My kitchen

Inspired by a month of posts by expats about their kitchens by Taking Route Blog #thisglobalkitchen, I'm going to tell you about mine.

My kitchen is not glamorous, but it is functional and I love it. It's bigger than a usual Japanese kitchen, but nowhere near as large as a kitchen would be in the usual three-bedroom house in Australia.

Looking back to the dining room and my corner office from the kitchen sink.

When we first came to Japan, one of the biggest challenges at home was the kitchen. We were in a much smaller place (we were a smaller family then, just one boy less than two-years-old). What drove me crazy was no bench space (i.e. "counter"). It is pretty typical, we've discovered, for a Japanese kitchen to have little food preparation space. The only place we could prepare food in our first Japanese kitchen, was on the sink-drainage area. 

Thankfully this kitchen (and house) is much larger, though I'm not sure if I would have appreciated it as much if I hadn't had had to work in a much smaller space (that first kitchen shared a tiny room with the laundry and shower ante-room).

When visitors who know Japan come to visit, one of the first things they usually comment on is our kitchen. It has an unusual amount of storage room. These built-in floor-to-ceiling cupboards are unusual, what's more, a crafty previous resident has added tasteful internal curtains to these glass-doors. But there are other unusual elements that we've added.

This house has had numerous missionaries live in it previously. It is not owned by a Christian and was not purpose-built for foreigners. However, when we moved in the kitchen had a most unusual element: an ancient American gas oven/stove. It didn't fit, being far deeper than these cabinets were. In our small attic we found the original under-stove cabinet that was removed to put the oven in. A former missionary had brought an oven with them from the US!

I loved that dinosaur of an oven, even though we had to practically lie on the floor to light it. Its large four-burner top provided pseudo-bench space that was so valuable. Ovens are not usual in a Japanese kitchen. Most people use toaster ovens and microwave ovens with convection functions, which are obviously much smaller.

Alas, four years ago that oven started leaking gas. You can read about that drama here. The Japanese repairmen who came to look at it had never seen the likes of it! There was much sucking in of breath over the teeth (a clear sign in Japan that there is a major problem).

The end result of that drama was that we lost that old oven and bought this Japanese oven and three-burner stovetop to replace the dinosaur—that was not a cheap decision. We reasoned that we'd be living here for some years yet with our three growing boys (they were aged 10, 13, and 16 at that time). One of the things I love to do is cook and bake, I really struggled with the idea of going back to just two burners and only using my microwave/convection oven (even though it was the biggest you can buy here). 

This Japanese oven is the most spectacular oven I've ever used. It heats up quickly and cooks very reliably. I'm still holding out hope that when we move from here we can take the oven/stove with us to a new place, but know that that might not be a reasonable expectation as we'd like to move into a smaller place after all our boys move out.

We have underfloor storage. This is a cool thing about Japanese houses (not sure if they exist in apartments). A place to put food and stores under the floor is very cool.

Underfloor storage.

Oil, potatoes, and cereal in this side.

Breadmaker with rubbish "drawers" underneath.

Other elements of the kitchen that I love are the breadmaker (we make our own sliced bread), the chest freezer, and a large fridge with lots of compartmentalised drawers. All these make providing food for my family much easier.

You'll see under the breadmaker the plastic drawers that help us sort rubbish as we dispose of it. The top drawer is glass and tin, then "unburnable" (i.e. doesn't fit any other category), and the bottom is paper and cardboard. The rest is in the bin on the other side of the kitchen next to the stove: burnable (raw food, scraps, etc.) and recyclable plastics.

Look closely and you will see that the lino is torn in places. The mat in front of the sink helps to hide that. Also, there is a gas-outlet in the floor that we don't use, but it dangerous for foot traffic, so it's covered with a carpet tile! The wall tiles are an ugly green, and the trim on all the doors are hard to clean.

It's not a shiny, new kitchen with fancy appliances. It's not particularly space-efficient and it's challenging for two people to work in, but it works for us and I'm very thankful for God's provision. Not just of this kitchen, but this house. Next year it will be ten years since we moved in here. It's an old house that has it's flaws and quirks, but we've done the majority of our child-raising here and we're thankful for the stability and convenience it affords (it's close to school, church, shops, and the train station).

Japan is not an easy place to live and work as a missionary, but we have many things to be thankful for in terms of ease of living and stability of society. Indeed "The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places" (Ps 16:6 NIV).