House-hunting in the Cho

February 27th, 2007

Our housing meeting was on Monday. Without going into the gory details, the earliest we could even remotely dream of getting on base housing that would allow a dog is April, and June is far more likely. Since Dory gets out of quarantine in June, waiting that long to live in little America when Japan is just out there waiting seems silly, sooo the house hunting has begun. We're going to live "in the Cho" after all.

Cho, by the way, is Japanese for neighborhood. Living "in the Cho" is basically saying living in a Japanese neighborhood. The chos here each have their own name, so when directing someone to your house, you can say it's "in Tamagachi Cho," for example. The American slang has turned it into the word for "apartment or house off base" as well. So the Americans refer to their off base houses as "their chos." It complicates things, but what are you going to do?

The system works something like this. In the Housing Office, there is a board where they post all the houses and apartments for rent. Each one lists space, rooms, where it is in comparison to base,and other vital information. Each family can look at up to two at a time. You take the papers to the front desk, and they set up appointments with the realitor to go see them. They give you the time of the appointment, the color of the car that will pick you up, and the license number. You go to the back gate at the appointed time, find the car, and jump in with a stranger who speaks little, if any, English and gets very excited when you know any Japanese at all. This person drives you to the house where you look around and they attempt to answer your questions despite the language barrier. Always an adventure.
Once you've seen a place, you have until noon the next day to take it or it goes back on the board for the world to see. This means that you really have to make up your mind quickly or run the risk of losing the place. The fact that we're in a culture class now from 8:30 until 3:30 each day makes things a little more complicated.
In addition, we were warned that Japanese houses are different from American houses in several ways. The most noticable is that they often use tatami mats as the floor. These mats are like super-hard matresses with a styrofoamy core and (may be) reed woven mat wrapped around them. When new, they smell terrific. The houses also often have sliding doors between rooms with either rice paper or a thicker paper in them. They always come with an entryway (Genkan) in which you leave your shoes because they're not allowed inside. The Genkan often has a little shoe closet (I can't wait to see how Zack's military boots will fit in there!). The bathrooms are totally different. The toilet is separate from the shower room always. The shower room is completely waterproof and the bath is separate from the shower. The bath in Japan, apparently is not for washing, but for soaking and relaxing. You aren't to put bubbles or soap or anything but may be salt into the bath. You wash outside of it so others can use the water when you're done (insert eyebrow raise here). The last difference is that often the Japanese houses come with "System Kitchens" which are a gas stove and a broiler. The broiler has just enough room to fit about one steak, or fish, or whatever. That's it. The government will install normal ranges in houses that have room for them, but not all of them do. So one thing you have to think about when you look at a place is "HOw often do I really bake and would I miss it if I couldn't?"
Anyway, we've seen four houses (or Chos) so far. The first was the only one on the board that said it took pets officially. It was cute, and convienent to base, but had zero grass anywhere near it. Also no sidewalks for walking a dog. We considered it anyway, but decided we needed to look further. So we decided to ignore the no pets allowed on the bottom of every other sheet and begin negotiating. As a result, we saw three houses today. The first house we looked at actually had a yard that would suit Dory just fine. The upstairs was a little run down, but other than that, it was quite charming. It was more traditional style from the first in that it had more sliding doors and the main room downstairs had tatami mats. It has it's own little parking lot next to it. The view from the windows is of a little urban sprawl and then the mountains. The next house today was a very old, very traditional, very enormous Japanese house. We were taken to it by a realitor who was very proud of the little English she had, and so had a tendency to repeat everything (including our dog's name). She was a driven saleswoman as well, so she really talked the place up. It's about fifty years old and very traditional. It was almost all tatami mats and entirely sliding doors . It had a room that used to be the housekeeper's room. It had a fantastic little Japanese garden in the back ("For Dory"). The view, however, was of shipyards and other houses, and it was entirely too large for two people and one small dog. The realitor was dissapointed to hear this, so she offered to take us to one more place.
As we rode back into town, the realitor explained that another military family had seen this house today, but if they put it back on the board, we could grab it tomorrow at noon. She also told us that the house belongs to her father, which meant she could guarantee that we could have our dog ("Dory okay, just for you"). She indicated that the other family who saw it thought their furniture was too big to fit. We hope she's right because this place was our favorite. It's very close to downtown, so easily bike riding distance from base. It is surrounded by apartments and townhouses, but it is free standing. It comes with two parking places, located under the house in a parking deck. You climb a set of green stairs to get to the house.

Downstairs is a very open floorplan with a small patio with a little plot of soil that Dory can use. One room downstairs is the super traditonal style with the tatami mats and sliding doors. The rest is hard wood. Upstairs, there are two decent sized rooms and a gianormous patio that is essentially the roof of the house. The view is fantastic: a little of downtown and then a clear view of the mountains and sky. Needless to say, we'r e a little in love with this house, so we can't wait to check the board tomorrow (please, oh please be there!).