Name: Hunting for an Apartment in Tokyo!
Uploaded: 2025-06-18T18:17:02.000Z
Duration: 32 min 2 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

I've been here for three years now, which isn't super long, but it's long enough to know that I want to move again.

I want to tell you about the pros and the cons of the place that I'm in, why I want to move, and also take you on the apartment hunt and search for my next place.

Because yeah, moving in Japan is not a fun time.

Also, yeah, if you can hear just like a sound in the background, that's 10,000 cicadas outside.

It's the peak of summer in Japan and it is hot.

So to start off with, if you knew as well, my name is Emma and I always say I live in Tokyo.

I live pretty close to Tokyo, but I live in one of the surrounding prefectures around Tokyo.

Let's start with the pros and I'll tell you about the place that I live in currently.

When I first moved from my last place three years ago, my goal was I want a big, beautiful place.

Relatively good access to the city, but I just wanted a big, beautiful apartment.

That was my dream and my goal and I did it.

I love this apartment for the apartment itself.

So it is a big, beautiful two LDK, so bedroom and an office and a living dining kitchen.

There's a really big balcony with a beautiful view of so many trees.

I was the first person to live in this renovated apartment.

It just means that someone cared a little bit when they put effort into designing this place.

A lot of Japanese places are very cookie cutter, the exact same thing over and over again, which can be very frustrating when searching for an apartment.

So the soundproofing is really good, except for the doors and the windows.

You can hear everything outside and you can hear everything in the stairwell.

But other than that, you can't hear the neighbors through the walls.

Also the price for the place is really good.

For a 2LDK, 55 square meter, newly renovated, I'm paying 128,000 yen, which is really good.

It's really good for the kind of place that it is.

I didn't really look too much into location when I was looking for a place.

I had like a general timeframe of it taking to get into Tokyo, but I was like, yeah, it should be fine.

I think areas like this are great if you have a family or a community that is in the area.

Sure, I've made some friends, mainly old ladies and some families.

Most of my friends are in Tokyo, Tokyo, like Tokyo proper.

If I want to go see them on the weekend, I have to catch the train in.

If I have any jobs, I have to catch the train in.

I'm basically catching the train in most days.

That time adds up and it's a very busy train because a lot of people live outside of Tokyo to commute in because it's way cheaper to live outside.

It's like a standing train for minimum half an hour.

That might not sound like much to some people, but I think after doing it for three years for that much time, constantly going in and out, and it's not just half an hour sitting down on a train, it's half an hour standing on a train and then my area is very full of hills, so it's a lot of ups and downs and all arounds.

Also, I live on the fourth floor with no elevator, another huge con.

After a big day, you finish up your day, you're tired, and then you get on the rush hour train and stand for minimum half an hour, depending on where you go.

Then you have to walk up a hill and down a hill and up a hill and down a hill, and then you have to climb four flights of stairs.

Of course, anyone can say, my commute's harder or my life is harder, and I absolutely believe you if that is the case and that if you're fine with it, hell yeah.

But for me, I've realized I don't want to do this anymore.

I'm in a very lucky privileged position where I am able to consider and afford moving to a different apartment where I don't have to climb four flights of stairs every time.

Another thing is, I actually live in a, did it reveal?

If you guys don't know what danchi is, I believe it's like public housing.

I don't know if these are still public housing, but each apartment is owned by a different owner, and they're very old buildings.

Another con, the building is so old that it's 1968, and so it's before earthquake prevention, like there's a certain standard everyone likes, and it's 1981 onwards.

There was a big earthquake and they changed a bunch of systems and then anything constructed after 1981 will have the newer earthquake stuff. 1968, I don't know if we got much going on here.

That's why it's cheap to live in these places.

You know, a lot of people won't go for no elevator and a lot of people don't like older buildings.

So yeah, the age is a con for earthquake safety, but also there's pros and cons to danchi.

They are a whole world within themselves.

It's all of these blocks that look exactly the same, and they build so many community-based things everywhere, like libraries and ponds and parks and community events and stuff.

I actually really love that about danchi.

There's a lot more responsibility, which can be a con, but also kind of a pro.

It keeps you active in the community, but also it's super annoying, like having to fill out forms.

Like right now I've got a kaidanban, where I have to fill out like, yes, I've read the kaidanban, any notices, you get newsletters.

You get put on trash duty to go and check that the trash has been taken and that people sorted it properly.

There's no management fee, because we are the managers.

For me, at this point, I'm like, I don't really want to do this anymore.

Another huge thing is the trash, because there's no trash rooms for everyone.

Before 8am, five days a week, the trash sorting is very intense in this area.

You have to go down the stairs, take it to the end of the street, and then come back and climb the stairs.

But overall, I'm really done with that aspect.

It's very community, do the right thing, take care of each other, little conversations with people every now and then.

Because these danchi have been here for so long, they're not really built super close together.

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Hunting for an Apartment in Tokyo!

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