Some quirky facts about our apartment

• It is very easy to overload a circuit and trip the fuse-box. Combinations known to cause problems are
• Heater + iron
• Vacuum cleaner + washing machine
• Microwave + just about anything, including lights, or maybe just the microwave on its own
• Our bath drainage is not plumbed in. If you pull the plug, the water drains out the bottom of the bath, swills around the bathroom floor for a bit, before draining out the drain on the bathroom floor. The washing machine drains in much the same way.
• We had a walking washing machine, but we have fixed it my sticking it on a moldy foam bath mat.
• The washing machine lives in the bathroom, but there are no power points in the bathroom as it is a wet room. Thus the power cord is plugged into an extension, which runs up over the "shower rail" (in front of the bathroom door), through the door, across the "room" in front of the bathroom, and plugs in next to the sink. Hunter has improved this somewhat by attaching hooks to the wall and ceiling outside the bathroom to control cabling there, but hooks won't attach in the damp bathroom.
• The sink near the bathroom does not have hot water. Hunter curses this every morning when he shaves
• The hot water system in the bathroom allows you to set the exact temperature you want the water to come out at - some new (wonderful) technology patched over the really old.
• The two main rooms have tatami floors. In this, I think we are quite lucky that our apartments are old, as tatami is less common in newer buildings. Tatami flooring is made from woven straw, and is very traditional. It means we have to be a bit careful about what we put on the floor, but I love it.
• The kitchen has an exhaust fan that is simply a fan sitting in a hole in the wall, going directly to the outside world. Thus, heating the whole house is just not realistic.
• There are two light switches for the toilet light. However, they are wired in series rather than in parallel.
• The sliding doors between rooms and on the built in wardrobes are made of paper. Not rice-paper, like you see in fancy Japanese rooms, but paper all the same. Some of the doors have holes.
• The wallpaper in the bedroom has a very coarse grained sand-effect, and can scratch the unwary. It is also peeling off the walls badly, which has only been mildly improved by me trying to stick it back on using a glue stick. A previous occupant has used thumb tacks to re-attach some sections.
• If the doors/windows are open, you can vacuum, and an hour later, see that the floors could benefit from another vacuum.
• The ceiling in the kitchen is badly blackened above the (not built in) gas burners.
• I am pretty confident that the apartment has not been repainted in the 15 years AETs have been living here, and probably a good bit before that either. Especially in the wet areas, paint is peeling off the wall and external pipes.
• The cabling and plumbing in the apartment seem to have been tacked on as an afterthought. I am sure they didn't build 4 storey apartments before the advent of electricity! One particularly impressive example is the electricity into one of the tatami rooms. It is run from the ceiling of the adjacent room, down the wall, through the doorway, back up the wall, and to the ceiling. As a result, it is not possible to close the (sliding) door properly. 
• Traditional Japanese wardrobes provide no hanging space. This can be partially remedied by inserting a temporary rod into the wardrobe, but the available space is not enough to hang a dress or long coat. Thus my clothes are hanging on a portable clothing rack.
• All the above grouching aside, it's home!