Japanese Apartments
So I've been looking recently at the details of living in Japan, mainly by finding blogs of gaijin (foreigners) who live there and their experiences in the country. In particular, I've been looking at prices and also Japanese apartments, namely in the city in Tokyo that I might want to live/work in: 三鷹市 (Mitaka).
I've found that the most common way to get an apartment over there is to
work through a real estate agent once you're actually in the country, and so I've just been researching to find out what the apartments are like etc. Basically, there are two types of apartments - マンション (manshon) and アパート (apaato). The manshon are generally the cement apartment buildings with quite a few stories blah, blah, whereas the apaato are generally two-story wooden buildings with between 2-8 rooms/apartment place things. Just for your knowledge, the ones that I am researching are the apaato, which are cheaper above all else. Oh, and one more thing - Japanese apartments in general consist of a kitchen, a bathroom (usually bath and toilet are seperate), a bedroom with a closet, and a balcony. They almost always come unfurnished.
Here are my search results. The one-bedroom apartments I looked at were in my desired location, 三鷹市大沢３丁目. (Just the district and section of Mitaka that would be most convenient for me to be in relative to where I might want to work.) I found five available rooms (...is that what you call them?) in this one apartment. Seems decent enough.
Then, I looked at some two-bedroom ones for maybe sharing with sissy Moriah one day in the distant future, but although I found some good ones they were a bit farther away than where I wanted to be. Ah well. My criteria for the 2-bedrooms, since there were none in ３丁目, were that they had to be in either ２丁目 or ６丁目 (which are the closest districts to the district I want to be in); they had to look decent; and they had to be less than ¥80,000 (about $800) per month.
And finally are the floor plans/pictures of what I think is the best apartment I've found so far, but 1) is occupied at the moment, and 2) is nowhere near where I'm thinking of living. But it gives me some ground for comparison.
As I said before, all of these are for reference only... when I really am apartment-hunting it will be in Japan with a real estate agency. Credits to athome.co.jp and sakura-house.com for the images and floor plans, and all the information about apartments in general. Very helpful.
茱理亜
I've found that the most common way to get an apartment over there is to
work through a real estate agent once you're actually in the country, and so I've just been researching to find out what the apartments are like etc. Basically, there are two types of apartments - マンション (manshon) and アパート (apaato). The manshon are generally the cement apartment buildings with quite a few stories blah, blah, whereas the apaato are generally two-story wooden buildings with between 2-8 rooms/apartment place things. Just for your knowledge, the ones that I am researching are the apaato, which are cheaper above all else. Oh, and one more thing - Japanese apartments in general consist of a kitchen, a bathroom (usually bath and toilet are seperate), a bedroom with a closet, and a balcony. They almost always come unfurnished.Here are my search results. The one-bedroom apartments I looked at were in my desired location, 三鷹市大沢３丁目. (Just the district and section of Mitaka that would be most convenient for me to be in relative to where I might want to work.) I found five available rooms (...is that what you call them?) in this one apartment. Seems decent enough.
Then, I looked at some two-bedroom ones for maybe sharing with sissy Moriah one day in the distant future, but although I found some good ones they were a bit farther away than where I wanted to be. Ah well. My criteria for the 2-bedrooms, since there were none in ３丁目, were that they had to be in either ２丁目 or ６丁目 (which are the closest districts to the district I want to be in); they had to look decent; and they had to be less than ¥80,000 (about $800) per month.
And finally are the floor plans/pictures of what I think is the best apartment I've found so far, but 1) is occupied at the moment, and 2) is nowhere near where I'm thinking of living. But it gives me some ground for comparison.
As I said before, all of these are for reference only... when I really am apartment-hunting it will be in Japan with a real estate agency. Credits to athome.co.jp and sakura-house.com for the images and floor plans, and all the information about apartments in general. Very helpful.茱理亜
Comments
Haha, and about moving to Japan... won't be for a couple years down the road. =) But still, I'm looking forward to it. I've done tons of research on Japan, so I think I'll be pretty well prepared once I get there. I'm sure that quite a few things will still surprise me though. I haven't been before, have you?