Nowadays, a share house is not just a simple dormitory accommodation to bed in and wake up but a lifestyle that you get a life-changing experience that you can never gain if you live alone in a single apartment.
There are many shared house that focus on its concept to make a new value to the residents. Adding some values on a regular living space to support residents’ lifestyle in exchange for a bit more expensive rent is a mainstream of a shared house in Japan.
Some people who can afford sufficiently to live by themselves dare to move in a shared house to take advantage of this opportunity. I will introduce here about the types of shared house which is in fashion.
Contents
Companies that newly enter into a shared house market focus their attention on a community formed in a common living space. They transformed a shared house itself into one community where people who have the same interests and dreams gather.
Only the people who sympathize the concept are allowed to move in a shared house to distinguish applicants from the ones who only hope for cheapness lifeline. For that reason, a rent is set to be a bit more expensive than general shared house.
This type of shared house aiming for establishing community culture is called “social apartment”. Types of communities that share houses suggest to applicants are like a “community for hobbies” : “Sport”, “Gardening”, “paying instruments”, “community for business people” : “start-up support”, “Programmer only”, “only aspirant to be the president of a company”, “community for single mothers”: “supporting nursery facility”.
Social apartments’ basic concept
The basic concept is Interactive single lifestyle which is an idea “a single life” and “Interacting with someone else”
To maintain this culture, human inspection is added on a regular entry screening to find someone who agree and is interested in this culture and have the same thoughts with other residents.
Pros
- You can make a life-changing friend with whom you can enjoy life in Japan
- Common spaces are basically cleaned up by a hired cleaner
- Equipments around kitchen are nicely prepared and a kitchen is wide enough like a commercial kitchen of a restaurant.
- You can interact with other residents through social apps such as “Whats app” and “Line”.
- Social Groups categorize cover a broad range of topics and you can join in one of activities managed by a group
- You can establish your group by collecting someone who sympathizes your group’s activity policy./
Cons
- Room inspection allows one person for one room
- No interphones equipped in your room. Talk directly to a courier on the phone to pick up your goods to an entrance if you receive something from a courier
- Your stuff will be removed or thrown away without any excuses if you put it in a common space when there is a spring cleaning or deep cleaning on regular basis.
SOCIAL APARTMENT
This website came up when I searched with a key words “social apartment” in Japanese. This website is a intermediation website that introduces apartment managed by real estate agents.
Moreover, this website is quite informative and covers a broad range of topics like interview residents, new social apartment information, resident’s lifestyle. You can learn how you can make a living through a interview of the residents of a social apartment.
The locations apartment covered by the website is mainly Chiba Pref, and Tokyo area. Socail apartment is very brand new stream that doesn’t penetrate deeper into a shared house culture in Japan. If you look for social apartment, come to Tokyo or Chiba.
Hitsuji Fudosan (real estate)
It is like long-established website, This website covers broad range of types of a shared house other than social apartment all over Japan.
This website doesn’t attach a great deal of importance to providing more informative contents than a site of Social Apartment but a number of introduced shared houses registered in this website is the largest among domestic shared house website.
But these is one probelm that this site is written eintirely in Japanese. If you really want to use this site by all means, you translate pages you are interested in into English by a google trnaslator.
This website provides search system for a shared house. Primarily this webiste covers a shared house information in Tokyo area. There are several search windos right under the site logo which you put your conditions in for “area”, “room type”, “rent price”.
Check if foreigners are acceptable
Not every rooms introduced in the websites can be leased by foreigners. Recetly an apartment or shared house which allows foreigners to move in has increased but small to middle shared houses managed by a private faimly may turn down your offer to move in.
Don’t jump to conclusions you can apply for all the share houses registered in a shared house portal sites above because those are written in English. Registered share houses on a website are a jumble of wheat and tares. Some may reject your application and others will accept your application. To omit wasteful labor that you are rejected because you are a foreigner, you firstly ask a manager of a shared house if foreigners are acceptable or not on the phone or by email.