Futons

Things I have learned about futons in the eight years I've lived in Japan:

1. If you don't fold up your futon every day, it will grow mould on the bottom...
2. If you don't hang your futon in the sun often, it will grow mould on the bottom...
3. Forgetting your futon outside on a rainy day is an expensive mistake!
4. Futons are not comfortable unless you have a tatami room.
5. Futons are especially uncomfortable on concrete floors.

Unfortunately I still often forget these things! I take naps with Elliott during the day, so often my futon doesn't get folded up at all. We have been in our loft for a month, and I only just hung our futons on the balcony to air this weekend. Hopefully they won't grow mould?!

Elliott sleeping in my futon:



Our futons hanging on the balcony. I haven't seen other residents hanging their futons on their front balconies, so hopefully it's OK! Arakawa + Gins say that the lofts come alive when people live in them, so we'll say it's OK to hang futons on the front of the building!

Windows and balconies

It was 20 degrees in Tokyo yesterday, so I took Elliott outside a few times and we explored the balconies for the first time. We had been living here for a week before I realised there are two balconies in our loft... The large one is at the front of the loft, and the floor to ceiling windows looking onto it are how we get most of our natural light. The view from the large balcony is of the busy road, so I show Elliott the cars and people out the window every morning at play time. He loves it!



The other balcony is easy to miss because it's behind some thick colourful curtains, and doesn't let in very much natural light.



You have to crouch down and crawl through a little window to get onto this balcony. I think this is the one Mrs. Yamaoka was talking about in the Wall Street Journal article here, although I disagree with her! I think it's fun to crawl through a little door. Elliott and I felt like Alice in Wonderland. There is a normal-sized door on the large front balcony, so I do wonder why she didn't just use that one for hanging her laundry. Perhaps she didn't want people to see her undies from the street?

The little door:



The view towards the street:



The view straight ahead, of the neighbour's balcony!



Little Elliott feeling like Alice in Wonderland:



I also took the chance to take photos of the windows in our loft. My two favourite aspects of architecture are windows and staircases, and the windows here are pretty photo-worthy! They are made of metal, which is usually my least favourite type of window. These windows are cool though, because they're at all different heights and are lots of different shapes!

Here's the view from the round room:



And here's the little window in the square room:



And here's another little window in the bathroom:



Obviously I like the little windows best!

Out and about (2)

I met a wonderful group of ladies in a playgroup called Little Angels on Friday. They were so lovely! We went out for lunch after the playgroup, and after that I went shopping with one of the Little Angels' mummies at Babies 'R' Us. Very fun! I now know that I can travel an hour and 45 minutes with Elliott on public transport, which is pretty amazing.

Right as we walked into Babies 'R' Us there was a section for Hinamatsuri dolls. Hinamatsuri is on March 3rd, and is Girls' Day in Japan. Families with daughters set up a shelf with dolls on them for the day. The dolls are of a royal court from the Heian period. Just as with Christmas trees, the size and quality of your dolls can depend on your budget.



There was also a maternity section in the Babies 'R' Us, and I was surprised to see these contraptions:



Apparently the extra fabric under your belly helps hold the baby up when you are pregnant. I am dubious about how helpful that would actually be though!! Mostly it just looks like an extra piece of ugly for your money.

I showed remarkable restraint in Babies 'R' Us and only came home with a teething toy, diaper wipes, and baby laundry detergent. I was super pleased to find the same diaper wipes we were using in Toronto. The things that make a mother happy!

Today we found a different baby supply shop called "Akachan Hompo" next to Musashi Koganei station, which is just one bus ride away from the Reversible Destiny Lofts rather than the two hours to Babies 'R' Us. Grant fell in love with a Dragon Ball onesie which we came home with, and we found nappies and bigger onesies for my quickly growing boy! Here we are in front of Akachan Honpo.



And here's the super geeky onesie Grant came home with!

The round room - Light

Grant participated in one of the tours the front office organises in an empty Reversible Destiny Loft upstairs, and learned some cool things about the round room. Because of the angles, there is a difference in the way the light hits you depending on whether you're standing up or sitting down. If you're standing up the light hits you as usual, but if you're sitting down the light hits you from below. It's really interesting to experience! The light also reflects off the bottom half of the wall when you're crouching down. It's quite pretty.

Normal light:



Lit from below:



The light on the walls when I sit down:

Play time!

Elliott had a colourful play mat and a bouncy chair in Toronto, with many toys hanging from both, so I feel as though since we came to the Reversible Destiny Loft he has been missing out on that. This morning I grabbed all the hooks I could find and hung them from the ceiling to almost the floor, then put toys on them for Elliott to play with. So resourceful! It turns out living in the Reversible Destiny Loft saved us the cost of buying a new play gym for Elliott. The best part is I can easily change out the toys to keep him interested.



Tummy time is still not very successful, but at least we're trying!



I also put Elliott on the bumpy floor for the first time this evening. I left one foot bare so he could experience the texture that way. It was so funny, he lifted the bare foot and put it on the covered foot! I think we will have to try this experiment again when it's a bit warmer.

The main living area

Grant read my last couple of posts and said I'm getting too "Baby" and not enough "Reversible Destiny", so here's a post about living in the loft.

Our main living area is in the middle, with a kitchen and a place to sit and eat or do internet. It's also where the hammock is, along with some rings to do exercise on, a pole to climb on, and a ladder which we've started to use as a shelf rather than to climb on. There is a flat space to the right of the bathroom which Grant thinks is for a freezer or fridge. I've put down a small carpet with a blanket on it so that Elliott has a place to do tummy time. I've realised that he doesn't spend much time on his tummy, so I am making a conscious effort to put him down these days instead of carry him around all the time. We also went to a shop called "Hard Off" which sells used items and found a bouncy chair for about $25. I have been carrying Elliott so much since we arrived in the Reversible Destiny Loft, it's nice to be able to put him down while I clean up a bit or get something to drink!

Here's a video of the main space:



And here are a few photos of the living room. First is the sunken kitchen. I like this design feature a lot. Our kitchen in Toronto is so dark and separated from the living room. If we have guests over the person cooking is always left out of the conversation. In our loft you are never lonely!



We always take our shoes off in the loft, and we wear house slippers to keep warm. You can see really clearly that the floor is uneven in this photo. You can also see that a lot of our belongings hang from the ceiling. Our coats hang from a hook by the front door. I think that along with the bumpy floor Arakawa and Gins want us to have to negotiate more obstacles in our effort to remain immortal! There are hooks all over the ceiling so you can change the position of the bags, hammock, and anything else you might like to hang from the ceiling.



And here is Elliott's new play space, complete with his new bouncy chair. (I haven't washed the seat cover yet, so for now he sits on a receiving blanket while he's in there)

懐かしいアイテム

I went grocery shopping in Kichijoji yesterday, and discovered these cups of coffee in the supermarket. I used to buy these things all the time when I was a university student, before I became a Starbucks addict!



Slowly, life in Japan is starting to feel more normal, for me at least! Elliott still has culture shock... or maybe Architectural Body shock! He doesn't seem to be able to sleep during the day in our loft, but if I take him out or if we're all ready for bed he is out like a light. I am seriously grateful to the Beco. It's the only way we can get the baby to relax and fall asleep these days! Grant's theory is that there is too much to look at in our loft, so he needs the dark confines of the Beco before he can fall asleep. Maybe he's right.

Snow!

It snowed a lot last night! It was really pretty, so here are some photos:

Sleep

Since having Elliott I have become obsessed with sleep. When can we get it, how much of it is the baby getting. Is he sleeping in the right place at the right time. Are we setting him up with bad "sleep associations"?

Last week I decided not to care. I let Elliott sleep where he wanted at whatever time he wanted. On the first day of this experiment he stayed up all day. It was quite frightening to see. The second day we were out most of the day, so he slept soundly in the Beco and even more soundly by my side in the futon at night. The third day he slept a few minutes in his baby futon, but mostly in my arms. Today, the same... Not a lot gets done around the house when I let Elliott sleep in my arms, but he's so cute how could I let him be anywhere else?!

Here is Elliott with me, watching our new TV in the round room:



Here is Elliott with Grant, trying to sleep in the hammock:



And here's Elliott's favourite place to sleep, in the Beco while we're out of the house!
(As requested by Mrs. Maihi's class, it's a photo of me and Elliott outside the Reversible Destiny Lofts. Our round room is the brown section above my head)

Reversible Destiny Child

No that is not the name of the next pop group! Today I took Elliott to visit the office staff downstairs to say thank you for the heated carpet they kindly dropped off yesterday after reading my post about the round room. While we were there I learned that Elliott is certainly not the first Reversible Destiny Baby. A baby was born here, and her older brother was about 5 years old when they moved out of the lofts. I got to hear a bit about how the parents raised their children here. They made the round room into a playroom filled with toys. It sounds like bliss for a kid! I have been curious about how a baby would learn to walk in a Reversible Destiny Loft, and I assumed that a baby would never use the bumpy floor while they were crawling. I was wrong! Apparently the baby living here crawled on the bumpy floor with no problems or added padding.

Speaking of the floor, I solved another mystery! The office staff are in close contact with Madeline Gins, the co-creator of the Reversible Destiny Lofts. The lady in the office was talking to Madeline about how cold we are finding the concrete floors, and apparently Madeline Gins said she thought it was a mistake when they were building the lofts. Madeline Gins wanted to somehow put a floor heater in, but Arakawa Shusaku disagreed. So interesting to be able to hear these stories!!

But that isn't the mystery that was solved. The lady in the office said that originally Arakawa and Gins wanted the floor around the kitchen to be dirt, like in a traditional Japanese farmhouse. In old farmhouses the cooking was often done over open flames, so to protect the rest of the house the kitchen was at ground level, separate from the main living space and the floor was made of dirt so that there was less of a fire hazard. It was convenient because if you were cooking and didn't need some extra water, you'd just tip it out on the floor! Of course, Arakawa and Gins soon realised that there would be mould and damp problems if they tried to have dirt floors in individual lofts, so they gave up on the idea. They kept the concept alive by making concrete floors that would look as though someone had been using dirt floors for a long time.

I feel better knowing that there was a reason behind the floors!

This morning I cleaned the bathroom, so here are a few photos of that. The bathroom is a cylinder, and the shower stall is right in the middle of the room. There is no door, but the toilet is (mostly) hidden from view by the shower. There are two narrow pathways around the shower to the toilet. If I had put on any more weight when I was pregnant with Elliott I might not have been able to get to the toilet! I wonder if this means Arakawa and Gins hoped only slim people would live in their lofts...? I like the narrow paths perhaps the best though. It makes going to the toilet a daily adventure!

The cylinder:


Going up the path on the right:



Our super fancy electronic toilet. The seat is warm 24/7, which I LOVE!



Coming down the path on the right. We use the little green ladder to hang our facetowels on.



Our sink. Where you'd usually stand in a flat house is curved in our loft, so it's impossible to get close to the mirror. I am never sure if I've done my make-up correctly, and Grant sometimes looks interesting after his shave!



The shower. Elliott's green bath is an inflatable bath, to save space!



You can see there's a curtain for privacy on the right. When we arrived at the loft the curtain was knotted back, and Grant and I didn't see a need to untie it. We had friends come to visit, and they didn't realise they could pull the curtain across. They left saying using our bathroom felt "thrilling"!! I must remember to untie the curtain when guests are here in the future.

Details

I don't mean to hold you all in suspense, but I need time to try and organise our main room before I make a post about it!

Today's post is about details.

We had lived in our loft a few days before I even knew this little cupboard existed:



I haven't decided what I want to use it for yet. The green machine above the cupboard is our rice cooker.

Our loft has a hammock! I'm not sure if all the lofts have hammocks... I'm curious to meet other residents and ask them. Baby Elliott is sometimes soothed by the rocking. He's a changeable wee fellow though, the hammock doesn't always work.



Below is our super duper water heating machine. It can tell you how much water you've used in a day. I am embarrassed to say that today we used 400 litres. How is that possible?!! In our apartment in Toronto the previous tenants left little stickers in the bathroom and kitchen that say "A dripping tap wastes up to 70 litres a day". I must check to make sure we don't have any leaking taps here...



I posted about the floor previously. It is made of concrete and has little stones in it. So far I haven't cleaned the bumpy floor, but the front office told us that we can just use the vacuum cleaner provided. (Our loft is a short stay loft, so all the things you need to live comfortably are in place before you arrive). I noticed today that in just over a week my house shoes have been torn to shreds by the bumpy floor. I wonder what it will do to the vacuum cleaner? Maybe it's a good excuse not to clean so often...

The round room

Today's post is about the round room. Each of the rooms branches off the main living area, and only the square room has a door. The living space has very few flat spaces to sit down with the baby, so I find myself often sitting down on the lip of the doorway to the round room when I need to tend to the baby quickly.



Before arriving at the Reversible Destiny Lofts I was hoping to use the round room as a play room for the baby, because the incline is similar to his play seat back in Toronto. Now we're here I've realised that because each room is made of concrete it's exceptionally cold inside, and I am reluctant to use any other room for long besides the square room.

The people in the front office kindly put carpets and pillows in the round room to try and warm it up, but even then it's quite cold.



I put Elliott in the round room for a moment this morning to play, and he seemed to enjoy it for a while until we both realised I had forgotten his hat and he started crying from the cold...



I have caught cold, and Grant is coming down with one. Hopefully Elliott won't get one... we'll see! If Shusaku Arakawa were still alive, I would like to ask him, why concrete? Why did you think making everything out of concrete would be a good way for people to live?

Edited to add:

Grant just told me that Madeline Gins is still alive, and was as fully responsible for designing the Reversible Destiny Lofts as Shusaku Arakawa was. I must make my apologies! And Madeline, if you're reading this I'm still curious to know if the concrete was a conscious choice of materials.

Paparazzi

Elliott had a grumpy day today, so this blog post is a short one.

There is a film about the Reversible Destiny Lofts on in Japan at the moment. That means that the lofts are something of a popular local tourist destination lately. Yesterday as I was letting Elliott look out the window (he loves watching the cars go by) a group walked up the entrance path and waved at us as they went by. The film is about children who have lived in the lofts, so I wonder if the group members thought they had just seen one of the stars of the movie!

I'm not sure if there was a formal group that came through the lofts today or not, but as I was nursing Elliott in the square room this afternoon I saw a flash go off out of the corner of my eye. Our square room looks out onto the landing outside, and although there are gauze curtains covering the windows I think people can see in. I'm a little embarrassed to think that somewhere out there someone has a photo of me nursing Elliott in the privacy of our own home! Such is the trade-off of living in a work of art.

Here's the trailer for the movie they're showing in Japan at the moment:
http://www.shinanai-kodomo.com

The floor

We arrived in Japan with five suitcases, not realising that there isn't much storage space in the Reversible Destiny Lofts! As such, I haven't unpacked to my liking and am unwilling to share the state of the place in photos. So! Today's post is about the floor in our main living space.

The floor is made of concrete and has the texture of rough sand to the touch. The floor undulates in little hills, and there are small bumps everywhere. I have discovered that it is easier to walk between the bumps than on top of them, but I still find myself stumbling sometimes. This is particularly freaky when I'm holding the baby!

Because the floor is made of concrete, the entire living space feels cold most of the time, even though we have two air-conditioners, a space heater, and two small heated carpets in there. As such, I spend a lot of time in the square room where it's nice and toasty warm. Sometimes I will be shut in the square room feeding the baby and hear variations of "OW!" coming from outside. Grant is quite clumsy, and often trips, stubs his toe, or twists his ankle on the floor. Shusaku Arakawa wanted people to always have a tentative relationship with their surroundings, and I feel as though he would have been really pleased with how tentative Grant is!

Out and about

I haven't had a chance to put together a post about another room in our Reversible Destiny Loft because we've been so busy out and about introducing Elliott to old friends. So I think this blog will be not only about life in a Reversible Destiny Loft with a baby, but also about life in Japan with a baby. Here goes!

As I posted before, our Canadian-sized stroller is impractical in Japan. Yesterday I took Elliott to Harajuku to meet friends at a pub, and I took him in our Beco carrier. It went well! I needed to feed Elliott while we were there, and ended up just using my nursing cover right at the table. Perhaps because of the wonderful company, it didn't feel awkward at all.



Also perhaps because it was a pub, there wasn't a change table in the bathroom. I ended up laying a change pad on the floor and changing Elliott's nappy there!

This morning we left the house relatively early in order to meet other English-speaking babies at a breastfeeding circle in Shibuya. Again, I ditched the stroller in favour of the Beco:



This seems a good choice, considering that even the barrier-free bus was pretty narrow!



Just in case I ever do want to bring my stroller, there were these helpful instructions on the wall of the bus:



It seems a lot more trouble than it's worth, which might explain why I definitely see more babies in carriers than I do in strollers!

The breastfeeding circle was in a community centre in Shibuya, and the ladies and babies were lovely. Elliott and I were there an hour and a half, so of course he needed to be fed and changed during that time. I was really happy to see another adult-sized change table in the community centre bathroom. My favourite way to nurse Elliott is lying down, so we were able to do that here. I also read the instructions on the change table more carefully, and have solved the mystery of why the change table is adult-sized! It's for people who take care of their elderly relatives and need to change their adult diapers. So clever!



Elliott falls straight to sleep in this position, so it made it very easy for us to then go out for lunch:



As we headed home in the train, I had a chance to mull over some of the subtle changes that have occurred in Japan since I left three years ago. Nowadays, information about stations is available in Korean and Chinese, not just in English:



And Japan is showing signs of the international culture of fear caused by 9/11 and subsequent bombings:



Japan had it's own terrorist scare back in the nineties when a religious group called Aum Shinrikyo was responsible for killing people in a sarin gas attack in the subway. Note that the photo above only talks about bomb scares, however. For some reason we are all supposed to fear fundamentalist Muslim attacks on a daily basis these days!

After getting off the train, we were one bus ride away from home. Elliott decided we wanted to be fed, so we looked around the station for a place to do that. I'd heard about "nursing rooms", and found one that really impressed me. There were two private cubicles with a change table each and a simple chair for nursing in, and in a kitchen area there was a machine for heating bottles in case that was more your thing. There was a line-up starting by the time Elliott had finished eating (he likes to take his time), but people seem accustomed to waiting to use the facilities.








We left this great nursing room and were heading towards the bus when Elliott let it be known that he was still hungry. We were close to a department store, so decided to check out the nursing room there. It was also very nice, although this one didn't have a device to heat bottles. It did have an extra seat in the cubicle though, which was useful for Grant considering we were there an hour and a half as Elliott blew through three changes of clothes!!



I think all the stimulation from meeting many new babies really tuckered my Reversible Destiny Baby out, because he has been asleep since we left the station and it's now five hours since then... Let's hope he hasn't forgotten how to sleep at night!