Japan trip - Day 4

My grandparents' house is small.  It sits on a plot of land between the old house that my mom grew up in and the small textile factory my uncle runs.  There's a bit of yard (rare for over there!) that wraps around the house, providing the perfect place for my brother and I to run bikes around when we were little.  The mailbox is attached to a tree near the entrance, and it always entranced me to watch for the motorcycle the mailman and newspaper man rode when they delivered to that mailbox.  All the windows on the south side of the house are sliding glass doors that you could leave wide open in the summer for ventilation.  The giant room inside the house could be divided in two by partition doors.  The bathroom always annoyed me, as there was a toilet room and then the sink/bath room.  You'd have to potty in one room, and then go to the next room to wash your hands.  Ugh!  The bathtub rocks though - you could sit in it and have the water up to your neck!  The only bad part of that room is the windows that point directly into the neighbor's living room.  Hee hee hee.  The kitchen is infinitely small, but from the table there's a great view of the stoplight on the street out the window!  All my grandfather's tools and machines for his rice fields were kept around the property in the back, and the washing machine stood right at the back door facing towards those things.  I honestly don't know how we managed to have six people living in that house for a month on end in the summer but we did!  Good times.