If you live in Japan for the first time, you may not know what to buy and where to buy to enjoy your single life. Lately, well furnished room rent offers like shared-house can been seen here and there. However, a well-furnished room you can find is not always prepared perfectly about whatever you need for your life. So I just want to introduce you the things you are supposed to prepare for your comfortable single life in Japan.
Contents
Electric appliance
Dryer
For those who have a long hair.
vacuum machine cleaner
Nowadays, cordless type cleaner is widespread, which lower the bar to clean your room frequently. If you have a Magiclean Wiper, you can enjoy cleaning your room without stress.
Bedding
Bed
In most cases, a bed is furnished in a shared house but if you rent an apartment by yourself and you stick to sleeping on a bed, you need to buy one.
Futon set
Futon set is a bedding set which is consist of a pillow, pillow cover, blanket, blanket cover, futon mattress and its cover. The market price is about 10000yen altogether.
Miscellaneous goods
Bath Mat
Save your time to wipe a wet floor after getting out of a shower. Bath mat can be sub for bath towel but it just absorbs drips of water and is difficult to dry out soon.
Basket
Basket for your laundries. You need this to pick up all laundries in one go to a balcony to dry up.
Towel
Needless to say, this is one of the must items to make a living wherever you live.
Hungers
If your room has not furnished closet or something, it is quite useful to hang your close nicely to keep your room tidy.
Wastebasket
A bin for wastes. Don’t put wastes into garbage bags directly and leave it in a corner of your room because it’s troublesome to buy a bin. You are supposed to always keep your room tidy because you rent a room.
Umbrella
Some of you don’t have custom to put up an umbrella even on rainy day and think it annoying to bring umbrella with you because one hand is clogged by umbrella. However, it is no good for you to meet someone with wet close in Japan. You just take care of your appearance no matter when you meet someone although it is none of my business.
Inkan
To adjust Western contract tradition, Japanese public institutions require you just a signature to register and conclude a contract. However, to tell the truth, there are some industries and institutions having a high regard for Hanko tradition in Japan. From time to time, you are required to seal your Hanko on a document. So you should buy some to use properly depending on the situation.
Things you should get in a week
A laundry machine and a refrigerator will not be in need on the day you move in. Probably, you are really tired of just opening so many boxes which you carry in. So equipping big electronic appliances is the thing you do after the next day.
Washing machine
If there is a space to equip washing machine and you can afford to buy it, you’d better buy one when thinking time to go to a laundromat and wait till finishing it there.
Refrigerator
If you don’t have a refrigerator, you can manage to survive because selling separately is pretty common in Japan and its quantity is as much as just one or two persons eat. But if you want to stock a can of beer in a fridge to keep it super chilly to drink, you must buy one.
Microwave
Microwave has normally additional function of Oven because mostly kitchen in an apartment doesn’t equip an oven. If you eat a frozen pizza every day, this is an indispensable thing.
Furniture
Table
Are you a scrooge or lazy man who uses boxes for moving as a table instead?
Sofa, couch, chair
In Japan, people take off their shoes when entering a room and think a room floor is much cleaner than a ground outside. Sitting on a floor directly is pretty much common in Japan. If you don’t get used to this style, you should buy a chair with table but if you adjust this tradition, you should buy cushion.
Kitchen
tablewares
How would you eat a bento which you bought at a convenience store if staff forgot to put disposable chopsticks in.
Dishes
Even if your life style rely heavily on restaurants, it is not that you never eat anything in an apartment.
Detergent
To wash those tablewares
Things you need later
Rice cooker
Japanese rice cooker is the most wonderful rice cooker in the world. This advantage is that you can cook other foods than rice like bread and cake and pasta. This has almighty functions to cook variety of dishes.
Iron
Smoothing out the wrinkles of your business cloths is one of you job to do. Take care of you look all the time before meeting someone.
TV
This is not for fun but this is a tool to practice your Japanese forcibly. This is the most ideal stuff to enhance your Japanese speaking ability because TV programs in English is almost nothing and you don’t have a choice to search information whenever you need.
Kettle
Do you want to drink a hot coffee in the morning for your waking?
Where to buy those Electric appliances?
There are 5 big electronics retail store in Japan, which has good support and good product assurance. They are really positive about discounting product. So let’s check these out.
Yamada Denki
Yamada Denki is the most biggest and has the highest sales in the rest of 5 major electronic retail chains. There are hundreds of community-based shops all around Japan. Prices of products are very standard in this industry.
Shop clerks are not sufficient per shop so that they can’t assist you perfectly to answer whatever you need to know to buy something. Basically 5 to 10 percent points is added on a product but is not added on a product with special offered price.
You can negotiate a discount with including your saved points but whether how much you can negotiate a discount depends on a staff. So first thing fist, you just learn to market price of a product you are going to buy in advance on the internet or something but you just give it try to negotiate a discount to two or more people.
If a shop staff remember your face, you can bring out more advantageous price from a staff from the next round.
Bic Camera
Big camera is second highest sales electronic retail chain in Japan. Prices of products is slightly cheaper than Yamada Denki and 10% points is added to every products
However, if you put warranty or guarantee on a product, points are added less than a product without these. It is suitable for those who want to add points steadily with product’s warranty or guarantee.
This retail chain’s staff education is thorough and people working here is rich in good knowledges of displayed products so you can be released from your worries by well-informed staffs before buying a product.
Edion
Product prices are comparably expensive than the above 2 major retailers but Edion has good maintenace support.
K’s Denki
A number of shops increases year by year. Product prices is pretty standard but variety of supports for products is very careful. Free warrant term for products is longer than any other 4 retailers. K’s Denki doesn’t adopt point system but if you apply for member’s card without annual fee, you receive a 5% discount of every products. If you don’t have much time to think about how much to buy, you quickly decide to buy something at K’s Denki. There is no mistake.
Hodobashi Camera
There are 23 shops in Tokyo. Point card system has started from Yodobashi Camera and it gives 10 percent point to evenly every single products.
Even if not thinking about reward points, product’s prices are comparably lower than other electronic retailer shops. If you give priority to cheapness of a product to buy, you should go to Yodobashi Camera.