$33,000 JAPAN APARTMENT: What did it get us?

$33,000 JAPAN APARTMENT: What did it get us?

What you’re about to see is our apartment in Japan. Hello and welcome to our Japanese apartment. Come on in. This is our entryway and we have a shelf for our shoes. And we haven’t quite finished decorating this space. Actually, that’s a general theme. We’ve gotten in we’ve gotten a little bit settled, but we have not finished all of our kind of making it all our own. But we do have our little charms from our travels here to greet us as we come in. All right, come on in. Okay, so first we’ll come in to Astra’s room. She chose to have this loft bed like this. And she’s got a desk. It’s very nice and cozy. And she wanted it so she could have a little space all her own with her bean bag chairs back there so that her and Connor can have late night chatting, conversing, conversing. And then across the way is Connor’s room. And he chose to have this really high loft bed. And um so that he could have this kind of computer cave under here. And instead of two small bean bags, a giant bean bag which we have dubbed the mochi. It gets pulled out. It’s hard for it to see exactly how giant that bean bag is, but it does get pulled out into our living room often to become part of our one piece watching. We continue down the hall here. We’ve got our washing machine, bathtub, and sink area all in one. So, the washing machine, which we picked out, felt like it was a decent size for a family. Our sink area, vanity, our cameraman, and then our wet bath. This bathroom is completely wet, so you shower in that whole thing. And the bath is really nice and deep. And one of the things that we love the most about it is that it automatically fills. So you just push a button and it fills it all the way. And it doesn’t even matter if it overfills it a little bit. Like you get in and it splashes out a little, it’s fine because that whole room is a wet room. So, it’s really nice to have this really deep relaxing bath. I We’ve really gotten into the Japanese bathing culture. Okay, I’m going to come down the hall a little further because in most Japanese homes, the toilet room is separate from the bathroom. It does make it so much easier for a family because somebody could be using the toilet, somebody can be using the bath, somebody can be using the sink. They’re all kind of separate areas. So, come on over here. We’ll switch places with you and we can open up this room. We have our fancy Japanese toilet here complete with washlet. It’s so nice to have nice fancy Japanese toilet. And we always appreciate that the sink is on the top. Since this room is separate, it means you can wash your hands right there after you instead of having to go into another room to wash your hands. That’s kind of the front half of our apartment. We have this door that separates so that it’s a little easier to cool and heat just one part part of the apartment. And this is the living space of the apartment. So, first we have our kitchen. It’s kind of a narrow kitchen, but it’s actually not too bad size for a Japanese kitchen. We found I think you found that it’s pretty uh worked pretty well for you. I have indeed. Something we really hoped to find with our home was a kitchen that felt more connected to the rest of the living space. That way, you know, sure, there are times I might be in the kitchen kind of chilling out with a podcast or video or something while I cook or do dishes, but other times, too, it’s really nice to be able to just engage and talk and we can just hang out as a family while the work of the kitchen’s going on. So, we were really happy with this space. We got a nice recessed area for the fridge, room along here for sorting rubbish according to the local style. Every place in Japan has its own particulars of how they want the rubbish sorted. We have a three bin system. We might add a little shelf or table of some kind here. Don’t know yet. We have our threeurner gas stove. Also a Japanese fish grill or fish oven. So we can make toast, we can roast vegetables. All sorts of kind of small scale oven type stuff we can do. And we get this nice handy pass through as well. So people can be at the table and we can hand things back and forth as needed. And it’s been a really lovely setup. But my favorite part is down here cuz one of the things we did was I really wanted a Japanese kitchen knife. This is a Sentoku from Jo Cutlery just up the train line a little bit in Sakai. Uh, Sakai is one of the main knife making areas of Japan and we’re not that far from it. So, this is probably just my first Japanese kitchen knife. I love that it has your name on it. Yeah. I think it’s been really nice to have the kitchen knife. It really has. And too, the kids are helping out in the kitchen more and more. So, they’ve also gotten views. Really nice. 3 years of Airbnb knives and this makes you grateful for having such a great knife. Really? Yeah. There’s no more that glorified tinfoil you get in some places. Oh man, this is if you feel half like a warrior with one of these chopping carrots. Yeah. Okay. So, the rest of our living area, Anthony and I share this room here, and it is our traditional tatami room, which is a kind of woven grass flooring that has like a little bit of softness to it. And Anthony and I are sleeping on the floor in a traditional Japanese way. Um, my futon is actually out. We have two big futons and we put them out and this whole room basically becomes like a giant bed. So, what’s nice is we can use that room then for other things during the day cuz the beds are put away. So, we can put a table over there and sit and do some work if we want to or we can do yoga in there or whatever else. It’s nice clear space. So, this was one of the trickiest things about choosing our apartment because finding one where the layout was something really great with three bedrooms. There’s almost always a bedroom that’s kind of like has no window or is like this where it’s kind of part of the living space. And so, this felt like the best solution out of the ones that we looked at. So, we got our living space over here and our um TV and couch, our one piece flag that we took on our cruise, and um that we obviously love hanging out as a family there and watching movies and whatnot. And then we have our dining space. This was one of the most important things for us to choose because we spend more time at the kitchen table than anywhere else in our home. And we now when we choose Airbnbs, we almost always prioritize one that has a table we feel like we could spend time at. Um, so this was really we knew we wanted to pick one that felt like it fit us really well. We went ahead and got a little bit larger one for the space and we are so glad we did because we work here. We often school here, we eat here which is very important to us and um we sit and converse and have long discussions about whatever is going on and it’s a really special place for our family. I really think our kids will look back at our kitchen table conversations and remember those when they grow up. I hope so. Anyway, so the rest of this space here is just we have a sideboard with our nice rice cooker and we are thinking maybe of putting like a microwave over there. And we have our coffee prep space, which is very important for us as well. And we got proper Americanized mugs when we were choosing our mugs. And then we have our really lovely balcony, which is where we dry our laundry since there usually is not a dryer and we opted to not do a combo washer dryer. In our experience, they do not work very well and it takes forever. So, it’s much easier to dry your laundry on the balcony. And eventually on the other side of the balcony, we would like to get a little beastro table so we can have coffee out there. That was not a priority because we’ve been here in the summer and it’s been blistering hot and not nice at all to be out there. So, we didn’t need to do that this time. We’ll probably do it next time we’re here. Now, we are enjoying our condo. We hustled for about the first two weeks to get everything set up. Since then, we’ve been enjoying our home in Japan, not to mention the awesome surrounding neighborhood and attractions. Can we stay in Japan fulltime? No. But we don’t have to. We love visiting Japan as much as we can. Only now, instead of having to find a vacation rental or hotel, when we arrive in Japan, we can just go home. What questions do you have about our experience or about real estate in Japan in general? Let us know in the comments and we’ll answer them in our next video. Thanks for following our journey to find our home in Japan. See you next time. [Music]

The Japanese real estate market now has one less akiya, or unoccupied property, to choose from.

And when our family travels to Japan, we don’t have to hunt for vacation rentals that offer enough room for a family. We can simply… go home.

Just over a year after we sold our house in the USA, we did something… unexpected. We bought an apartment… in Japan!

Come tour the apartment that we chose!

Want to see the apartments we looked at? Check them out here: https://youtu.be/oA1vqqZLZjE

Want to buy a place of your own in Japan? Here are resources we’ve found helpful:

Nippon Trading International – great podcast and hosts of the Japan Real Estate Summit – https://nippontradings.com

Nippon Bridge – business and relocation – https://nipponbridge.com

Akiya-Mart – listings and filters in English – http://akiya-mart.com

Here’s to finding everyday adventure wherever you are!

0:00 – Welcome
0:48 – Kids rooms
1:59 – Bathroom
3:21 – Where’s the toilet?
4:27 – Kitchen
7:04 – Tatami room
8:20 – Living room
8:50 – Dining room
10:22 – Laundry Dryer
11:00 – What’s next?

Who are the Learners and Makers?!
We are a family of 4 who believe in learning through our life experiences and making our own destiny. In August of 2022 we packed up our home of 16 years and sold our cars to travel the world full time. We are living the digital nomad lifestyle while worldschooling our 2 kids. Anthony, writer extraordinaire is the reason we were inspired to travel in the first place. If he decides to do something everyday, he’ll be building an impressive streak in no time. Jodie is video editor and social media manager. As an above the knee amputee, she hopes to show how amazing travel is possible with a mobility disability. Connor loves his long hair and is becoming an adventurous eater. He’s up for trying almost anything. If you have any questions about Minecraft, he’s your guy. Aster is full of joy and we swear she must have springs in her feet. She loves animals.
Thank you for joining us!

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