Apartments For Rent, Tokyo Style Nov 09 2005
Look in the shop window of any high street estate agents in the UK and you'll find dozens of picture perfect rooms laid out to entice you. Rooms have been carefully cleaned, shots taken at an angle that shows off the period fireplace, and if at all possible, sunlight streams through available windows. A Tokyo estage agents' window however, is a rather different view.
Like anywhere, searching for an apartment in Tokyo revolves around three things: location, price and size. But the Japanese presentation of this information; utilitarian floorplans spartanly printed in monochrome A4, makes for a far more quantified approach to finding one's dream home.
The Facts
Japanese apartments are primarily categorised by a room-listing system. Using the letters K for Kitchen, D for Dining room and L for living room, a 2 bedroomed apartment with living rom, kitchen and dining area is shortened to a 2LDK, cut a bedroom, the living room and dining room and you get a 1K and so on. The general lack of architectural features we enjoy in the UK such as bay windows and loft conversions makes descriptions of the interiors themselves less relevant.
Next, understandably for ultra-compact Tokyo, comes the floorspace. This has historically been quoted in in "jo" (one jo being one straw tatami mat, about 180cm x 90cm) but recently, the area is quoted in m². After this comes the vital minutes walk from nearest station declaration, and we wind up with bonus features like air conditioning and auto-lock doors.
My 2DK Trumps Your 3K
The result is that like shopping for a computer, the unaware go on the facts provided alone; that 35m² must be a better find than 30m², and so on. What the Tokyo estate agents miss out on (that the glossy UK estate agents' photo-filled windows capitalize on so well) is that a home should be an emotional choice rather than a statistical one. The shop window should be a showcase, not a directory. Get a passer-by wanting to look inside an apartment and your halfway there.
Digging For Gold
The irony is that as far as I'm concerned, the best apartments here are the ones with the worst statistics. The oldest, the cheapest, the mod-con-free-est Tokyo has to offer are also the most charming, satisfying places to live in the most welcoming neighbourhoods. Yet it takes persistence to get the estate agents to dig them out from under the weight of faceless pre-fabs popping up left, right and center. But like finding a gem in a junk shop, the digging is worth it. I love my cheapo sliding-doored, tatami-filled wooden 2DK, and it would take a lot more than any auto-locking, double-glazed multi-storey palace to get me to move out.