and the table.  This saves me from having to wear socks in the room from Autumn and sometimes I take a nap on the kakebuton.  I don't go out to the balcony much because I only have a pair of rubber slippers which I use to run to the washing machine room across the corridor so I leave my slippers at the genkan at the time.  There is not much of a view from my balcony anyway.

I don't have nice things beyond the basic furniture, because there isn't a Nitori within walking distance where I might buy quite a bit of things.  Usually I just resist the urge to add something else to my already tiny 1R+ when I do my usual rounds at the local Daiso and Off House on Sundays.