my home

Hi everybody,

I want to write in this post about where I live. Tsukuka (つくば市) is the science city, it has an important University and many research centers. It is a relative new city, 50-60 years old, created from the addition of several towns and small villages surrounding. This make it to be very spread out with large distances between different quarters. For guest researchers, foreigners or not, there are several residences on the city, I am living in one of those. Its name is Ninomiya House and you can find some pictures and additional information in the following link. You can see above an overview of the different parts of the apartment: first the living/working room, the bedroom to the right, the kitchen in the back part, and the bathroom is behind the bedroom and therefore not seen in the photography. The residence is quite modern and there are available all facilities that one can imagine. Inside the apartment we have washing machine, microwave oven, gas cooker, internet, telephone, fax, TV with video player (the still exist!), air conditioning in the living room and in the bathroom, a waste disposer unit, and a survival kit and automatic lock of the doors of the cupboards in case of earthquake!! There are a lot of earthquakes in this region but not very strong, today I have experienced the first one. I had the feeling that a very big truck was driving very close to me making noise and moving things, but I was sitting on my desk in the eight floor of the institute, where no trucks are usually driving! There were only 10 seconds but it was a strange feeling. Now, coming back to the apartment, it is not really Japanese style and apart from the paper doors of the bedroom the rest is quite occidental.

In addition, the residence hat common places as assembly rooms, exercise room, a children´s room, a library and a courtyard (see photographies). The courtyard is full with people when it is nice weather and in summer they organize parties and barbecues. What still can be convienient of such a nice place? It is very close to the work and to the city center, not far away from the train station, they rent bikes for a very low amount of money, they speak English (not so easy to find in this country), and still, the best thing is that every apartment has a BALCONY. About my balcony I will write my next post.

A hug.