In this video I'm gonna take you on a tour of my new Tokyo apartment
Since I did a video on my last Shibuya apartment
And I also did a video on moving to this new place
A lot of people been asking for a full tour of this new apartment
So here it is the old Shibuya apartment was about 35 square meters
while this new apartment is 70 square meters
Which works out to be about
750 square feet
Which is kind of what Maiko and I were looking for
when looking for new place.
As many of you know
We're about to have a baby soon
So, finding a place that just had a little bit more room
for Michael, myself and the new baby
Just made a lot of sense to us
but if you watch my second channel Tokyo zebra
You know how much of a pain and all the issues
We've had trying to find this new place
But fortunately, we found it
and we finally moved in and luckily for us
We moved into this new apartment several weeks before
Japan declared a state of emergency
Which, has made the quarantine a little bit more bearable
So, before I start if you want to see what I'm doing on
The daily check out my Instagram account
and if you want to help support the channel
check out the Hold my Miso merch
and if you have any questions about Japan
Check out my discord community
that all said let me take you on a tour of this place.
Let's go
So, first of all
This is the entrance area
and as you can see it's a lot wider and more spacious
than my previous apartment
So, one of the things that I appreciate the most
is that in this place, it has a built-in storage for shoes
Finally, I get my own dedicated closet here
and then just next to it
Maiko has her own dedicated closet for shoes as well
and just below I keep some of my workout equipment
So, if I need to go and I'm on the run I can just quickly grab it and go
Also, another thing that I appreciate
is that the apartment has a lot of built-in wall hooks.
In fact, it's proven quite useful because I'm able to hang a hand sanitizer just right here at the entrance
and there you go!
My hands all sanitized now.
And another thing that I really love about this new place
Is that just in front of the entrance
there's a little space
where you can actually put a vase and hang something if you really want
Let me show you what I put in front of the entrance
because I'm kind of a little proud of it
And here it is YouTube's 1 million subscriber play button.
This is one of those Awards where it wouldn't have been possible without you guys
So thank you so much!
I appreciate all the support ♡
and one thing that I wanted to share with you guys is..
Look just a little bit closer to the play button
it actually says presented to Paula from Tokyo
and Maiko
because they do this channel together
Again, thank you guys so much for the support over the years ♡
I'm so excited for this year to come
and all of the new content
I'll be sharing with you
that said let me now show you the living room
Alright, so this is the main living, dining and kitchen area
In fact, we live in a 2 ldk
which, means in Japan
two bedrooms living, dining and the kitchen
So, I'll be showing you the other two bedrooms shortly
but let me just go through and kind of show you
what we did around this space.
One of the things that was really
important to Maiko and I
When kind of setting up this place
was to make sure
we didn't have a lot of clutter.
If you saw this Shibuya apartment tour
just a few weeks ago
You notice that we lived in a fairly cramped space
and because it was so cramped.
We just had so much clutter, which just
I really really hated
so, in this new space
I kinda wanted to try to keep it as simple as possible
One of the things you'll probably notice first
Is that the living dining kitchen is all connected into this one space.
We wanted to have this kind of Island kitchen behind me
So, that in the future when we're doing more vlogs on
our Tokyo Zebra channel
We'll be able to kind of show you more what's going on
in the kitchen, in the living room
without having to go to all these like separate rooms.
So, we have the main island kitchen there
We have a little dining set over there.
And then we just have this living room
this space right here
You can see that the zebra carpet
which, kind of goes to the Tokyo Zebra Motif.
This kind of separates the dining and the living room area,
but one thing about this living room area
We're actually still waiting for a sofa to be delivered
This pink chair behind me should just be going actually like right here
and then there we're supposed to have another sofa,
but we just couldn't get it in time.
It might just take another month or two to be delivered
So what can you do.
Now, let me show you this apartment from that side of the room
So, a lot of you already know that
Maiko and I work from home
So, we've actually set up this little area
for our work desk
So, one of the things that was quite important to us,
was to keep the work stations here in the main living area
so that when that baby comes we can also watch over
the baby while we're working
But, if you already haven't noticed
this room is kind of in a weird triangle shape
So, we kind of had to make adjustments
in order to make this room work.
First of all, I think this area was originally intended
to be kind of like
where you put your TVs and everything
and then maybe the couch would go here
and you'd face that way
but instead we actually decided to put the TV here
in front of the window
just to open up the space
a little bit more,
because we do have these work stations here
and because we did that
we had to kind of reposition the lights.
What you'll find I don't know this might be similar to your country
But, the light fixtures and apartments are fixed to one location
in order to get around that
I had to get this light fixture bar,
where I can move the light
one meter away and pretty much the same thing
for the dining room as well.
Oh, but let me show you
One thing, I didn't like about this room,
but was able to find a solution for
so just underneath the island kitchen
I actually wanted to put the air filter right here,
but the problem is they didn't have any electrical outlets
They only had it on the other side of the room
So, what I actually did to just like clean things up
because I really hate cables all over the place
It was I ran some molding
from that side of the wall
all the way to this side of the wall
and because the color of the baseboard changed
I also changed the color of the molding
and then determinated
I made this little box where I can put all the cables in,
so it's not so messy
I know pretty simple, but these little things just make me super happy
And another thing that I just really love about this space
is just how the windows wrap around this entire room,
so that when you pull back the curtains
you really feel like there's a lot more space
than It is right now,
because I know a lot of you
who live in Western countries
probably think that, this is a pretty small place
But it's Japan.
So what can you do
Overall, I think we did a decent job
on making this room work
I don't know.
What do you guys think,
but probably I shouldn't take any of this credit
because It was actually Maiko that designed
and like spaced everything out, picked out the furniture,
picked out the carpet.
Pretty much, I just had to agree to whatever she wanted
and I'm pretty happy that I did
Oh, but I did get to choose a TV.
The only thing is we agreed that
I wouldn't go any bigger than this one
So, this is the kitchen area
and as I said before
one of the things I love the most about this area
is that it's an open kitchen
It's just so nice to sit back here
and be able to see the rest of the room
see the views to the TV and also since we have a baby
on the way
It'll be cool to be able to like do stuff here in the kitchen,
while also being able to watch the baby
because what you'll find in a lot of Japanese apartments
Especially, like the one we had before
the kitchen is kind of in a separate room
It's difficult to see what's going on in the dining room
or the Living room
It just makes life easier for us.
Also, what I do like is a kitchen sink is bigger
Before, we have two burners on the stove.
Now, we have three burners
We have a little fish grill,
Which I didn't have before
and now we have an oven microwave system,
so we can actually bake stuff
Maiko's already made lasagna, cookies
and all that kind of stuff.
It just opens up all the stuff
that we can eat and you know
I love food
So, the thing is it's not actually the biggest oven
in the world but ovens are really hard to come by in
Apartments in Tokyo.
So, we're just super happy that we have it
I think a lot of people today
who want ovens will actually buy separate ones that they
set in their kitchen
They don't actually have ones that are built in
in fact
That's one of the things that Maiko and I were really
considering if we didn't have an oven
in the new apartment
We were probably just gonna get a stand alone one
and just hook it up and connect it somewhere
and then just beyond there
You keep all the dishes
and then we have some pots down below
One thing though that I didn't particularly like about this kitchen.
There's this kind of a shelf area just behind me
I wish they had just a little bit more depth,
so that we can actually put stuff on there
But since we can't
it's kind of limited.
We've actually had to buy this cart separately
that's just sitting right here,
so that we can put the rice cooker,
put the toaster oven and just a little bit more supplies
and then just behind me right here
We actually have our refrigerator
It's just a better location
especially compared to the last apartment.
In fact
You'd be pretty surprised how difficult it is to find
An apartment with an open kitchen like this in Tokyo.
And this is the bath area.
There's actually not a lot to see because everything
is hidden behind all the cabinets.
Basically, you just have some soap here
Yeah
Some of Maiko's little things,
which I really don't know what it is
And she has her glasses there.
And then just right here
We have our washer and dryer unit,
Basically It's all in one combo machine
So, you throw your clothes in it washes it
then automatically goes into a dry cycle
and then a few hours later
all of it is good to go
and then you can just fold it up
So, just next to the washer and dryer
you have this shower and bath unit.
It's actually an all-in-one enclosed space.
You have the shower right here to my left
and just weren't actually standing right now
You have the bathtub.
Like many bathtubs in a Japanese home
It does have the automatic features
but pretty much all you need to do
before you want to take a bath is hit
a few buttons on the panel and it'll fill the bath
to a desired level and temperature.
Personally, I'm not so much of a bath person
I like to take showers instead,
but Maiko has been using it quite frequently.
So, It really depends but it is useful.
So, I've converted this small bedroom
into a mini studio
It's actually something I wanted
since we started this YouTube channel,
but because our space was so small
in the previous apartment
I just could never do it.
But now that we do I finally was able to build
this little mini studio
Just like the rest of this apartment.
It's still not completely done
If you guys want to see kind of like the final final apartment?
then definitely just check out our Tokyo zebra channel,
because we'll be doing kind of like daily vlogs
with our son our family
and we'll Just be filming all around the house.
So, you'll be able to see how our apartment evolves
over time.
For now, this is pretty much it.
You can see just right behind me.
I have this kind of a filming studio
I have these two LED panels.
I have the camera
I have the microphone
all on a table and what's actually pretty cool
is that this table rolls
so I can take this whole set up and move it to the other room
and again
the thing that I wanted to do really was to like have
a camera set up all the time
so that whenever I wanted to film
whenever Maiko wanted a film
we can just like do it
we don't have to like set everything up
and like waste a lot time doing it.
Also, we have our sofa from our old apartment
We have all the like the cabinet's from the old apartment
Everything is like pretty much from the old apartment
except for like these like lights
and then this new table that I got here
And the reason I got this table in particular
is that I actually wanted to be able to stand and work
sometimes and also if i needed to do something like
Do-it-yourself projects and wanted cut stuff or you know nail stuff down.
I wanted a table where I could do it
This is kind of like one of those heavy-duty tables
I'm also doing like a complete
separate video on how I set up this whole entire studio
from just like equipment I chose to how I built it all out
and that video will be on the Tokyo zebra channel
So subscribe to that channel,
if you want to see how this whole little filming studio got built out
Also just behind these cabinets
something I always really wanted to do
was kind of Casey Neistat inspired me when I started
watching his blogs years and years ago was just I loved
How he had his filming studio
where he had like all of his tools in the background
and all of that stuff and our like easily it was for him to
Like take on projects because everything was just right there
I'm actually kind of like a clean freak
and I want to kind of hide everything but
I still want everything easy and accessible
That white closet over there
just have it has all the tools and all like the bits and bobs
that I need to like build stuff or make stuff all
The parts in there and then in this cabinet just behind me
I have like a charging station and I have all of the camera equipment and all of that stuff
So, setting things up like this makes it just a super efficient
Especially, for my workflow for Maiko's workflow
for the things we do for this channel
But who knows in the future
this may turn into our son's room
that may be a sad day because I spent so many hours
Building this out.
So many hours like thinking how I wanted to set this particular room up
This is like honestly like my personal space
Maiko got to design
Everything else in the house.
I got to kind of just like run with this room
And yeah, this is how it's come out so far
Anyway, let me show you the rest of the apartment
and this is the toilet room
It's actually a separate room from the bath area.
The toilet in itself has all of the automatic features
It has a washlet, It has a bidet
So it just makes it super easy
Again, and just to the left of the sink is this shelf
and then right under this shelf
It was just like this weird open space, but we did find something
It's little like cabinet thing to put just right there so we can put additional storage space
In fact, I'm kind of actually surprised how much space they use for this toilet area
That would have prefered they have the size of this toilet room and then use the other half for closet space
And finally, this is the main bedroom.
You can quickly see that it's fairly simple in here
in fact
We decided not to put too much money in this space
just because we probably won't be spending a lot of time in here
We have a standard bed drawers on the side
closet right next to it and then a full-length mirror
and that's like pretty much it in this room
and then just here to my left
We're planning on putting the baby crib
So here's all the stuff that we have for our baby some of it
We got our own and some of it we actually got from a lot of you
So again, thank you for that.
And just where Elmer was sitting is where we're gonna put the new baby crib
We should be getting that pretty soon.
So yeah, basically that's a full tour of my new apartment here in Tokyo
Let me know what you thought of the new setup
if you do things differently or if you had any advice.
Yeah Anyways, let me know all of that stuff in the comments
If you like this video help me out and hit that like button
if you want to see what I'm doing on the daily
Check out my Instagram account if you wanna help support the channel
Check out the hold my miso merch!
If you want to see more family style videos
Check out my Tokyo zebra Channel
and then if you want to see more guides about Tokyo or Japan
hit that subscribe button and the Bell button
and I'll catch you guys in the next one