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How we live cleverly in such a small house.

In my previous post I introduced what kind of houses Japanese people are living in. I’m sure you’ve learned that we live in a small house, especially when we are located in Tokyo and somewhere close to it.
Then you’d wonder how we can fit in such a limited space.
This time I’ll tell you that.

First of all, it’s not only that the floor area is small, but ceiling hight is only 2.4 meter or so in average. This maybe considered lower compared with other countries. Even if the area is small, the room will look larger if the ceiling is high, besides, ceiling hight doesn’t need land. That’s how I feel, but normally most of the room has around 2.4m hight. (Some apartments, especially targeting single, is lofted but most of the cases, they try to show loft and forget about the small floor.) In spite of limited space, we have to have so many stuff to live in Japan because we have 4 seasons every year. Shoes, clothing, comforter, home electronics, and etc. we need them for spring/summer and autumn/winter. Let’s take comforter for example. In summer, we use cotton blanket but in winter we use down quilt. We have to store down quilt during spring and summer season. Likewise, we need electric fan in summer but steam vaporizer in winter. (Air conditioner is wall-hung near the ceiling, so it’s always there.) Same goes with shoes and clothing, and the amount of these will be multiple as family member increases. This being the case, in Japan, most of the nation suffer from how small storage space is. *Disclaimer: The photos are quoted from Nihon Chokuhan, one of the most well-known TV shopiing companies in Japan.

That’s why it’s very natural that we need a rental storage like this to store extra things we cannot take care of at our house. Furniture is another option that we can make use of. Tatamigaoka lets us have Tatami floor and storage space at a time. Popular mail order company “DINOS” always has good collection of furniture with great devices for storage. I personally like Belle Maison too. Furniture makers make small furniture that will fit in a small house. Especially when it comes to single to live in a room under 20 square meters area, sofa, table, or bed must be minimal.
Young people before marriage or college students would like to shop funiture at stores such as Francfranc, One’s, Mujirushi, and etc. Unlike abundant spaced countries such as the U.S, Canada, or Australia, we cannot have a large kitchen, which means we have to make the most out of limited space with kitchen like this. (compact kitchen but good devices to store kitechen tools)

Well, I hope I answered to Ia, who kindly suggested I refer to this topic. If you watch Japanese TV dramas, the rooms may look better because usually designer apartments are used for location. :p