Name: How Much Building a House in Japan Really Costs
Uploaded: 2025-07-28T18:19:43.000Z
Duration: 16 min 42 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...

So, have you ever wondered how much it would cost to build a Japanese house?

Well, in this video, I'm going to break it all down for you.

So, without further ado, let's get at it.

Today, I'm showing you a common-style Japanese multi-generational house, which means it provides separate living spaces for two families, so grandma and grandma can live along with the family.

And before we get into it, full disclosure, I'm not getting paid for this video by this company.

Rather, I thought sharing the cost of building a house in Japan in today's current economy would be interesting.

So, I asked with Earth Home if I could give a Japan house tour while explaining their costs, and they kindly agreed.

So, this house is pretty interesting because it has this front patio area, you know, just to hang out in the front, see the neighbors.

You don't usually see this, I mean, you see this depending on the house, but sometimes people will build a fence around here so you can actually see.

But yeah, it's a pretty cool front area, but let's go inside.

Okay, so here we have the front entrance area, also known as a genkan.

Looks like right here, you probably have the shoe closets and then some more storage here.

And what's also interesting is they have this storage space a little bit.

They have kind of like this half wall here that separates the storage area.

So, if you have your stuff that you need to like readily access, like umbrellas or sports equipment or whatever you have that, and you can just grab at it when you need to, when you like go outside.

What is kind of cool is they have this artwork design.

I guess you can kind of change that, you can put a statue of something if you wanted.

I don't know what kind of statue would you guys want.

As I go through this video, let me know what you guys like, let me know what you guys don't like, what you would change, how you guys may like configure it yourself and how you do things.

Okay, so the first thing you notice is this living space.

So, this house cost 88 million yen, about 560,000 US dollars to build before tax and without land.

Given it's a total of 316 square meters, that works out to be about $1,800 per square meter or $164 per square foot.

Mind you that the cost fully ensures that it meets all of Japan's strict building codes to ascent an M7 seismic level earthquake.

Oh, and you could build the house with all the furniture, appliances, decorations, etc.

you see today included for 93 million yen, about $593,000.

So, what's kind of cool about this setup here is that you kind of have this L-shaped couch that opens up to the dining area over there.

You can watch TV here to the side and then it also has, I believe this is a fireplace.

Let me see if I can figure out how to turn this on.

I guess it lights up and the heat generated gets pushed out into the room.

Oh, and if you are interested in getting heated floors, a rough estimate for installing a floor heater would be about 250,000 yen, $1,600 per 12.5 square meters.

It gets pretty cold in Japan, so it's very common to have one nowadays, especially in the main living area.

So, I also kind of like this, I guess, sunken ceiling or lowered ceiling to just give separation from the dining room and that TV room area without actually closing off the space.

It's also pretty nice is that you have all of this storage area here.

As you can see, you have a decent size sink over there.

And then just right here, you have a space for your garbage bins, your microwave.

You can put your coffee maker right here.

This is kind of like your mini pantry area.

So, this build-out for this system kitchen area would be roughly around 2 million to 3 million yen, which works out to be around $13,000 to about $20,000.

It really depends on how much storage you have, like what kind of stoves you get, type of sinks you get, but, you know, generally around that price.

So, let me make my way over here, which is the tatami room.

This is where the grandparents kind of hang out.

And they can also use this as their sleeping quarters.

What's also pretty unique to Japanese houses is that you have these sunken tables.

You know, if you've ever been to a restaurant or anywhere in Japan that has these tatami tables, and they're really low.

You're meant to sit on the ground, but it gets really tiring.

But this way, it's easier for people to sit.

This table is removable, so you can take it off and then you can put the tatami here.

Obviously, there's different configurations, but yeah, this is one of the configurations that you can do.

Japanese modern houses are commonly built with flooring, but it's also common to have a room or two as a Japanese-style tatami room for guest rooms or for older members of the family.

It costs about ¥50,000 to switch to around a 10-square-meter tatami room and about ¥500,000, $3,200, to build it with a sunken table, which requires additional construction for the raised floor to create the leg space.

So, what's interesting is you have this kind of sink area, obviously, for people to wash their hands.

And then you have this table right here, and they describe it as a place to make soba.

But I guess you can use it as kind of like a dining table as well.

But yeah, then you have these stairs, which is quite interesting because these stairs go up from this side and that side as well to the second floor.

This space is known as a doma, a workspace with usually packed earth or sometimes stone.

Traditionally, it's located at the entrance to serve as a transitional space, but I guess in this modern house, it's a space where you can be creative.

Okay, so now let's go up to the second floor where the second family lives.

I've been in Japanese homes where the stairs are super, super steep.

It's probably generally why you don't have the grandparents living upstairs.

It has your Japanese toilet, which you guys know I love so much.

So, this probably costs around ¥200,000, which works out to be like $1,200.

Look at the assortment of controls there.

Let's see what else is going on in this second floor.

So, obviously, this is the family kitchen area.

Again, this is probably around ¥2-3 million.

So, that works out to be around ¥13,000.

By the way, in terms of time it takes to construct this type of standard house in Japan, it usually takes about 150 days.

And considering the time to plan and design from signing the contract, it takes about 200 days on average.

Is it fast? Is it slow? Let me know in the comments.

So, one thing that I would probably do here is I would actually make this back area just a little bit smaller.

And then I would move the stove to this center aisle here.

Maybe make this a little bit longer and put the stove and the kitchen sink right next to each other.

And then make this island bigger so that you can seat people right in front of the stove.

So, you can cook, you can wash dishes, and you can talk to everyone.

I would perhaps just put a TV right there as well.

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