Wednesday, January 18, 2006

My Kitchen

I have been surfing around the blogesphere the last little bit (canceled class).
I have been trying to decide what to do with my blog when I return to Canada: new country, new home, new life, new stories,

New blog?

I don’t want to loose this one though.
I would like to keep it all in tack. I am not sure how to do that. Have to do some more searching. I could also just keep things as is and continue the life of this one.

Then deeizak went and got her own domain name AND THAT IS SOOO COOL! Only problem is that I am totally template inept, yes granny I really am. I need the template already in place before I start to do things. I cannot even imagine creating one from zero.
There are other Blogging engines out there but I don’t like the idea of paying. Maybe I will just stay with blogger.
I DON’T KNOW.
Just thinking.
Don’t need to do anything about it right now.
…….
Any way, in my surfing travels I noticed a few amusing posts about ones kitchen and fridge.

Ahh kitchens.

I love to design dream houses on scrap paper: I should consider taking some remodeling and interior design courses. Every time I draw the kitchen in this dream house it is HUGE, usually bigger than the living room, with a giant table, an island with bar stool chairs for the counter. Everything is laid out in a wonderful circle and all made of honey oak.

In Japan my kitchen is smaller than my father upstairs bathroom and lacking in any type of counter space anywhere.

Li and I have been able to develop a system that has worked but it is impossible and borderline dangerous to have more than one person in there at the same time.
More excuses for me to not help when Li is cooking dinner. ;-)

In Canada I became accustomed to rented apartments ALWAYS containing certain key things in the kitchen: a fridge, a sink, a stove, basic cupboards, and a little bit of counter space.

In Japan, when you rent an apartment, you get: a sink, one maybe two cupboards, and basically no counter space.
No fridge.
No stove.

This shocked me when I first came.
I took over my first apartment from the previous teacher, Heather, and she left me with a single burner gas range and a half sized apartment fridge about 3 feet high. It took me a bit to get used to it. Needless to say I shopped little and often and did very simple cooking.

I decided I couldn’t handle the burner any more and Kelly Boy helped me get one of the common double burner ones with the tiny weenie grill pan in the middle.

Then about a year before we moved into our larger apartment we bought a second hand fridge off of another teacher who was leaving. It is not huge but compared to the old one it is enormous! It is still shorter than me but at least I can fit the drinks in there and only have to go food shopping twice a week instead of six. It also is perfect height to hold our microwave, which didn’t fit anywhere else. We also had to buy a cabinet to hold all our plates and cups.



The cupboards provided in the apartment are only good for the garbage can and the pots and pans. The cupboard above the sink holds all of our really nice dinner-wear and I cannot reach it without standing on a chair. Totally useless. All of the towel holders and what not were also bought by us.



I bought myself a table on rollers that could act as a counter top but also hold things. This has now become the only counter space we have for cooking. Ji has also become very good at removing the water and tea when we have the bottles piled on it. The kid is getting very strong.



I also bought another table thing that has a power bar in it so works great for the rice cooker and the toaster oven when we need it. I used to have all of my spices on the second shelf but when Ji became mobile that started to not work very well. They have been moved.
(By the way, the painting is something I did when I was about 14.)



Basically all of our stuff in jam-packed together in a mish mash of non-matching furniture bought as cheap as possible.
The huge problem here is that I have to get rid of all of it when we move.
AURGH!

So that is a Japanese apartment kitchen. Well actually it is our Japanese kitchen.
The sad thing is that a house kitchen in Japan is not too much bigger. I have no idea how people cook for a family larger than ours.


Update:
Today’s blessings:
- My Wednesday night lady canceled again. I like her, I really do, but with Li working nights now it is a little stressful trying to get everything done before she arrives for class. I never complain when she cancels.
- Li is working an earlier shift tonight and should be home at a slightly more respectable time.
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Posted by (Top)Andrea::1/18/2006 :: 22 Comments:

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