How do you raise children around Tokyo with the ridiculous size of apartments?

30 comments

1. Move out of Tokyo and commute. Kawasaki, Chiba, Saitama, etc. there is a reason why so many people commute to Tokyo proper from outside the city. More space. With no traffic, I could get to Tokyo proper in about 40 min or so by car.

   I have a 4LDK house with a yard and only pay ¥70k a month for my mortgage

2. Your company may be located in the middle of Tokyo, but you don’t have to be. You’re going to have to compromise and change your parameters or else you won’t find anything

3. A dual income household and you’re scrimping rent with 15man? The reality is that amount is far too little if you want to live in central Tokyo in a larger place.

   If you want a larger place you have two options:

   1. Pay more money.
   2. Move further out of Tokyo.

   There’s not much else to it.

4. Welcome to Tokyo. Pack em tight and build high.

5. Yes, I would like to live somewhere more outside of Tokyo. The only thing is that the middle between the work of my partner and mine would be in the middle of Tokyo. He has to work very south of Yokohama, while I am at the North of Tokyo. We would have loved to keep commuting time under 1 hour for each of us, but I suppose that won’t be possible.

6. Stop looking at appartment in Hiroo or any of the expat living places, Stop looking at something within 5min walking of a Major Yamanote station.

   With 15man you can have a big place in Yokohama, Kawasaki. Hell, our loan is not even that high and we got a 100+ sqm house… All within 30min of Shinjuku

7. Are you looking in very central Tokyo? (Minato/Shibuya/Meguro) I pay 22万 for a 60sqm 2LDK in the middle of the city. 15万 is quite reasonable for a 40-50sqm 1LDK depending on where you are looking. Obviously for that price you won’t be living in Azabu, but around Koenji or Nerima? Sure. Those are very nice areas in my opinion.

   That said, most people with families live out on the western side of the city, south of the city, or north into Saitama. Although quite a few people just buy homes in more central areas, because even buying something up to 1億 works out to around 275,000-300,000 per month on a 35 year loan and the vast majority of houses or apartments outside of central areas are not anywhere near that much.

8. You need to move to the darkest corners of Nerima or Itabashi or *shudder* Adachi to find something in that price range.

9. 1) Check out apartments in Edogawa-ku, especially 20-25 minutes away from the station.
   2) check out apartments provided by Daiwa Living, they have nice design and sometimes you can find good size for good price.

10. Check at Kawasaki around the Odakyu line, specially Yurigaoka or Shin yurigaoka

    I feel like it’s a “cheat code”, even if it’s like 15/20km far from Tokyo it’s only 25min with the rapid express train from Shinjuku

    There are lot of shop, cinema, and you can find new appartments and more bigger than Tokyo itself

    My gf when she was student last year, was in a 4man yen that accepts cats, for 25m² and not that old

11. Live in Kanagawa, work in Tokyo. That’s what I do. It works quite well. I’m about a 12 minute walk from the station. My wife and I pay around 80k a month and it’s about 45sqm. It’s about a 34 minute train ride to Shinjuku. Pretty convenient.

12. Most families live outside of Tokyo in either Kanagawa, Chiba, or Saitama and commute. Living in Tokyo is mostly for the rich or young singles/couples. Of course sometimes you can get affordable places in Tokyo but they tend to be older, far from stations, More on the outskirts of Tokyo/in less desirable wards, etc.

    I used to live in a 39m2 2DK for ¥40,000 in Chiba.

    Personally now I live in a 36m2 2DK in Tokyo (¥~71,000) and have a toddler and it’s not that bad. It’s older, maybe around 30-35 years old, but it was renovated within the last few years and is really nice inside and has good insulation/sound proofing. Its about 18 minutes walk to the station though. It’s just enough space. Cozy, and less area to clean so it works for me. We work a lot so the kid gets to play a lot at daycare and they often go on excursions outside, and on days we’re home/one of us is home we tend to try to take her outside to different places a lot, but even staying home I find it’s comfortable enough. We’re definitely moving to a bigger place within the next couple years, but in the first few years of their life you don’t need that much room.

    Many families in Japan sleep in the same room/same bed as their children until their children are in elementary, or even junior high school. Around puberty starting is generally the cut off for sleeping in the same room. So that’s one more reason they’re able to live in smaller apartments. A 1LDK, 2DK, etc is fine if you only need one room for the bedroom and then have a living room and a dining room and that’s it. Even people in a 2LDK, 3DK, etc might use the extra room as an office or something rather than a kid’s room until the kid is older

    I knew some fairly wealthy families who lived in Aoyama/Omotesando/etc and even they only lived in like a 1-2LDK despite having a couple of kids, they slept in the same room as their (elementary school aged) kids and then used the other rooms as living space/office space.

    I like to check suumo just for fun sometimes though and there are HUNDREDS of hits for places 2LDK or bigger and 50m2 or bigger in Setagaya alone. Not sure why you’re unable to find something?

13. For that price you gonna have to check the outskirts of Tokyo, or even check outside of Tokyo. You can’t have it all. Either you are going to have be prepared to commute or either pay a lot more

14. Easy fix; don’t live in tokyo, I bought a whole-ass 3bdr house for under 200k. Japan is cheap af if you don’t live in Tokyo

15. Isn’t that expected of Tokyo?

    Here’s my advice. Live in the tiny apartment for now. If it’s just you and your partner do you need that much space? I’d and when you have kids, baby in a tiny apartment is fine until they are old enough to walk. You’re gonna have time to look after. Either go for more expensive place then or just go move out to Saitama or wherever get a proper house and make peace with the hell commute for the kids sake.

    Or pay loads of money for a big place central. Those your options.

16. I don’t live in Tokyo, but 15万 seems a quite low…

    Edited to add:

    I live in a house in a city in Hyogo with my family (4 people) and i had a baby last year. My son is 1 and he doesn’t have his own room. He sleeps with me and my husband sleeps in a separate room. I mostly raise my son in the living room during the day. We play and watch Sesame Street and I feed him and change him here too.

    One child doesn’t take up as much space as you think they will. I thought my son was going to need a whole separate room and a playroom, but that’s not the case at all.

17. You could say exactly the same thing about apartments in Singapore, or Manhattan.

    But the good thing about Japan is that just an hour or two outside of the city, you have entire towns full of large houses that are basically free.

18. 15man is pretty low. You can give
    Up some things, such as opting for a unit bathroom, for more living space, or an older building. With two incomes you could afford a bit more hopefully, although it’s important to measure how much time you will spend inside your home.
    As for kids, you can always plan to save (even for a tighter living space while you are only 2) and then move somewhere bigger. You can figure it out, and you can move again later or buy a place. You don’t have to do the co sleeping thing, it really is up to you, doesn’t have to be gloom and doom, sometimes people make it sound worse than it has to be. Good luck!

19. Apparently you take them to the car dealer and let Toyota raise them.

20. Location, size, price, quality. Those are what you balance when choosing a place to live.

    Your budget is 15man. You could get a smallish place in central Tokyo, or a much, much bigger place further out.

    I’m on the Miura Peninsula and pay just under 10man for a 130m^(2) house which includes a decent sized powered shed, some land, and a parking spot. But it’s ~90mins by car into Tokyo. For me that’s great, I only go into Tokyo once or twice a month and I enjoy the drive.

21. Tokyo rents are shocking. And these prices despite a housing glut country-wide. Many Japanese prefer to commute 1-3 hours rather than pay such high prices. Yokohama rents are cheaper but good luck finding something you are happy to live in.

22. Just wanted to add, the age alone of the building isn’t the only thing you might want to check. There are three types of shin-Taishin (earthquake resistance).

    Taishin – the basic earthquake resistance required by law.
    The higher the floor, the higher the degree of shaking.
    Repeated earthquakes may eventually lead to serious damage. After a large earthquake (magnitude 7 or above), the building may require large scale repairs or additional reinforcing. There is also a risk that the damage may not be repairable.
    This method is suitable for low-rise buildings.)

    Seishin – vibration control.
    (This is optional and not required by the law, but is recommend for high-rise buildings.
    This is more expensive than the regular method but less expensive than menshin (base isolation).)

    Menshin – base isolation system.
    This is optional and not required by the law. It is the most expensive method but is also considered to be the safest.
    The building structure is isolated from the ground.
    This construction method is often used in skyscrapers and high-rise apartments.

    I live in Menshin..It really is different than Seishin. But don’t pay the price of one for the other. I loved in Seishin concrete too, it was alright.

23. further west of Tokyo-to, in Tama Region, you can find cheaper and bigger places.

    I live on a 2LDK almost 60sqm, iirc, 10万 apartment with my wife. I could have moved to Hachiouji and slashed 2万 off for the same size, but id rather just work overtime and be 15minutes away from my workplace, and 2万 is something i can trade for 1.5 hours of roundtrip commute everyday. with that said, no matter how convenient it is to live and work within 23wards, i’d rather not. i pretty much enjoy life here in an almost inaka suburb of Fuchu-shi, quiet and peaceful.

    anyway, OP, you can consider Tama Region for your next place, it will be farther from your workplaces but train lines such as Keio Line, JR Chuo Line, etc. will still make transportation convenient.
    Outside Tokyo-to is definitely cheaper.

24. My mortgage is less than that. Look into buying an apartment. They’re surprisingly affordable if you’re not looking in like roppongi hills or something.

25. I live about an hour from shinjuku and we have a fairly-newly-built detached 2-LDK + loft with parking space for under 14 man.

26. how huge are your kids??

27. You can’t really live in the center of Tokyo in a nice, well-located, new-ish, *and* spacious apartment for anything less than 200,000 and up.

    I actually thought it was crazy and then I looked at prices in London and realized… oh yeah Tokyo is not really thaaaat bad after all.

    My solution was to move out of Tokyo to the outskirts of Chiba. That way, you’re still under an hour commute from Tokyo but you can get a new, spacious apartment for well under 200k/month.

    Realistically, I wouldn’t want to live in an apartment with kids. I don’t want the hassle of having to worry about future kids making a racket. At the very least I would find a *detached* house to rent (they do exist of course), even if it means I need to pay a bit extra per month.

28. 10man in saitama-shi, 66m2 3LDK, not that hard.

    stop looking in tokyo, what you want doesn’t exist.

29. Some bigger UR apartments will give a discount rate if you have kids or are expecting for around that range.

30. Not in Tokyo, but before having kids my wife and I lived in a small 2K apartment with about 45 square metres of space. That was cramped for us, but there was a family of five (couple with 3 kids, all under 10 years old) crammed into the same size place next door which seemed crazy to me.

    If you want to have kids and any sort of space at all, you either have to get rich or you have to move out to the suburbs.