New House: Part 1

We have moved into our new house here in Japan! I labeled this post as "Part 1" because the pictures I will have on here are NOT what our house will look like after we get our stuff delivered and I decide on a paint scheme. But since so many people are curious and want to know, I decided to do a post so you can all get the gist of what our new home is like.
This is the outside of our house.

Its actually more like a southern style apartment complex, where there are two floors and outside entrances into the home. There are a total of 8 homes in our building, that are all labeled as 1A, 2A etc. We are 1C, so we are on the first floor. This was HUGE for us because it means we have a yard. (More on the yard later... its the best part of the house!). We have met our neighbors across from us, Jose and Silvia, in house 1D and they are very nice. Silvia is 7 months pregnant so that means there will be a baby close by soon. That's fun! Our neighbors who we share a wall with, in 1B- Gabe and Melinda, are very nice as well. They brought over some fresh baked cookies and homemade beer as a housewarming gift. They have a yellow lab that always gets excited whenever Marty goes outside. Can't wait to get them together to play soon! Gabe is also in the squadron with Dereck.

The door of our home enters directly into the living room, and we have an outdoor storage room as well. Eventually our name will be on the nameplate and I can't wait for that! It might seem small, but for me it screams "permanent home"... and after the moves we've had in the last year, that is HUGE for us.

Like I mentioned, the living room is directly when you enter into the home. The furniture you see in the picture is all loaner furniture that we are allowed to have until TMO delivers all our belongings. These pictures were all taken right after our small shipment came, so there is still some stuff laying around in a mess, but at least now we have a TV, some pots and pans, and our own bedding and towels to use! Here is a picture series that shows the living room area:

The doors at the end of the living room go to the two bedrooms (one on the left, one on the right) and the bathroom (in the middle). Turning to the left will bring you into the dining room and kitchen. We chose to use the smaller bedroom on the right as our master for two reasons. Number one is that it does not get morning sun, which is great for sleeping in! Number two is that we have more furniture we want to fit in the extra bedroom over what we have in the master (at least for a while) so we'd rather use the larger room to fit everything. Here are some photos of the rooms... first, the Spare Bedroom.

Its nice because the house has a total of 4 large storage closets... one huge wall unit in each bedroom, a hall closet leading to the dining room, and a "pantry" closet.
Now the Bathroom:

Master bedroom- See the fence out the window? That's the backyard... another reason we used the smaller room as the master, we see the yard and not the parking lot when we have an open window. Much nicer!

Now here is the small hallway into the dining room and our dining room/kitchen area. 

We are loving our new kitchen so far, there are SO many cabinets that we don't even need to use the pantry (which is why I now view it as another closet). The only downside is that the kitchen is completely closed off to the living area, so entertaining will be a little different than what we are used to, but that's okay. Here is the kitchen area (and laundry).

And now onto our favorite part of the house, our backyard. We have a sliding glass door that opens onto our patio. We do not have an awning like some of the yards do, but we realized that even the evening sun only comes about 1/2 way up the patio, so we won't need the sun shade so much. What we do have, that a lot of homes do not, is a huge fence. I'd say about 1/3 of the yards have fences so having a fence at all is great. But ours is about twice as large as most. Notice where the neighbors back fence line cuts off, that's typical. So we have a HUGE yard with two gorgeous trees in it. We love it! We can't wait to start a garden later this spring.

As you can see, we already picked up some planters (only $15 for all of it!) from some people moving so we have a little head start on the planting. Can't wait to really make it "ours".

That goes for the whole house too. We have so much wedding stuff that we have yet to be able to use, I can't wait to see it! Our furniture and all our things will start to really make this feel like home, but for now we are grateful to have a place to live and some loaner furniture to use. I will update you all when we do some painting, and for sure when we get it all set up later this spring!