4. An undisclosed location (aka doorframes and toilets)

Here is my apartment, in all its disarray!

Look at me taking panorama pictures like a champ. 

So I inherited (by which I mean paid a small amount of money for) a lot of things from the old English teacher that used to live in my apartment, and some things just came with the apartment when he got it.  I haven't figured out what a lot of them are, and here are some of my favorites:

1.  Brand new, never-been-used octopus cooker

Is this for cooking octopus, or for octopuses with a culinary inclination?

2.  Small circular object with a bunch of nails (pointy end) sticking out of it.  Looks like a brush, but they are NAILS.  Ow why did I try that on my head?

Some of you probably know what this is.  Please let me know.

3. Radio that doesn't have a tuning dial.  It is plugged in, but it doesn't turn off when I unplug it because it has a battery.  The first evening I was here, it made a beeping sound, turned itself on, and a voice in Japanese started speaking.  After a few minutes, it turned itself off.  I didn't really catch any of the words, but I was a little alarmed and I was worried it was a tsunami alert system or something.

Harbinger of doom

4. Speaker with a pull string.  When I pull it, a woman speaks in Japanese.  It's right next to the pull string for the light in my bedroom (if you can call it a bedroom - see below), so I've pulled it quite a few times even by mistake.  Later I learned that this is an emergency call system.  Apparently someone is supposed to come to your apartment if you pull it.  No one busted down my door, which is good I guess, but maybe disturbing too.

I thought these were for nursing homes.

5.  This was described to me as an electric table/blanket.  Which doesn't make any sense, but now that I saw it is probably how I would describe it too.  It's a table where the tabletop part comes off and you're left with a frame with a heater attached.  You stick a blanket over that part, stick the tabletop back on, and then sit with your legs under the table and never leave the house until spring comes.

It's called a kotatsu. There will be a quiz later.

The doorframes in my apartment are all right above eye level but definitely within solid head-smashing territory; this is a dangerous and stealthy zone for them to be in.  So far my morning trips to the bathroom in the first four mornings I have lived here have gone as follows:

Day 1 - Smashed my head on the doorframe.
Day 2 - Smashed my head on the doorframe.
Day 3 - Dodged the first two doorframes (yes!), then really slammed into the third one.
Day 4 - Crawled on the floor to the bathroom.  Got there safely.

Toilets in Japan are super nice.  The toilet we had in the hotel had 3 bidet settings (little butt spray, big butt spray, front spray for women), adjustable water pressure for the bidet, a heated seat, a big/little dual flush system, and a pressure-sensitive seat that sprayed deodorizer into the toilet whenever you sat down.  The public toilets in the lobby also had a little button that made a flushing noise when you push it to cover up any farting you may want to do.  My toilet in the apartment is pretty cool too, but it is in such a small room that if I sit down my knees are crammed against the door.  So I close the curtains when I poop and just leave the door open.  Hopefully I don't have to poop when people are over.

The toilet in my apartment also has this genius feature that every toilet in the world should incorporate.  When you flush, the water that fills up the tank comes out of a little sink on top of the toilet, so as you wash your hands, the drained water fills the toilet tank.  DOUBLE WATER USAGE! BAM!

Art.

So apparently the way most Japanese people sleep is in a bamboo mat (tatami) room, and they put a thin pad deceptively known as a futon underneath them every night.  They (we, I suppose, because that's what I'm doing for the moment) have to remove the futon during the day so the bamboo mats can air out.  Otherwise they mold.  Basically, the moral is, beds are better.  How's that for cultural insensitivity.

Here is my tatami room. Good for daily headstand practice, not so good for sleeping.