Our new home!

Stephanie and I feel extremely blessed to have the type of apartment or "mansion" as many Japanese refer to it as. We were very fortunate to get into the building that we did with a great location for both groceries and work. Stephanie and I have both on separate occasions called it a hotel but I think that comes with the fact we ride an elevator up to our room and that we are still getting settled in.

We found this advertisement for our apartment hanging in a store window and thought it would be good to see the actual floor plan. If you want to get a better idea on how large the rooms are you can do the conversions to feet.

Not sure why but the building itself is called Global Shimonoseki- not sure what makes it global.

The building is 13 stories high and we live on the 10th floor . Because we are so high we have a nice breeze to dry clothes with and keep us cool but we will have to wait and see how that works out during the winter when its below freezing.

We have a really nice grocery store right beside our apartment- which you can see in the background. We still cannot read Japanese but I am pretty sure the store is called Red Cabbage.

A Wonderful view from the front door of our apartment. You can notice a large tree in the left side of the photo which is actually part of a temple for a Shinto shrine, of which I put a photo of directly below.

Literally across the street is a constant reminder of why we are here.

One of our rooms. Notice the floor which is called tatami flooring.

This is the kitchen with a few items that were donated to us from the church members on the countertop.

Here I am checking out the tatami flooring in what will eventually be a guest room/ baby room.

Several of the doors are made of a very light material that you just slide open and closed. It is actually quite convenient for sectioning of areas so you do not have to heat or cool large areas.

Here is our wonderufl new refrigerator that we got on Thursday. Very excited to get it, and Stephanie has already started to decorate it with our wonderful trash pickup schedule (we have to sort our trash, but thats has to be a separate blog.) I am pretty sure you cannot see it but Stephanie was very smart to write down in English what all the colors mean when one person from the church told us. 

Japanese style shower, which is actually quite spacious which I found to be odd when compared to everything else.

We got a really nice washer/dryer, but unfortunately we have to try and remember what all the buttons do since they are all labeled in Japanese.

Thats it for tonight, because I need to head to bed. Thanks again for all your encouragements, thoughts and prayers. We could not be here if it was not for all the people that partner with us in prayer and finances.
David