Our Tanashi – Tokyo House – From the Land Down Under to the Rising Sun

*I couldn’t easily find a picture of them together in front of the house so here are two pictures side by side of June and Milton posing in front of the Tanashi house.*

The last post about June and Milton’s story ended with Dad driving us to our new school in Tokyo and we all arrived late. At that point, we were renting a house right next to a railway line that shook every time a train went by. Soon after, they bought a house in Tanashi a suburb of Tokyo. (Side note, if you want to find the location on Google maps, years later, Tanashi and its neighboring city joined together and became Nishi-Tokyo or West Tokyo).

*I don’t remember snow in Kobe (but I am told it did snow) but I believe this was from our first winter in Tokyo – heavy snow. It was quite exciting.* *This was just down the road from our house.*

House prices in Tokyo were much higher than in Kobe so our new house size was an adjustment for us all. Amusingly, Milton spent a few paragraphs talking about our small new house. It clearly was a big adjustment for him too. The next part written by Milton about our new house is written in the present tense. This is because this journal Milton wrote, was written in the 1970s while we still lived in that house.

*Me smiling because I bet it was a snow day – no school* *but here you can see the half height garage that will be mentioned in the paragraphs below. I am standing out on the “street” so as you can see no front yard. (I think 1972 ish)*

Milton:

In Beppu, we had lived in a little house with fruit trees in the garden and a large chunk of land beyond, waiting to be used. In Kobe, we settled for a slightly larger house and smaller backyard with a suggestion of a garden. Land was getting to be like gold. The only place we could find in the greater Tokyo area was new and neat, but no garden existed. We walked off the street directly into the house in two steps. We could touch the fence dividing us from the neighbor’s house by reaching through the window. But we bought it and condensed everything to fit into it. This was to be our next stop in the journey.

Mary: Here is a picture of the backyard in Kobe. There was another level half the size just below the fence line because the house was built on a slight hill. In Kobe there was also a front yard of about 10 feet that Dad turned into a rock garden with rose bushes.

*June and our dog Caesar in the backyard of our Kobe house – just for comparison*

*Caesar in the Tanashi/Tokyo backyard rock garden Milton created. Caesar looks like he’s saying “No one asked me if I was okay with this downsizing”* *That was the depth of the backyard. You can see the wall upper left side of image.*

The other side of the backyard. (side note – it didn’t snow that often but when it did, we took a lot of pictures!) Dad poking a face for me by the shed and in the foreground the clothes line. You literally could lean out the kitchen door and grab the washing.

Milton: The building was as modern as a Toyota car, but its module was the traditional 1 m 75 cm (5 ft. 8 in.) – the tatami mat flooring section. In a bygone era, that was the height of a tall Japanese man. One tatami mat was the sleeping space for each adult back then. Everything else in the house, the windows, doors, and cupboards were modeled from that size. All the doorways in our house are 5 ft. 8 in. high. The only thing that stops a 6 ft visitor from kinking his neck or dying from claustrophobia is the higher ceilings. There is no way of saving him from getting clobbered between the eyes like Goliath if he doesn’t watch where he is going.

*View from the upstairs – my bedroom window of the neighborhood*

Milton: The kitchen is designed like a cross between a compact trailer home and a yacht galley. The man who planned the house must have been a wizard on his calculator.

After church (in the living room) food was prepared – I wish you could see the full width of this kitchen/dining room but what you see is about half the width. The next picture is the other “half”.

*Here is the side of the kitchen/dining with the doorway to the living room. Just in case you are curious that vent/pipe thing is from the heater we had to vent the kerosene exhaust outdoors.*

Milton: The narrow stairs leading to the second floor, curve around 90 degrees after the 5th step. Straight ahead from the 5th step is the room over the carport. It gives the house a split-level effect. But the amazing factor is that the angle where the first-floor ceiling ends and the stairway wall rises to the 2nd floor is exactly 5 feet 6 inches directly above the 5th step. Not many adults can stand upright in that space. Yet very rarely doe anyone chip the plaster. As the body rises from one step to the next, the head and shoulders automatically lean forward in anticipation to counterbalance the forward move. The stair climber’s head rises toward the ceiling and then shifts forward just moments from the point of impact. The climber never knows how close he was to a knockout – unless someone calls him just as he takes that 5th step and he stops in his tracks and tries to straighten up to reply. That is why some of the plaster is missing from our stairway.

It wasn’t until I came back for a visit after living in the wide open spaces of the USA that the crazy stairs registered in my mind that a picture was needed! On the left is the doorway to the room over the carport Dad mentions and I am right at the ceiling spot that sometimes the plaster got chipped.

Milton: How we settled five grown, or growing people into the house is now a mystery but we did. And not only that, but we also used it as an office, Sunday School, and church as well.

*I love this picture for two reasons: 1. The ubiquitous “peace” sign being flashed and 2. You get a sense of* *people overflowing in the house by seeing the window on the right above the carport/garage.*

Mary

The upside to this small house was by some miracle we had an empty lot of land right across the street, in front of the house. I do not know who owned it, maybe it was city land but Milton and June utilized it well.

*Ping pong table stored in the carport came out after church service*

June:

We searched daily but prices were higher than in Kobe. We asked the real estate agent if he did not have a haunted house on sale, remembering how we had bought a cheap place in Kobe because it was supposed to be haunted.

Somehow the Lord led us to a house in the city of Tanashi, now called West Tokyo, much smaller but good enough. Milton was invited to preach in Taiwan for some time and I started an English/Japanese Bible class in our home.

*The photo is labelled “Beginning of our church in Tanashi”*

June: When Milton returned from Taiwan, he gave out invitations to our Christian meeting at the station. A man named Mr. Yoshida, responded, and came to the meeting. He soon decided to become a Christian and brought a friend Mr. Ishikawa, who was an artist employed by a newspaper. He also became a Christian.

Mr. and Mrs. Yoshida. He was one of the first people to come to Milton and June’s Tanashi church. When Mom and Dad moved back to Sydney almost 20 years later Mr. & Mrs. Yoshida followed and lived in Sydney for a while.

June: Our church group in Tanashi City (West Tokyo) was very small but there were some men and women in it who really followed Jesus. It is wonderful how people brought up in the Buddhist or Shinto religion when introduced to the story of Jesus, are willing to bear the rejection of family and friends and follow Jesus.

*Living room – a tight squeeze* – *a few years later they would rent a hall up near the train station but this was normal life for a while.*

Mary

Neither Milton nor June related a fun story of Mr. Ishikawa the artist. While Mr. Yoshida was married, I think Mr. Ishikawa was a widow or perhaps he had never married. Mom jumped back into her match-making role as she had done back in Beppu with Teriko. I do not remember who the woman was – someone June and Milton knew a Christian woman about the same age, from perhaps Kobe. I do remember her coming to visit and I asked Mom some questions with much teenage skepticism.