Reorganization & Used Items in Japan...

Joe's senior manager recently just moved back to Seattle. Lucky for us he lived only a couple of floors above us, and since it's really difficult to get rid of items in Japan, we acquired a few new things. We have discovered that in general, people here like brand new and really nice things. They are extremely fashionable and appearance matters greatly. Therefore, for the most part, they all want the biggest, and best, and newest items on the market - whether its clothes, accessories, household items, food, cars... or whatever! So basically, there's no market for used items, and when someone wants to get rid of something here - it goes into the trash. Seriously! Occasionally, if it's a fairly new item and in descent condition you can find a recycle shop and try to sell it. For example, when we moved into our new apartment we had to get rid of one of our air conditioners. It was less than a year old, and we bought it brand new for about $1500... and we sold it to a recycle shop for $50. Enough said. But what's even more crazy is that for most of your items, you actually have to PAY someone to get rid of them. Like a couch - you can't exactly throw it onto the streets downtown... so you have to first of all find someone to come and dispose of it, and then secondly you have to pay them to do it. Ridiculous! So it actually makes more sense to give your items away to other expats who want them, rather than to deal with the hassle of trying to sell them for essentially nothing or paying someone to come and dispose of it. You would think that a person would be able to donate their nice items to a homeless shelter or similar organization, or a Goodwill type of establishment - but apparently that doesn't exist here. We're already dreading having to try and get rid of all of our furniture when we leave here.

Anyway, as I was originally saying, we acquired a few new items from Joe's coworker - including a couple furniture pieces and about 20 plants! I've been wanting plants for a while, but Joe didn't seem to think they were necessary since we're only here temporarily. So now I finally got my plants, including a beautiful little orchid plant, yay! ;)

Here is a before picture...


And after...

New buffet style piece on the wall, filled with Japanese knick-knacks, and little plants displayed on top. Not sure if I've shown a picture yet of our wall of pics...? Since we're not allowed to nail anything into the walls - Joe created this design and hung everything by string. Each picture is of us from a different place in the world. It's a daily reminder of why we're living here, and how much we've been able to see and do through this amazing opportunity to live abroad! :) And then you can see in the back corner that I used my old bookcase to hold a variety of plants.

New TV stand and plants. And yes, Elodie is laying on the floor watching a Baby Einstein DVD (she loves them!). The only downfall to this new arrangement is that we don't have a good place to hang our antique scroll anymore.

New bookshelf and plants. We have too many books to do anything cute with this unit. Oh well.

The longer we live here, the more we stuff we seem to accumulate - especially because of Elodie! We originally showed up in suitcases, bought the essentials, and decided to keep it to the bare minimum. But we continue to acquire more and more stuff, which makes it cute & cozy and more "homey," but will ultimately come back to haunt us when we finally move back to the U.S.