Find My Place
(Mid. 2010s)
Ten years ago, the apartment I was living in was going to be demolished. I was forced to move and started looking for a new place.
For me, the move was a good opportunity to reassess my lifestyle. After that, I spent about two months looking at several vacant apartments with a real estate agent.
There were many points I had to consider, such as the size of the room, the layout, the distance from the station, whether there were supermarkets and convenience stores nearby, the rent, the age of the building… etc.
And these photos in this article are of one of the vacant rooms I looked around.
By the way, rental housing in Japan is divided into categories such as 借家 (Shakuya), コーポ (Cōpo), アパート (Apāto), and マンション (Mansion). 借家 refer to detached buildings, コーポ and アパート are often two-story buildings built with wood or light steel frames, and マンション generally refer to buildings made of reinforced concrete with three or more stories.
In other countries, “mansion” seems to refer to a luxurious house, but that's not the case in Japan.
In principle, the articles in this publication are free to read, but if you become a paid subscriber, you can read more in-depth special articles delivered several times a month. In addition, your payment will be used as a valuable fund to continue the activities of “JAPAN ORDINARY -photos-”.
I moved into my current place in Tokyo’s Shibuya-ku in 2011. At the time I checked over fifty apartments, all of them ‘mansions’.
Coming from the area between Osaka and Kobe where I had lived for three decades the thing that surprised me the most was the absence of a real kitchen in the majority of apartments.
These places had at best just a little corner for heating up food. I asked one of the real estate agents about it and he explained that most young people get their food at restaurants and convenience stores. They don’t cook.
As it turned out that is exactly how all of my assistants in Tokyo lived their life. It made me wonder how many Japanese still lived Japan’s famous ‘healthy lifestyle’ …
Thankfully, I was able to find a place with a wonderful kitchen. But it took a lot of searching and determination.
I'm always fascinated by the floors and wall material and the layout, walls seem more like movable screens that can be totally open when desired. Nice series!