I guess they own the whole building. I always thought of it as/remembered it as a duplex because it looks like one, but I just looked it up on google maps and I’m realizing it has to be the whole place and that there was only one door on the right side of the building.
There were some steps leading up to the door. The main floor was the second floor. As per usual for this country, there was a GENKAN which is a little sunken entryway where you would remove your shoes. That way, your grimy, disgusting shoes never actually entered the home. I was used to this because certain people in my family had a split level home in which you have a genkan by default.
You stepped up into the living room. There was a coffee table in the middle where you’d sit on the floor (there were cushions around it). The computer was on the floor on the wall directly across from the coffee table and above it was a Totoro calendar (it was Totoro for both 2008 and 2009) and the TV was in the corner on a TV stand. There was a maroon leather couch that made a nice room divider between the kitchen and living room. On the right wall there was a piano and on top of that there was a soft Rilakuma tissue box.
There was a sliding paper door to the left of the genkan that opened to the room I slept in. There was a tatami floor and my bed was a futon which I rolled up every day and put away. By day, the room was the sanctuary where all of the photos and mementos of the dead relatives were, the grandparents specifically. There was no air conditioning so I had a fan with many different settings and buttons that went “beep beep boop” when you pressed them. There wasn’t any heat either but that wasn’t that important since it never got that cold. The window looked out onto this music store where I went in and bought a ton of CDs on a regular basis. Then I’d bring them home and the family would laugh at all the weird shit I picked out. The Mom was always so amused at my Enka obsession at the time. Sometimes we’d play the cds on the roof but I’ll get to the roof later. Next to the music store there was a 7-eleven where we would get ice cream with the Dad almost every night. (He would also pick up 2 tall boys of Kirin beer for him and the mom.)
In my room, If I had the window open at night I would constantly hear Vespas going by which became comforting.
The bathroom was to the right of the living room. There was a little vanity space and the fancy toilet was in a separate room. Then there was a bigger enclave which had the ofuro bath (meaning it was small and deep and you’d go in and soak after you showered.) Of course there was a removable shower head and they bought me a stool for the shower which I never used. Everyone had their own stool. The mother’s name was Miki, so everything in the bathroom was Mickey Mouse themed and on all of HER shampoos and conditioners there were Mickey Mouse stickers.
The kitchen had a table with bench seating. The fridge was always stocked with giant jugs of oolong tea and a box of choco-pies sat on top of the fridge. The bread was THICK and we used blueberry jam.
The stairs were narrow and spiraled, leading up to the 3rd floor which was everyone’s bedroom and the laundry room. Everyone’s room was small and full of stuff. There was no minimalism going on in this family. Yui and Akiko’s room was full of clothes, wigs, jewelry and stacks of fashion magazines.
The backyard was small but had a lot of trees (for it being an urban area) and a Totoro playhouse that the Dad had built in 1990. He told me that after proudly announcing that “this was a Ghibli family” which it really was. On my first night, we watched Howl’s Moving Castle and EVERYONE got emotional (except me because there were no subtitles and I was still learning also that was one of the only one’s I hadn’t seen.)
Then finally, there was the roof. From up there, you could see our high school, the sanatorium, and some rolling hills. They almost always had fireworks up there too so we would light those at night when we were bored with playing video games or heckling the comedians on TV.
March meant the end of the school year. Then you had a spring vacation for two weeks and the next school year started in April. So I would have been “going into my senior year” for the third time. It was cool, not having to progress and move on to the next phase in life like everyone else was doing.
So that was my life ten years ago. There were eight of us living in that house. So of course they owned the whole building. Yui and Nami still live there. Akiko got married and had a kid a while ago. Kazuki is out there doing his own thing. The parents haven’t changed (from what I hear). There was someone else, who’s name will go unmentioned, and he’s in some other country too. And as for me, I’m ten years older and sitting alone with my cat in the toucan room. Next stop, shangri la.
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