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All about apartments in Tokyo

May 2, 08 Comments

Here in Tokyo, apartments are usually rented through real estate agents rather than landlords.

The housing situation with respect to living space has improved a lot in recent decades, even though there are still many very small apartments mainly in the large cities and in central Tokyo, in particular.

Most rooms come with tatami floors or wooden floors, while fully carpeted rooms are rare. Some apartments come with both, tatami rooms and wooden floor rooms, while others do not contain any tatami room.

LDK is an abbreviation frequently used in the world of Japanese real estate to describe apartments. It stands for Living, Dining and Kitchen area, and is preceeded by the number of rooms. Some examples are:

1K = one room apartment with kitchen
1DK = one room apartment with dining and kitchen area
1LDK = one room apartment with a living, dining and kitchen area

In addition, most apartments come with a bathroom, a toilet room and an entrance area (genkan) where the shoes are taken off.

The actual rent is paid monthly, usually through automatic bank transfer. It is due before the start of a new month. The rental cost varies significantly, from ¥ 40,000 (~$400) for a small room to over ¥ 1 million (~$10,000) for large, luxurious apartments. I suppose the average for a 1DK in Tokyo is about ¥ 90,000 (~$900).

Apartments located close to city centers are most expensive. The difference in cost to apartments in the suburbs or even neighboring prefectures can be very large.

Old buildings with small apartments are called apato ("apartment"), while modern buildings with larger apartments are refered to as manshon ("mansion"). Meanwhile, apartments that face to the south and receive a lot of sunlight tend to be more expensive.

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