About ten years ago now, we packed up a few suitcases and moved to a foreign country. We arrived at night and drove for a few hours listening to broken English and our job being explained, while our eyes were hanging out of our heads with tiredness, trying to take in the new roles that we would fill, watching the lights of city homes packed up against each other as the drive went on and on.Finally our resting place was before us, a pre-war flat, two separate single futons on the floor, a few feet inside the front door. We crashed for the night, and waited until morning to take in our new home.
The whole entire one bedroom flat could fit inside the small loungeroom that we have now. The kitchen consisted of a tiny bench with a double gas cooker, squashed next to a gigantic laundry sized sink, and a bar fridge – no actual bench space. There was a tiny step up to the “dining room”, which was half filled with a small dining table (seriously, it filled half the room), a little bit of space to pull your chair out before you hit the cupboard. Sliding the paper walls along revealed the bedroom, which would only just fit in the futons. The toilet was a squat toilet, which had been westernised by putting a plastic seat on top of it – but when you tried to close the door it would hit your knees! And the shower … was outside … opening the frosted glass doors revealed a tiny backyard, about two metres square with a sort of demountable shower/bath room. And no running hot water! To have a shower we needed to go outside and turn on the gas flame under the bath to warm up the water (taking about fifteen minutes depending on the season) and the shower connected to the water from the bath. We boiled a kettle to do the washing up. When my sister and brother-in-law came to stay, they slept with their legs under the table. It was wall-to-wall futons. In the day we would fold up our bed and use it as our lounge.
I knew that Japan was crowded, but we were really surprised to be living in such small accommodation, ground level, with cockroaches! It wasn’t pretty, but it was cosy and easy to heat.
The best thing about living in such a cramped and dark home, was getting out! We walked in the snow on one of our first days there. We would go for amazing bike rides across the city, zooming down the riverside to all sorts of palaces and temples, mountain walks and ancient buildings. We met beautiful people everywhere we went. We loved to talk to Mrs Honda, an old lady in her purple tracksuit, purple shoes, purple hair and big shiny false teeth smile, who would speak to us every morning on our way to work, with her foreign country dialect that no one could understand. We had no choice, but to get out, to live, to explore, to make new friends, to meet new people and to go to new places.
One of my favourite things to do at night while Mark was teaching English was to go to the church and play the baby grand piano. If I had been comfy in my home, with lots of things to do and beautiful lounges to laze about on, I might never have learnt how to play or taken the opportunity to. Many nights were filled with playing music and learning a new skill.It was such a blessing to live in that home and to experience a different way of living. It forced us into the community, and it forced us to be thankful, it challenged our attitudes and character. I’m really glad that we lived there.
Thank you for sharing this!
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how living overseas in a small space is an adventure but in Australia it's an inconvenience - we (I mean I!) want more living space! But really I need less stuff in my house and to be grateful for the amazing house we are blessed to live in.
From our observation in China - having smaller living spaces meant you socialised with your neighbours more - eating together at local family run restaurants and relaxing with family or friends on the sofas in the karaoke room - smaller houses actually meant more togetherness.