luxury japanese interior design
hello world, greg here. ever wondered what a brand newjapanese home looks like? well you're watching this, so i guess so,let's go check one out. but first we'll have one of our friendlyneighbourhood real estate agents introduce himself. i'm tomita from sanshin realty.nice to meet you. the most popular house with buyersis a 4ldk with a garage. oh right, what does 4ldk mean? l is for living room,d is for dining room,
and k is for kitchen. 4 is the number of bedrooms. homes usually have two toilets,and what's common and a big selling feature is a big large living room, dining room,and kitchen area. ok, now it's time to enter,please meet our guide. i'm junichi goto from sanshin realty. is this a normal, average new house? it's a new detached house. is it a typical house?
it's a typical house. hahaha. alright, i should explain the laughter. we were laughing a bit because john and ithought this was a bit more expensive than the average house, or at least whatthe average household could afford. how much is this house? it's â¥45,800,000. and we weren't wrong. these homes, which as of today works out to be about $400,000 us dollars
are about $100,000 above being affordable for families making the median household income (â¥4,880,000jpy/$43,500usd)in edogawa, which is a ward within tokyo metropolis. i think the average annual incomeof buyers are between â¥3,000,000 and â¥5,000,000(usd$26,000 to usd$44,000) but to be fair to goto-san, it's fairly close to the average price of new homes i saw when touring around edogawa. anyways, let's get back to the tour.
here's where you can park your car. you can even park a pretty big van. up here is a light. over here you can place yourfamily name plate. this is an intercom. it has a camera so you can see visitors. this is the entrance area. this might be unique to japanese homes.
and this is where you have totake off your shoes. this is a door stopper. this protects the wallsfrom being damaged. there's a magnet on both the door and the floor and you can step right on itwithout it being in the way. wow, amazing! sorry, if you've ever watched japanese tv, that oo, sugoi is a pretty typical reaction :-)
something that might be surprising,is that until recently, single pane windows were the norm in homes, but times have changed. over here is the windowin a bedroom on the first floor. this is a special double-pane window. this is the same window, but this one makes it hard to see insidefrom the outside. windows like this use special glass so that you can have
privacy from neighbours. this is a 24-hour ventthat can circulate air throughout the whole house.when you push, it opens. in order to get air intothe room from outside, you push it open. when you're away like on a family trip, you can circulate the air. just push this panel to close it. push it a little bit, a little bit,a little bit.
now we're going to enter the second room on the ground floor. this access panel is insidethis room on the first floor. so what you can do with this, is open it up here. from this access point, service people can maintain the gas and water pipes. and here's the 3rd room on the first floor.
there is the tv outlet. this is the closet. talking about houses in tokyo, land is limited, so you may have neighbours close to you. so on the first floor, there are special shutterson the windows. you close it and you're fine. you do it like 1, 2, 3.
if you try to open it, it won't. as i was watching the demonstration, i thought, the locks are nice and all, but are home burglaries even an issue in japan? turns out nope, they're not. now let's peruse the last roomon the first floor, the restroom. this is a toilet washlet. on this single panel, you have buttonsfor males and females,
for the strength of water, to move the spray forwardsor backwards, and to flush the toilet. on the panel there's a button to warm upthe seat.you'll really like it in winter. hot water's next. you can change the temp.this washlet has functions like this. and i agree 100% that a warm seaton a cold day is glorious, especially since central heating isvirtually non-existent in japanese homes. this is called barrier free and this railing is for elders to holdon to for their safety.
when we go up to the second floor,we see the living room. as you can probably imagine, you can put a tv here, a sofa here, and the family can gather. this is an intercom with a camera. when you hit this button, the outdoor camera
will show who's visiting, and you can see the faceon the monitor. and you can also talk to the person. from my experience touring new houses, interphones are quite standard, but i'd say this next floorheating feature is not. over here is the floor heating. this control panel is for setting the floor heating in the living room area.
this is the dining and kitchen area. a mother can cook the food over here, and the children can wait here, and get the food like this and eat here. ah, the good old image of the stay-at-homemom making meals for the kids. the space is designedso you can see everywhere. you can easily watch kids playing; it's very convenient.
over here, behind me,you can put the fridge. and here, you can put the cupboard. in the cupboard you can putyour rice cooker. you can use the space for whateveryou want, like storing food. you can spray all around the sinkwith the shower head. inside the sink faucet there's a water purifier cartridge. it's in shower mode now,and this changes it to regular water, and then purified water. down here is a gas stove.
you can take apart this stoveand it's easy to clean. down here you can push buttons like this. in here you can cook fish. you can use these to controlthe temperature. this is a lock in case yourchild pushes this. it won't work when it's locked. as you can see, full sized ovens are not usually built-in, but sometimes you will seesmall dishwashers. in the kitchen you can find a dishwasher.
there's a plenty of storage space.you can store pots like this. on the side of the kitchen, there's aremote control panel for the bathtub. you don't have to go to the bathroom.from the kitchen you can do everything. by the way, you need a control panel, because the water heater is ondemand and tankless. over here's the washroom. of course, you can use this forthe water temperature, and then shower... there's a 3 panel mirror here.
if you do this,you can see your whole body. haha, we can see ourselves, look. oh, are you in the mirror? sorry. it's ok, it's ok. over here you can put the washing machine. you guys don't use dryers in japan, right? you can plug in the hair dryer here. oh, i'm not talking about a hair dryer. ah, a laundry dryer? no.
while there is typically no spot for avented dryer, you can get 2-in-1washer/dryer models that don't require a vent and canfit in a space like that. instead, we have this over here,isn't this good? from here you can go straightinto the bathroom. like the kitchen,there's a control panel. on a cold day, you can put the heater on, and on a hot day,you can push this cold air button. when it's moist in the bathroom,there's a fan.
and for laundry on a rainy day, if you hit this dryer button, you can dry your laundry on a rainy day. this is the bathtub. maybe it's unique to japan, there's not only a shower,there's also a tub. over here, when you take a bath withlittle children, you can still have spaceand sit down. there'd be water up to here, and you can take a bath withyour children like this.
in case you didn't know, bathing with family members is quite common and normal in japan. over here's the shower. you take a shower standing up, and whensitting down, can control the height. from here you can sit downand take a shower. over here there's a shower andunderneath there's a faucet. you can place a bucket hereto keep water in. this is for when you want to putwater in the bath, this is to reheat the waterwhen it gets cold. and over here there's more settings.
the bathroom floor is easy to clean. the water will swirl aroundand this will catch stuff like hair. you can then unscrew it and clean it. in older bath units, the drainage areaalso goes under the bath tub. thankfully newer units seal off the bath tub and there's only this one small drainage area toworry about cleaning. from the washroom, you can use this doorto get to the bathroom. so you enter and when you come outyou can put your towel here. i don't know if this iscompletely obvious,
but in japan, the bathing room is separate from the sink, which is separate from the toilet, so threepeople can use the area at the same time. in addition to the 1st floor toilet, there'sone on the 2nd floor. inside it's the same. from the 2nd floor, you can go upstairsto the 3rd floor. so let's go up. on the third floor in the hallwaythere's a closet. this is the third floor bedroom. there are so many laws whenyou build a house in japan, and because builders have tofollow the laws, over here you can see how the ceilingin this room is slanted.
if we take a look at the outside, you'll see the slant he's talking about. while houses can be built extremely close to each other, there are rules to ensure thateach house can receive a certain amount of daylight sun hours. this closet over here is differentfrom the closet on the first floor. it's a walk-in closetand it even has a light. from the room on the 3rd flooryou can access this balcony. on this balcony you hang your laundry out. every room, the stairway, the kitchen,and so on,
have a smoke detector. over here in this room up hereis a smoke detector. here i go! you can do it! you can do it! peep. it's working. that was a test. this is a room on the third floor, and just like the other rooms,it has no lock. in japan, only the toiletsand bathing rooms have locks.
i think that while you wantprivacy in your room, it's only really family living in thehouse, so there are no locks. another reason for no locks in rooms is so that the kids can't lock themselves in. when houses are built in japan, they're built according tobuilding codes and laws. in order to ensure the houseis structurally sound, but still has a wideopen space like this, the four beams at the cornersneed to be exposed.
even though it needs to be designedlike this, isn't it stylish? on the balcony,laundry racks are attached. first, you can adjust the height.this makes it level. to use it, you can raise it like this,and also adjust the height down. the third stage is for when it's notin use, and you store it like this. while we previously saw thatthe bathroom has a heater fan built-in, the most common method for drying clothesis still to hang dry them outside. as such, balconies are a standard feature. in japan, we use siding like thisfor the exterior walls.
in the case of a fire,it doesn't burn easily. it shouldn't break, but the sunlight can fade the colour over the years. if that happens, you can paint it over. it is supposed to be good forabout 15 years or so, before it needs to be maintainedas it gets cracked. this window is a kind of wired glass. inside of it there's a wire mesh. when a fire occurs,it won't break apart into pieces.
to complete the tour, let's check out some outdoor features. outside, you'll find the water tap. when you open it,you can access the water. you can connect it to a hoseif you want to wash your car. over here is the water meter.the main water line is here, if you open it you can use the water. over here is the gas meter. up here is the electric meter. there are 2 pipes here.
this grey one is for toilet and bathwater. the reason why the pipe is outside, is because the bad smellcan escape from here. it's way up there, because even if it'ssmelly, you won't smell it from below. the other white one is to collect rainwater from the roof and the water goes into another pipe that connects underground. oh goodness, we didn't take a look at the back yard.
here ya go!okay, it's fairly non-existent. it's not that houses in tokyo don't haveyards, but due to the price of land, only the wealthier can afford it. still want more housing videos? well, whether you want them or not,there's more, more, and even more coming! first and foremost,thanks to the realtors at sanshin for organizing the new home tours.it was fantastic. and thanks to all those on patreonfor supporting these videos. as always, much appreciated.
many thanks to my nephew and wifefor the language translations. oh, yeah, john! thanks for interpretingfor me, but let's be real, your biggest contribution was beinga portable light stand. but you were a very good one. his channel is only in japanand he's got some fun vids, so all you watching should check them out. and thank you, dear viewer, for watching! what are new homes like where you're from?