In this video I'm gonna take you on a tour of my new Tokyo apartment Since I did a video on my last Shibuya apartment And I also did a video on moving to this new place A lot of people been asking for a full tour of this new apartment So here it is the old Shibuya apartment was about 35 square meters while this new apartment is 70 square meters Which works out to be about 750 square feet Which is kind of what Maiko and I were looking for when looking for new place. As many of you know We're about to have a baby soon So, finding a place that just had a little bit more room for Michael, myself and the new baby Just made a lot of sense to us but if you watch my second channel Tokyo zebra You know how much of a pain and all the issues We've had trying to find this new place But fortunately, we found it and we finally moved in and luckily for us We moved into this new apartment several weeks before Japan declared a state of emergency Which, has made the quarantine a little bit more bearable So, before I start if you want to see what I'm doing on The daily check out my Instagram account and if you want to help support the channel check out the Hold my Miso merch and if you have any questions about Japan Check out my discord community that all said let me take you on a tour of this place. Let's go So, first of all This is the entrance area and as you can see it's a lot wider and more spacious than my previous apartment So, one of the things that I appreciate the most is that in this place, it has a built-in storage for shoes Finally, I get my own dedicated closet here and then just next to it Maiko has her own dedicated closet for shoes as well and just below I keep some of my workout equipment So, if I need to go and I'm on the run I can just quickly grab it and go Also, another thing that I appreciate is that the apartment has a lot of built-in wall hooks. In fact, it's proven quite useful because I'm able to hang a hand sanitizer just right here at the entrance and there you go! My hands all sanitized now. And another thing that I really love about this new place Is that just in front of the entrance there's a little space where you can actually put a vase and hang something if you really want Let me show you what I put in front of the entrance because I'm kind of a little proud of it And here it is YouTube's 1 million subscriber play button. This is one of those Awards where it wouldn't have been possible without you guys So thank you so much! I appreciate all the support ♡ and one thing that I wanted to share with you guys is.. Look just a little bit closer to the play button it actually says presented to Paula from Tokyo and Maiko because they do this channel together Again, thank you guys so much for the support over the years ♡ I'm so excited for this year to come and all of the new content I'll be sharing with you that said let me now show you the living room Alright, so this is the main living, dining and kitchen area In fact, we live in a 2 ldk which, means in Japan two bedrooms living, dining and the kitchen So, I'll be showing you the other two bedrooms shortly but let me just go through and kind of show you what we did around this space. One of the things that was really important to Maiko and I When kind of setting up this place was to make sure we didn't have a lot of clutter. If you saw this Shibuya apartment tour just a few weeks ago You notice that we lived in a fairly cramped space and because it was so cramped. We just had so much clutter, which just I really really hated so, in this new space I kinda wanted to try to keep it as simple as possible One of the things you'll probably notice first Is that the living dining kitchen is all connected into this one space. We wanted to have this kind of Island kitchen behind me So, that in the future when we're doing more vlogs on our Tokyo Zebra channel We'll be able to kind of show you more what's going on in the kitchen, in the living room without having to go to all these like separate rooms. So, we have the main island kitchen there We have a little dining set over there. And then we just have this living room this space right here You can see that the zebra carpet which, kind of goes to the Tokyo Zebra Motif. This kind of separates the dining and the living room area, but one thing about this living room area We're actually still waiting for a sofa to be delivered This pink chair behind me should just be going actually like right here and then there we're supposed to have another sofa, but we just couldn't get it in time. It might just take another month or two to be delivered So what can you do. Now, let me show you this apartment from that side of the room So, a lot of you already know that Maiko and I work from home So, we've actually set up this little area for our work desk So, one of the things that was quite important to us, was to keep the work stations here in the main living area so that when that baby comes we can also watch over the baby while we're working But, if you already haven't noticed this room is kind of in a weird triangle shape So, we kind of had to make adjustments in order to make this room work. First of all, I think this area was originally intended to be kind of like where you put your TVs and everything and then maybe the couch would go here and you'd face that way but instead we actually decided to put the TV here in front of the window just to open up the space a little bit more, because we do have these work stations here and because we did that we had to kind of reposition the lights. What you'll find I don't know this might be similar to your country But, the light fixtures and apartments are fixed to one location in order to get around that I had to get this light fixture bar, where I can move the light one meter away and pretty much the same thing for the dining room as well. Oh, but let me show you One thing, I didn't like about this room, but was able to find a solution for so just underneath the island kitchen I actually wanted to put the air filter right here, but the problem is they didn't have any electrical outlets They only had it on the other side of the room So, what I actually did to just like clean things up because I really hate cables all over the place It was I ran some molding from that side of the wall all the way to this side of the wall and because the color of the baseboard changed I also changed the color of the molding and then determinated I made this little box where I can put all the cables in, so it's not so messy I know pretty simple, but these little things just make me super happy And another thing that I just really love about this space is just how the windows wrap around this entire room, so that when you pull back the curtains you really feel like there's a lot more space than It is right now, because I know a lot of you who live in Western countries probably think that, this is a pretty small place But it's Japan. So what can you do Overall, I think we did a decent job on making this room work I don't know. What do you guys think, but probably I shouldn't take any of this credit because It was actually Maiko that designed and like spaced everything out, picked out the furniture, picked out the carpet. Pretty much, I just had to agree to whatever she wanted and I'm pretty happy that I did Oh, but I did get to choose a TV. The only thing is we agreed that I wouldn't go any bigger than this one So, this is the kitchen area and as I said before one of the things I love the most about this area is that it's an open kitchen It's just so nice to sit back here and be able to see the rest of the room see the views to the TV and also since we have a baby on the way It'll be cool to be able to like do stuff here in the kitchen, while also being able to watch the baby because what you'll find in a lot of Japanese apartments Especially, like the one we had before the kitchen is kind of in a separate room It's difficult to see what's going on in the dining room or the Living room It just makes life easier for us. Also, what I do like is a kitchen sink is bigger Before, we have two burners on the stove. Now, we have three burners We have a little fish grill, Which I didn't have before and now we have an oven microwave system, so we can actually bake stuff Maiko's already made lasagna, cookies and all that kind of stuff. It just opens up all the stuff that we can eat and you know I love food So, the thing is it's not actually the biggest oven in the world but ovens are really hard to come by in Apartments in Tokyo. So, we're just super happy that we have it I think a lot of people today who want ovens will actually buy separate ones that they set in their kitchen They don't actually have ones that are built in in fact That's one of the things that Maiko and I were really considering if we didn't have an oven in the new apartment We were probably just gonna get a stand alone one and just hook it up and connect it somewhere and then just beyond there You keep all the dishes and then we have some pots down below One thing though that I didn't particularly like about this kitchen. There's this kind of a shelf area just behind me I wish they had just a little bit more depth, so that we can actually put stuff on there But since we can't it's kind of limited. We've actually had to buy this cart separately that's just sitting right here, so that we can put the rice cooker, put the toaster oven and just a little bit more supplies and then just behind me right here We actually have our refrigerator It's just a better location especially compared to the last apartment. In fact You'd be pretty surprised how difficult it is to find An apartment with an open kitchen like this in Tokyo. And this is the bath area. There's actually not a lot to see because everything is hidden behind all the cabinets. Basically, you just have some soap here Yeah Some of Maiko's little things, which I really don't know what it is And she has her glasses there. And then just right here We have our washer and dryer unit, Basically It's all in one combo machine So, you throw your clothes in it washes it then automatically goes into a dry cycle and then a few hours later all of it is good to go and then you can just fold it up So, just next to the washer and dryer you have this shower and bath unit. It's actually an all-in-one enclosed space. You have the shower right here to my left and just weren't actually standing right now You have the bathtub. Like many bathtubs in a Japanese home It does have the automatic features but pretty much all you need to do before you want to take a bath is hit a few buttons on the panel and it'll fill the bath to a desired level and temperature. Personally, I'm not so much of a bath person I like to take showers instead, but Maiko has been using it quite frequently. So, It really depends but it is useful. So, I've converted this small bedroom into a mini studio It's actually something I wanted since we started this YouTube channel, but because our space was so small in the previous apartment I just could never do it. But now that we do I finally was able to build this little mini studio Just like the rest of this apartment. It's still not completely done If you guys want to see kind of like the final final apartment? then definitely just check out our Tokyo zebra channel, because we'll be doing kind of like daily vlogs with our son our family and we'll Just be filming all around the house. So, you'll be able to see how our apartment evolves over time. For now, this is pretty much it. You can see just right behind me. I have this kind of a filming studio I have these two LED panels. I have the camera I have the microphone all on a table and what's actually pretty cool is that this table rolls so I can take this whole set up and move it to the other room and again the thing that I wanted to do really was to like have a camera set up all the time so that whenever I wanted to film whenever Maiko wanted a film we can just like do it we don't have to like set everything up and like waste a lot time doing it. Also, we have our sofa from our old apartment We have all the like the cabinet's from the old apartment Everything is like pretty much from the old apartment except for like these like lights and then this new table that I got here And the reason I got this table in particular is that I actually wanted to be able to stand and work sometimes and also if i needed to do something like Do-it-yourself projects and wanted cut stuff or you know nail stuff down. I wanted a table where I could do it This is kind of like one of those heavy-duty tables I'm also doing like a complete separate video on how I set up this whole entire studio from just like equipment I chose to how I built it all out and that video will be on the Tokyo zebra channel So subscribe to that channel, if you want to see how this whole little filming studio got built out Also just behind these cabinets something I always really wanted to do was kind of Casey Neistat inspired me when I started watching his blogs years and years ago was just I loved How he had his filming studio where he had like all of his tools in the background and all of that stuff and our like easily it was for him to Like take on projects because everything was just right there I'm actually kind of like a clean freak and I want to kind of hide everything but I still want everything easy and accessible That white closet over there just have it has all the tools and all like the bits and bobs that I need to like build stuff or make stuff all The parts in there and then in this cabinet just behind me I have like a charging station and I have all of the camera equipment and all of that stuff So, setting things up like this makes it just a super efficient Especially, for my workflow for Maiko's workflow for the things we do for this channel But who knows in the future this may turn into our son's room that may be a sad day because I spent so many hours Building this out. So many hours like thinking how I wanted to set this particular room up This is like honestly like my personal space Maiko got to design Everything else in the house. I got to kind of just like run with this room And yeah, this is how it's come out so far Anyway, let me show you the rest of the apartment and this is the toilet room It's actually a separate room from the bath area. The toilet in itself has all of the automatic features It has a washlet, It has a bidet So it just makes it super easy Again, and just to the left of the sink is this shelf and then right under this shelf It was just like this weird open space, but we did find something It's little like cabinet thing to put just right there so we can put additional storage space In fact, I'm kind of actually surprised how much space they use for this toilet area That would have prefered they have the size of this toilet room and then use the other half for closet space And finally, this is the main bedroom. You can quickly see that it's fairly simple in here in fact We decided not to put too much money in this space just because we probably won't be spending a lot of time in here We have a standard bed drawers on the side closet right next to it and then a full-length mirror and that's like pretty much it in this room and then just here to my left We're planning on putting the baby crib So here's all the stuff that we have for our baby some of it We got our own and some of it we actually got from a lot of you So again, thank you for that. And just where Elmer was sitting is where we're gonna put the new baby crib We should be getting that pretty soon. So yeah, basically that's a full tour of my new apartment here in Tokyo Let me know what you thought of the new setup if you do things differently or if you had any advice. Yeah Anyways, let me know all of that stuff in the comments If you like this video help me out and hit that like button if you want to see what I'm doing on the daily Check out my Instagram account if you wanna help support the channel Check out the hold my miso merch! If you want to see more family style videos Check out my Tokyo zebra Channel and then if you want to see more guides about Tokyo or Japan hit that subscribe button and the Bell button and I'll catch you guys in the next one
