the usual Japanese appartment?

[bengilo]

Hello ,

I'm a design student from Germany/Berlin. My professor gave me the task to get more information about the usual Japanese appartments, how does the Japaneses live? Just people like me and you, not those who don't care about money. Avangarde interior is not interesting! I'm just looking for usual every day interior to compare it with your european linvingspaces, self made pictures would be great! How do you store things in Japan (any special solutions), how does the kitchen look like, how does the room you are watching tv in look like, how does the bedroom look like? How/where do you eat? Do the Japaneses take big care of their appartments or is the outside living more important? - I heard something like that. I know many questions and its not easy to bring it to the point , but a few hints could help me a lot. It's realy hard to find something about every day living in Japan! Thank you so much !

Cheers

Benni

[RickOShay]

Have a look with this.

路線・駅から探す - 路線名・駅名 | お部屋探しはミニミニで

Under the large magnifying glass in the upper left hand corner you should see something that says 都道府県. go down the list until you find the one that says 静岡県
in the box below a JR should pop up. Click on that. Then click on the thing that says 東海道本線
Then go down the next list and click on any that you like, but the ones with bigger numbers will have more apartments. Once you click on one, click on the button below the box with a plus sign (+) by it that says 駅を追加. Repeat this for up to ten of them. Now check all the boxes you see below with 1R, 1K, 1DK..... and so on. then click on the big orange button that says 検索する(it too has a magnifying glass icon in it).

It starts from the cheapest (usually meaning older and smaller) and goes up from there, it is in japanese but there are pictures and you can see how many square meters each place is.

If you need a further explanation I or someone else if they have spare time can maybe write it for you.

[FJCOM]

Foreclosed Japan might be better for you because instead of empty apartments, you can see interiors of where and how people are actually living and you can see the full spectrum of lifestyle. Everything is in English but you have to use the slideshow to get to all of the interior photos and floor plans which might take a lot of time. There are thousands of properties and photos of all size and type, and everything natural, not staged photos for fancy brochures.

Just like anywhere, some people are tidy, some are a mess. Some put effort into their homes and home lifestyle, others don't seem to care the slightest. Some people spend a lot on furnishings, some people live with stuff that even recycle shops probably wouldn't take.

[steven]

Something I love about the internet now is Youtube! There is a good chance that you will find a bunch of videos of Japanese apartments on there. You've got English down, so first try a search in English.

Then try these:
マンション
アパート

Those simple searches will hopefully get you some more information (if not mostly visual information).

Edit:
About my own apartment (which may be slightly larger than usual because I live in the country side): I have a kitchen, a small porch (with just enough room to hang clothes to dry), a bedroom, a Japanese style room with tatami flooring (a washitsu), a bathroom (with a sink room, a shower/bath room, and a toilet room). I only have a washing machine, so I have to hang dry my clothes.

Lifestyles change from season to season. For example, in the winter people will use a kotatsu (look it up on google images/youtube). People also do a lot of living on the floor. Instead of beds, a lot of people use futons (which also change in thickness depending on the season). I have a couch that is kind of like a zabuton (which is like a cushion on the floor).

We don't have a garbage disposal in the sink... so whatever you shove down the sink, you have to take out and throw it away in the regular trash. This also might be a prefecture specific thing, but we also have to separate our trash into burnable and non burnable... and the non-burnable trash has to be separated even further. They're very strict on trash here.

[bengilo]

Hey, thank you sooo much! All of you gave me some nice hints! Of course everyone lives in a different way, but I think it's getting easyer for me now to get a picture of the typical japanese way of living.

Cheers

[GoNative]

I'm not all that sure what normal living spaces are like in Germany but comparing the average home I've seen in Japan to those of my home country Australia there are some pretty striking differences.
On the whole Japanese houses, at least up here in Hokkaido, have smaller rooms. Especially the living spaces like loungerooms and kitchens.

When I bought my house the bottom floor had 3 rooms split by sliding doors and a kitchen and bathroom. First thing we did when renovating was to take out two walls to create a more open living/dining area from the previous 3 small rooms. We took out part of a wall between this living area and the kitchen and put a serving area through the wall between the kitchen and the dining table.
The bathroom was miniscule and we turned that area into the laundry and used the area that was a back door/genkan/storage area into a much larger bathroom.
For whatever the reason the ceiling was also very low even though there was plenty of space between it and the second floor so we raised the whole ceiling as well.
Anyway main differnces I've noticed is Japanese houses will often have many more small rooms than would be normal in a house in Australia. These rooms are often multipurpose as bedding is generally folded away during the day. Many Japanese families will have 3 generations living in the house as well, hence the need for more rooms I guess. In Aus there's not so many multigenerational houses. The kitchens are generally extremely basic and small. Most Japanese houses do not have ovens (we installed quite a large stainless steel commercial oven/cooktop). Bathrooms too are generally much smaller than what I was used to in Aus. Overall the quality of the finishes of houses is in my opinion pretty poor, at least aesthetically. Maybe it's just up here in Hokkaido but many houses will have all plumbing pipes for water and gas actually exposed. Few Japanese houses have painted walls, it's nearly all wallpaper and generally not that great quality. They do though have some amazing design features though in some of the more modern houses especially to create extra space in what are often very small houses.