Hello World, Greg here. Ever wondered what a brand new
Japanese 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 friendly
neighbourhood real estate agents introduce himself. I'm Tomita from Sanshin Realty.
Nice to meet you. The most popular house with buyers
is 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 I
thought this was a bit more expensive than the average house, or at least what
the average household could afford. How much is this house? It's ¥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 (¥4,880,000JPY/$43,500USD)in Edogawa, which is a ward within Tokyo Metropolis. I think the average annual income
of buyers are between ¥3,000,000 and ¥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 your
family 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 to
take off your shoes. This is a door stopper. This protects the walls
from being damaged. There's a magnet on both the door and the floor and you can step right on it
without 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 window
in 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 inside
from the outside. Windows like this use special glass so that you can have privacy from neighbours. This is a 24-hour vent
that can circulate air throughout the whole house.
When you push, it opens. In order to get air into
the 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 inside
this 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 shutters
on 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 room
on the first floor, the restroom. This is a toilet washlet. On this single panel, you have buttons
for males and females, for the strength of water, to move the spray forwards
or backwards, and to flush the toilet. On the panel there's a button to warm up
the 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 seat
on a cold day is glorious, especially since central heating is
virtually non-existent in Japanese homes. This is called barrier free and this railing is for elders to hold
on 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 face
on 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 floor
heating 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-home
mom making meals for the kids. The space is designed
so 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 put
your rice cooker. You can use the space for whatever
you want, like storing food. You can spray all around the sink
with 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 stove
and it's easy to clean. Down here you can push buttons like this. In here you can cook fish. You can use these to control
the temperature. This is a lock in case your
child 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 see
small 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 a
remote 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 on
demand and tankless. Over here's the washroom. Of course, you can use this for
the 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 a
vented dryer, you can get 2-in-1
washer/dryer models that don't require a vent and can
fit in a space like that. Instead, we have this over here,
isn't this good? From here you can go straight
into 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 with
little children, you can still have space
and sit down. There'd be water up to here, and you can take a bath with
your 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 when
sitting down, can control the height. From here you can sit down
and take a shower. Over here there's a shower and
underneath there's a faucet. You can place a bucket here
to keep water in. This is for when you want to put
water in the bath, this is to reheat the water
when it gets cold. And over here there's more settings. The bathroom floor is easy to clean. The water will swirl around
and this will catch stuff like hair. You can then unscrew it and clean it. In older bath units, the drainage area
also goes under the bath tub. Thankfully newer units seal off
the bath tub and there's only this one small drainage area to
worry about cleaning. From the washroom, you can use this door
to get to the bathroom. So you enter and when you come out
you can put your towel here. I don't know if this is
completely obvious, but in Japan, the bathing room is
separate from the sink, which is separate from the toilet, so three
people can use the area at the same time. In addition to the 1st floor toilet, there's
one on the 2nd floor. Inside it's the same. From the 2nd floor, you can go upstairs
to the 3rd floor. So let's go up. On the third floor in the hallway
there's a closet. This is the third floor bedroom. There are so many laws when
you build a house in Japan, and because builders have to
follow the laws, over here you can see how the ceiling
in 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 that
each house can receive a certain amount of daylight sun hours. This closet over here is different
from the closet on the first floor. It's a walk-in closet
and it even has a light. From the room on the 3rd floor
you 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 here
is 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 toilets
and bathing rooms have locks. I think that while you want
privacy in your room, it's only really family living in the
house, 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 to
building codes and laws. In order to ensure the house
is structurally sound, but still has a wide
open space like this, the four beams at the corners
need to be exposed. Even though it needs to be designed
like 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 not
in use, and you store it like this. While we previously saw that
the bathroom has a heater fan built-in, the most common method for drying clothes
is still to hang dry them outside. As such, balconies are a standard feature. In Japan, we use siding like this
for 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 for
about 15 years or so, before it needs to be maintained
as 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 hose
if 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 smell
can escape from here. It's way up there, because even if it's
smelly, 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 have
yards, 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 Patreon
for supporting these videos. As always, much appreciated. Many thanks to my nephew and wife
for the language translations. Oh, yeah, John! Thanks for interpreting
for me, but let's be real, your biggest contribution was being
a portable light stand. But you were a very good one. His channel is Only in Japan
and 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?
Hey, I'm the guy who made this video. Thanks to everyone for watching. It's always interesting reading the comments!
Had a few clarifications / things to say from seeing comments in here and on YouTube:
I'm going to soon go off on a shoot for the day, but if anyone actually reads this and has some questions, feel free to ask. I may not be able to answer right away, but can do so when I get back later on.
I have no idea why I watched this, but something about it gave me such a good feeling. The realtor's explanations of everything, the politeness and the gentleness of the interaction, it was comforting somehow. Thanks for sharing.
Make sure you turn on closed captioning!
Really interesting how much there is going on inside a relatively small space. Makes me wish our home was as well designed and well planned as this one.
It's important to note that homes in Japan depreciate in value, similar to cars. If you buy a piece of land with an old home on it, you will probably tear it down and build a brand-new home on the same lot. For that reason, pre-built new homes like this tend to be flashy, just like new cars. You are buying a piece of equipment.
The important thing I learned was that Denmark has a crazy high home break in rate. Eyeballing the graph he showed, Denmark is 2,000 break ins per 100k people vs 800 in UK or 600 in the US.
-and Italy is about as safe as Japan. I wouldn't expect that given the constant reports of tourists being robbed.
WTF the avg salary is 40k and they think 400k is affordable for them?
Nice solution with bathroom floor cleaning. Here in Uk they put carpets in bathrooms...
Most shocking part of the whole video: burglaries are higher in Sweden than in the U.S. And WTF Denmark?!
That's a really good deal, $400,000 for that house would be a bargain here in San Diego.