I love Japanese toilets

I'll be honest, I love a lot of things about our new place. But I love nothing more than the toilets. These babies have a little sensor that causes the lid to open up when you approach the toilet. Come on. Really.



The seats are always warm. You never have to touch any part of the toilet. There is a little remote control that you push to flush, bring the seats up or down, activate the bidet, or hot air spray, etc.

Japan has come a long way in their bathroom technology. I used to live in fear of having to use the dreaded "squatter"...I think you can visualize what I'm talking about. If not, then think of a hole in the ground.

As is the case with any new revolutionary, life-changing technology, you're going to get those who don't totally embrace it at first. Shelley was a little annoyed that the toilet would raise the lid in excited anticipation whenever Shelley entered the bathroom, even when she only wanted to brush her teeth. She at first made me turn off the automatic setting, only to come around after pushing a few wrong buttons and almost falling in late one night.

I'm not sure what one of these babies cost, but as Ferris Bueler once said, "It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up."

I think the only thing it doesn't have is captured nicely by Saturday Night Live...


The Love Toilet

Our apartment

We've been buried in Tokyo without internet access and so we haven't had a chance to update our blog with pictures and stories about our first few days here in Tokyo.

Our apartment is on the third floor of this four story building pictured to the left. We live below a friend of the family who I've known since my days in La Canada...small world. They've been incredibly nice to us...so much so that Anthon has a new "Grammy" that he talks about all the time.

We live in the relatively quiet urban neighborhood of Yoyogi Uehara. It's about a 15 minute walk to Tokyo's version of Central Park with lots of green space, ducks, dogs and open space to run around. The area has a lot of expats as its the closest bus stop to the American School. So there is a nice mixture between local and expat families.

We've found this life in this area is very different from our life back in Pasadena. We can walk pretty much everywhere we go and for longer trips we take the train. Talk of buying a car has been put on hold until at least our little girl is born. Then we can revisit that topic at a time when many expats move home. But we are a two minute walk to the grocery store, three minute walk to the train station and within 5-10 minutes from a variety of small, family owned restaurants, flower shops, book stores, bakeries, etc. It's what I imagined living in New York would be like.

The apartment itself is quite spacious. It's double the size of our Pasadena condo and normally wouldn't have been within our housing budget. But it sat for 6 months open and I think the landlords were looking to get any cash flow possible. We lucked out because they recently upgraded the whole place. While our place is sterile and drafty because our stuff is still on the slow boat, it has a lot of potential. The kitchen, living and dining rooms and master bedroom face the western sunset. While all this light is a blessing in this cold winter, I can only imagine how hot it could get in the summer. The view to the west is of a mosque. Not what we thought we'd be looking at, but as you can see from the picture to the right, it does provide quite the view at sunset.

The kitchen has tons of storage space, granite counter tops and US-sized fridge, dish washer and oven. The bedrooms are large and afford Anthon to have his own room, Ella her own room come May, and an office.

If you're a Google Maps geek, like I am, then here is an arial photo of our place. Yes, it doesn't look like much.


View Larger Map

We'll pass along a more detailed video of our place. But in the mean time, please enjoy a few pictures of our place.