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Kawaii House Inrterior
16/JUL/2011 on air

NIGO is a fashion director of A Bathing Ape who loves to modify vintage furniture from 1950′s. In this episode, Tokyo Kawaii TV shows how Japanese young people live in an unique interior.

A 33-year-old man who works as a sports instructor modified his 3 bedroom like a Japanese garden. He placed stones in the 6 Jo (=6 tatami mats) room by himself. His house is totally decorated in Japanese style. The blissful moment is when he relaxes with a drink in this room.

A 26-year-old woman who works as a dokumo (an amateur fashion model from subscribers of the fashion magazine) modified a 3 bedroom apartment by herself. The theme of her room is adult-Hime room. She’s spent 1 million yen so far to buy rococo furniture so it should match the interior image. She used to be a Yamanba Gyaru but now she is a beautiful princess. But you’ll never guess her main job as a driver of a trailer!

At a Hobby Show 2011, Girl’s DIY attracted people in this year. DIY Joshi-bu is a club from women who love DIY. Mr. Ikki and Beni-chan modified a 1000yen chair to something unique.

Tokyo cool room file No.1
A room in a colorful wall paper. It’s Mika Ninagawa‘s room. It’s actually her works that she used for wall paper! She thinks it’s important what surrounds her.

Tokyo cool room file No.2
This shared house is very unique. It’s a 20-year-old building that has recently renovated. The house has 11 mobile boxes for 11 people who share this house. Each box has 3J (3 tatami mats) and its monthly rent is 53,000 yen. It’s up to the resident how he or she wants to decorate inside the box. They can even hold a party in a large space that can hold about 50 people at a time, when all the boxes are moved to the other side of the space. Basically the house is for creators for their creative interaction.

Tokyo cool room file No.3
30-year-old 2 bedroom apartment was totally renovated by a housewife. This housewife visited Bordeaux (France) several times to study how the antique furniture in a farm house looks like. Then she studied how to paint furniture with antique taste. “Antique furniture is very expensive in Japan, but when I made antique-look furniture by myself, it was fun! It doesn’t cost much and I can do it as I like.” She has been introduced in a magazine and she is popular among housewives who love this taste.

Morimayu-chan works as a sales assistant as well as a blogger. But her room is messed up.

Kojimagic, a comedian who also is good at making use of the goods from 100 yen shop to make cabinets and storage, helped place a dressing table in the room after cleaning it up for over 4 hours. He put 2 shelves together and placed 2 drawers: one for summer clothing and the other for winter clothing. What’s interesting is that he used goods from 100 yen shop in a different way from how they are normally used.

Some people who are working in an interior industry check up 30 cheap chairs that are priced between 3,000-4,000 yen.
They’ve published MONOQLO magazine to provide the readers with how to distinguish between the good and the bad especially among low-priced furniture brands such as IKEA, Nitori, and Muji (Mujirushi). Of course, these companies are unhappy about this magazine.

Tokyo cool room file No.4
A studio room with a monthly rent of 84,000 yen, in Tokyo.
This room is decorated in French taste. A wall is painted with chalkboard paint. A woman who lives in this room has never been out of Japan but she wishes to check out flea markets in France, buy some furniture there and open her shop in Japan in the future.

Tokyo cool room file No.5
A studio room with a monthly rent of 70,000 yen, in Tokyo.
This room is full of figures. It’s Maruyacco‘s room.

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Kirin’s opinion:
I remember some of the readers mentioned they want to see house interiors in Tokyo. The rooms introduced in this episode are so unique but it’s true some people pursue the taste they like this much. It’s so much fun to look at interior magazines and plan or do something about one’s own house. Nitori for example has become so successful because their reasonable priced furniture, window treatments, and etc. are appreciated by the majority of people during the current economic slump. I know a lot more decent furniture brands but their products are too expensive considering how our economy situation is. Reasonable furniture, clothing and food are strong in Japan now, due to economic downturn.

About the house rent, it’s common in Tokyo to pay 70,000-80,000 or even 100,000 yen monthly to rent a small studio room with a tiny kitchen and a small sink combined with a small bathroom. House share was not popular 10-15 years ago, but lately it’s no longer. There are many nice shared houses in Tokyo and people love it because it’s cheap and fun.
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Disclaimer: Tokyo Kawaii TV is a TV program owned and broadcasted by NHK Japan, and has nothing to do with this blog.

***There are archives of episodes listed under the page titled “Tokyo Kawaii TV” that is just located under the title banner of this blog.
***If you want to know the music that was used in the episode, please refer to this page and help yourself to find it by selecting the date when the episode was on air in Japan.

Here’s Apple’s post.

Kayo Satoh may well be every guy’s dream girl!

Kyouzanbou
nearest train station: Not accessible by train
location: Susono, Shizuoka
phone: 0559-98-0170
open: 11:30am- 6:00pm
close: Mondays and the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays

View Larger Map

I had a chance to visit this nice Soba restaurant the other day, on the way to an onsen hotel in Shizuoka with a family of my husband’s.

Unfortunately the weather was terrible. It was heavily raining. Yet, there were already some people waiting before the restaurant opened at 11:30. (*0*)!! My father-in-law fell in love with their soba since he first visited there a few months ago. It’s everyday that people make a line to wait for the opening of the restaurant, according to him. We planned to be there before 11:30 so we should be able to join the queue to enter the restaurant for a lunch. That day was not exceptional, in spite of the terrible weather. What a surprise!

I was unable to take pictures from outside or the facade of the restaurant because of the heavy rain. It seemed like a typhoon or a storm. >_< I realized the building was a kominka (Japanese old folk house) only after I entered it. Wow! "I've got to blog about it for TKE readers!" Actually it's not common any longer in Japan to have a irori fireplace in a house we live in today. It might be the first time for me to see it. :p

As always, I tend to be more interested in the atmosphere and interior of the restaurant than the taste. haha! You see how many interior pictures I took there, compared with only a few food pictures. ^ ^;;

We were seated on the wood floor (not directly but on zabuton, or a floor cushion).

But there was also a large tatami room connecting from the wood floor + irori fireplace area. Whichever tables, we had to sit on the floor folding legs, you know, the traditional Japanese way. Men can sit with agura style (sit with his legs crossed in front of his body) but that’s considered bad manners for women. Women are recommended to sit with seiza style (sit on her heels) but that is not comfortable for me. I don’t like to sit on the floor in Japanese style.

Oh, but it’s possible this table has a space to place legs under the table. It’s called “horigotatsu” (掘りごたつ) in Japanese. In case of horigotatsu, we can sit on zabuton without folding legs and we can sit like we do on a chair. I like that.

The menu looked so nice!

I ordered a set of 3 kinds of soba noodles. The normal one, thick one and the thin one in pink color. According to my father-in-law, the pink soba can be green when it’s Matcha tea flavor. This time, it was pink because it was shrimp flavor, according to the restaurant. But it didn’t taste like shrimp at all. Maybe the taste was too subtle but I put a little too much of wasabi and grated Japanese radish inside the soba dipping soup…

When I first saw this thick soba, I thought I wouldn’t like it. I’ve never seen or tasted such thick soba noodle ever in my life! But as it turned out, it was good especially when I kept chewing it for a while.

My husband ordered the same set as mine but with tempura (deep fried shrimp and vegetables). I was too busy eating my soba to take pictures of all the other family members’. But my father-in-law was eating a hot soba and told us that we would find out the hot one was better as we eat more and more.

I enjoyed the interior and the thick soba was interesting. But hmmm…the normal one didn’t taste very special to me. I didn’t like the thin one in shrimp flavor so much. So…I don’t know why this place attracts people that much. But if you have a chance to drive near this area, you can try it!

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