Here’s a closer look at our mini appliances. Above you can see the stove as well as the fridge with the microwave sitting on top of it and the washing machine beside it. To give you perspective, the fridge is about 44 inches tall, 19 inches wide and 20 inches from front to back. In our family, I’ve always been known as the person who could pack the most into an already full fridge. That’s definitely a valuable skill here! Of course, when you have to carry all the groceries home from the store by hand, it limits the amount of food that you have in the house at any one time!

I brought our little travel iron with us but I haven’t had to use it because, unlike many of the MIL apartments, ours is furnished with an ironing board and iron. I can’t read the instructions on the iron but the brand name is Press Love! Isn’t that cute? It’s also very typical Japanese English.

I really think the vacuum cleaner is our cutest appliance though. It’s so little! Since the apartment is also so small, I can vacuum the whole place in a matter of minutes. The last time I did that I realized that one reason I love this apartment so much is that using all these mini appliances make me feel like a little girl playing house!