Apartment Hunting:

I spent part of my first weekend hunting for an apartment, my employer arranged for a real estate agent who did most of the leg work, my main comment is that Tokyo apartments are very small. I ended up touring three apartments:

Apartment option one is the apartment I will be moving into, more on that apartment in a later post. For now I wanted to use the other two as examples of how small the apartments here are.

Here's apartment number two (about 35 square meters), on the upside it has a deck with the view you can see in the pics, it's not a bad view of the neighborhood and skyline.

Unfortunately that's about the only good thing about this apartment. It's all one room (the two photos below are showing the entire apartment), with the closet in the living room, the bed is next to a desk, across from the one sitting chair and the kitchen (very small) is on one of the walls of the room. The entry way has three break off rooms for the bathroom, shower and sink/laundry (all the apartments have a combined washer and dryer, European style where it's the same thing not two units). There's no couch or table, and the TV has to be watched while sitting on the bed. This place seems very small to say the least.

Here’s apartment number three (a little less than 35 square meters), on the upside it’s in one of the trendiest new buildings in the city and it’s less than 100 yards from my work. On the downside it too is very small, as you can see in this photo it is made up of a long entry hallway and one room, that’s the entire apartment you are looking at there:

The idea of having the bed take up most of the main room is a bit odd and again shows how small the place is:

Besides the bed, there is one chair:

A hallway which sadly takes up half of the square footage of the place:

A tiny kitchen

And a TV, Fax Machine and desk conveniently less than a foot from bed, how efficient!!!! How tiny!!!!: