A place to sleep, eat and play
A priority was to make the place clean enough to cook/eat in and a play space for the kids to have fun with their toys. This involved 4 sheets of blue tarp, 2 sets of wallpaper scrapers, lots of cloths, water, soap, some power tools and the most important ingredient elbow grease.
To get the house clean enough to sleep comfortably in was achieved in a couple of days. For the kids to play in, well from their perspective it was ready as soon as we arrived . They didn’t see dirt, germs or filth. After being in our apartment this house felt enormous. They enjoyed emptying the toy boxes over the floor and spreading out. We scraped the walls in the large main room quickly and we covered the dirty stained tatami mats with large blue plastic sheets.
To get the place in to a state good enough to cook and eat took a week. Without a water supply it was slow going. Eventually we had a functional kitchen. Eating out for three meals a day was more tiring than costly as the kids were a little fussy a times. Our daughter demanded pancakes each morning and lunch was always sea chicken onigiri (Tuna-mayo rice ball) that had to be bought fresh from a Family Mart. We all ate so much convenience store food during that time that these days we can’t even think about eating fries, the karage (deep fried Chicken) or pasta.
inaka house 