living in japan - une petit appartement

this is NOT our study.. i really wish so, but no.


{picture from sabrina rothe via designtoinspire}

this beautiful room is gorgeously simple, spacious and filled with sunlight. and it is right about the square footage of our living room, guest bedroom, master bedroom, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, storage. all rolled into one. so if anyone can come up with a brilliant idea of how i can fit a floating bench in the middle of the room to score a stellar study like this one, i'll name our first child after you.

also, we've come to realize that in this lovely country of ours, rental apartments come completely empty. you move in with your own washer, fridge, shelves, bed frame.. everything single thing you can think of! even if you've living for only 6 months, furnished apartments are uncommon and hardly done here! so we've been shopping up a storm. toe-ing the fine line of not wanting to be too cheap and have our bed fall apart on us and not splurging too much such that when we leave, we feel the pain to abandon it all. and all our plans for our first paycheck has been pushed back infinitely! (g'bye, my balenciaga bag..)

anyhow, we were in our "oh poor me.." mode last night when we found an article about great places to retire. while we're still a fair bit away from that dream, but we nearly choked on our yakisoba when we realized that our combined 2 year's rent can buy us a spiffy house in athens, georgia with:

• 3 bedrooms, 2 baths
• 1,360 square feet
• Fireplace
• Attached two-car garage

FOR REAL!? and i love georgia too! the two car garage would be a great space for me to work on spray painting projects.. *dreams* which lead to the big question, between the little rental japanese apartment, our little aussie nugget of space and the singaporean property bubble... are we seriously living in the wrong countries?