How To Get To Where I Work

This is the road I work on.  This is the view you would see immediately after turning onto the road.  That warehouse-looking building on the far left is one of the buildings on our work property.  I think the driveway is the 3rd one on the left, which is down the hill just a little way.  That mountain in clear view on the right is where the park is where para-sailors (para-sailers?) para-sail from.  Is it called para-sailing?  I suddenly realized I'm not sure what para-sailing is.  But I know they're not parachuting or hang-gliding.

This is the view immediately when you turn left into our work driveway.  That first warehouse on the right is the same one in the picture above, and the second warehouse is where the main office is.  There's a third warehouse behind that.  I park on the right, next to where that other car is parked in this photo.

This, in fact, is (essentially) the view from where I park.  I'm actually standing in the same driveway shown in the previous picture, but straight out in front of my car.  That white car in the background is the plant manager's car.  I have to walk back here around to the back of this warehouse to get into the main office.

Here's the outdoor space I see the most when I'm at work.  If you walk up the driveway shown in the previous picture(s) and turn right to go between the two main buildings, this is your view.  The building on the right has the main office, a meeting room, and our largest machine.  The building on the left has a meeting room and about 6 other gigantic machines, give or take.  Also immediately to my left in this picture is a vending machine with both hot and cold drinks, like hot coffee in a dozen varieties and cold coffee in a dozen OTHER varieties.  Also, maybe some tea.

Here you're looking at the main office.  It has a plaque right on it that says "Main Office."  You can kind of see right inside the door (even though the glass is somewhat frosted) that everyone takes their shoes off, even in the main office of a business.  That 5-tier rack inside the door has guest slippers. It also reminds me that I left my umbrella in another rack just inside that door.

Here is the inside of the main office.  That grayish cabinet to the left is the same ominous rectangular silhouette you can see inside the door in the previous picture.  In this photo, I'm standing behind the manager's desk.  The first desk on the right is the secretary's, the one directly across from that (immediately behind the photobombing phone) is mine.  That dry-erase marker board in the background, at the press of a button, will not only scroll to a whole new blank board, but scan and print what's written on the full one as it scrolls.  Its really quite amazing.

Here's my desk from the back.  This was taken at about 5:50 this evening, a few minutes after I had already packed up my computer.  Usually my laptop is sitting there, broadcasting a wireless signal so I can play games and check email ON MY BREAKS.

And that's it for the guided tour!  There are, of course, the insides of the rest of the buildings and the other half of this building, but there are a lot of photos-forbidden zones and plus I'm only really in those places when I'm actually working so I can't just be taking pictures willy-nilly.

My Apartment Walkthrough

Hi Mikey!  Here's what it looks like coming to my house from the front, then through and out the back.  The picture of the parking lot were taking during the day but the rest were at night, so if there seems to be a discrepancy in lighting, now you know why.

Here's where I park my car.  We have our own private parking lot.  And I mean "We" in the royal sense, since I am the only one living here.  The parking spot has 7 spaces, I think.

When I get out of my car after a long day at work, this is what I see.  Except I don't usually back up from my car, so usually I just see the tail end of the car and then the rest of this.  That downstairs window on the right is my bedroom window, and that little tiny window like you might shoot arrows from goes directly to my shower.

This is my bike.  With a shadow of me taking a picture cast over it.  That shadow is always there, whether or not I am.  It's weird.

This is my boat.  Well, it's parked next to my car anyway.  It's as much my boat as the bike is my bike and the car is my car, except I can't take it out for a spin whenever I want.  

Here's the view of my front door and kitchen window.  I don't know why the kitchen window is frosted.  I guess it's not common for people to be able to look directly into your house.  The big white box on the right I THINK is the gas meter and/or valve.  The medium off-white box to the top left of my front door is the electric meter.  The little gray-black box just left of my door is the doorbell/intercom.  I have a phone handset in the living room from which I can talk to whoever rang the doorbell.

Here's the view from just inside the front door.  I'm standing in the teeny entryway, just big enough to take your shoes off in and one step down from the floor of the rest of the house.

This is my kitchen, immediately to the right of the entryway. In fact, you can still see the top of my suitcase in the picture, and the suitcase is sitting in the same spot it was in the previous picture.

This is my appliance area, on the left side of my hallway.  In relation to the "view from inside the front door," the gray minifridge (far left) is just on the other side of the entryway half-wall.  In other words, this stuff is all directly across from the bathroom door (first door on the right in the hallway picture).  That green piece of paper hanging above the washing machine is a picture Eve drew for me of a bunch of fish swimming away from an underwater volcano.  It used to hang on my desk at IU.

My bathroom.  Directly across the hall from the rice cooker.  There are separate slippers you wear in the bathrooms in Japanese houses, so even though you can't see it in this picture there's about a 4-5 inch threshold between the hallway and the bathroom, and a pair of "bathroom slippers" permanently in the bathroom.  You can kind of tell (about the threshold) from the first hallway picture.

Here's the view of my bedroom (and the living room, brightly lit, to the left) from the hallway.  You can get to either room from the hallway and you can get between the two rooms without going through the hall.  I think you already knew that though.

Here's my bedroom from JUST inside the bedroom door.  The curtains hide a sliding glass door that leads to my back porch, and there's also a sliding screen door so on nice days I can circulate some fresh air.

Here's the view of my living room from the hallway door to the living room.  For some reason I refuse to set my computer on that table and instead have it on a bookshelf which means I have to slouch over to use it.  Maybe I'll change that tonight.  I keep thinking maybe I'll have company so I should keep the table clear, but I think realistically I won't have company on such short notice that I won't have time to move the computer.

I've only watched the television once.  I kind of want to have it on more just for Japanese learning purposes, but my brain is so tired at the end of every day from forced-comprehension all day long that I can't bring myself to have Japanese speech even in the background.

This view is from standing in almost the exact same spot as the previous picture but turned about 45 degrees to the right.  You can see the sliding wall/doors between the living room and bedroom, and the matching sliding glass doors to the back porch in each room.  Also, I have a clock!

Here's my back porch at night, from the bedroom end.  There are 3 identical porches just beyond mine looking this direction, and the parking lot is behind me in this view.  The privacy shrubbery and then small elementary school are to my right.

And these are the views into my bedroom and living room (respectively) from the back porch.  That phone handset on the living room wall is the intercom I was talking about earlier.

That's it!  Stay tuned for a walkthrough of work!

xo