That is absolutely CRIMINAL. Seriously. Almost a thousand dollars a month?

Just how desperate are they to live in Tokyo to put themselves in poverty to live in a closet. I have a walkin closet that is bigger than those criminally small "apartments'. I put that in quotes as they company making them should be ASHAMED of themselves for putting people in squalor and worse that Japan has turned its countryside into ghost towns.

People would go nuts in a place like that if they stayed inside say for days if there was a serious monsoon or even earthquake. We have prison cells bigger than this. Absolultely SHAMEFULL they screw over young people looking for a decent place to live. I am appalled.

You'd be paying $2500-3000 in Manhattan for that.

$1,500 at a coliving outfit.

I hear you. Tokyo, however, is a wonderful city. It has a lot to offer. When I think about the beautiful gardens one can go to, for an escape, perhaps living in a micro apartment is not so bad.

I would never want that in NYC, but Tokyo? Not so bad. Its a peaceful city. Not so maddening like NY.

Nobody is "screwing over" young people. Nobody held a gun to these people's heads and forced them to rent. If they want to save money, they could go rent 30 miles away in the suburbs and take a train in every day. Living close to middle of ANY large nice city these days is expensive.

THANK YOU. Holy carp, these people and their entitlement complexes...

Thats the bizarre thing, juxtaposing with this article about closet size apartments in tokyo is another that discusses the record number of abandoned houses in Japan...something like 9+ million empty homes For some of the young who work online it would be a good deal to set up residence in an empty house in a town nearby rent free if you can give up the city life.

$500-600 a month for the first example. I'd be concerned about fire safety, evacuation. That's actually generous in size and quality compared to coffin capsules and internet cafe sleeping rooms..
Also, Asians used to small spaces. Multiple generations of same family have traditionally shared Japanese apartments- as they marry they still continue living with parents and grandparents.

I think it's only like mid $600's US which seems cheap for a big city (I live outside DC). I agree that these places are tiny but they are still kind of cool in my opinion.....We are doing the same thing here. Most of the newer apartment buildings are super expensive (Up to $2400 a month) for a 700sq/ft studio. They make super luxurious common areas which encourage people to mingle and then go back to their pigeon hole apartments to sleep or watch Netflix

Nope....it doens't include the maintenance fee. The price for rent shown often doesn't include it. Once included 1K+.

$1,000 is still cheap compared to other 1st world big cities......Just saying. I'm a 260lbs American, I wouldn't want to live in there but it's all perspective Dude.

True....but where does it end? It takes space to make space. At this rate that 1K will end up being $2500K down the road.

How entitled are you to be appalled by this? You know why cost of living is so high in population-dense cities? Because supply and demand: supply of area is in high demand.

If you either can't or struggle to afford it, take it as a hint that you shouldn't be living there.

Japan has to cram 127 million people into a country the size of California. AND, almost all the people have to live close to their coastlines, as the middle of the country is filled with mountains. The only way to fit in all these people is tiny apartments.

If you listen to people like Procyon, they'll completely ignore the reality of the situation.

"Won't someone PLEASE think of the children!"

Utter nonsense...

These units wouldn't be bad if you could rent like 9 of them and put them together.

$1000 per month per unit. 9 units = $9000 per month. Brilliant! ;)

In college in the Boston area, 50 years ago, I spent my last 2 years in a 7'x8' single dorm room and considered it the height of luxury. The bed and dresser were permanently built in and the door swung into the space, making one corner of the room unusable. Our dorm was the newest building on campus and there was always a fight to qualify for getting a room there. We did have a communal bathroom that served all 10 of us in the suite, and the space was fine for the resident and a friend - if one of us sat on the bed. I could sit on my desk chair and by swiveling around I could put my feet under the desk, on the windowsill, on the bed or on a drawer pulled out of the dresser - all without moving my chair! I spent a lot of time in that room because I also served the campus by running a low-power FM radio station out of my room,having sneaked up onto the roof to set up the transmitting antenna over the previous summer. Good times!

Ha! I lived in a 25' travel trailer on the back of a friend's piece of property in the country for the last 3 years of college...once you drove past all the broken-down cars and junk, it wasn't so bad. I never had any dates over, but it was "trailer-sweet-trailer" for a long time. What is really sad is all the local ads running that are hyping up living full-time in a travel trailer as some type of great thing...really sad.

CJ - I can relate. When I moved to a new area, I had a house built for me, and I spent much of a year in my dad's 24' travel trailer while the place was built. Everything was fine for me, my wife, and our two cats until the place froze up solid when the temp dropped to -10 degrees F for a week. We had extra heaters inside and once you ignored the frost on the inside of the walls we were fine, but the bottom of the trailer was enclosed and we could not get in there to put heat tapes on the pipes! We rented an unfurnished apartment for the month and slept on an air mattress. When things warmed up, the trailer was fine and so were we. Moving into the new house was all the more enjoyable because of the change from our recent accommodations.

In America, we think nothing of renting out a room with bath to someone. Decked out with a microwave and small refrigerator, students all over are able to live cheaply in the areas closest to their work or school. This is no different. They call it an apartment, because the bathroom is attached and it has a cooktop. I'm talking about the configuration only, not the issue of utilities being separate. Also, these "apartments" usually have a very high ceiling, which gives the feeling of space and airiness, regardless of the floor space. I think they are wonderful and serve a huge need.

The room with bath, how many square feet it is? I bet that the above described "apartments" are smaller than your "bath". Not even counting the "room".

I'm disturbed how people are being programmed to accept living in spaces smaller than prison cells as cool and totally okay.

It's the reality of living in a population-dense city. When space is a luxury, what else can you do? I mean, you could opt out of living there and move to a less dense area. Seems like it's more a matter of choice.

Japanese have discipline and commitment to excellence. Save money, do the right thing, no drugs, no spoiling the language with urban dialects, no obesity paired with skin-tight clothing and pants below the knees.

Buddy not sure what you are smoking but you should quit it.

And this is called... A first world country? I call it GRINDING POVERTY! A shantytown and a SLUM.

Don't be so sensational Igor. Japan is rich

Small is beautiful.. I would rather live in a tiny apartment in an interesting city than a huge apartment in a boring, ugly part of the USA for example

People like you miss the point entirely and are the reason why so many people get taken advatage of. Rent prices shouldn't look the way they do period. People working and contributing to society shouldn't be living in spaces smaller than murderers and rapist. However so long as people keep going well at least I'm in X trendy city you all will continue to be bled dry.

If there is evidence that the tenants are not getting maintenance for their apartments, other quality of life things, or that they're locked into price non-competitive rents, then you'd have a point. However, simply paying a high rent to live in a nice area is not being taken advantage of.

But by all means, keep bleating like a terrified sheep that your fellow comrades are being taken advantage of for things they have a choice in making.

I was actually listening to what you had to say until your sheep nonsense...you're one of those so this won't go much farther than this comment. You just don't have the range.

No thieves or hood rats present.

Closet-sized apartments just opened in San Diego

http://sdbj.com/news/2019/a...

Surely even Carlos Ghosn's prison cell is bigger than that.

perhaps if the ladder is a foldable one ..need to use ..it will create additional space on the floor..

None of those photos were taken with fish-eye lenses. If they were then you would see the straight lines such as curtain and wall boundaries curving. Those pictures were taken with wide angle lenses, not fish eye lenses. You could web search, but I will provide a link which provides succinct information about the difference between fish eye and wide lenses: http://www.uwphotographygui...

Furthermore, in comparison to jail cells, these spaces are vastly preferable, because they have large clear windows, and doors that can be unlocked from the inside, gaining access to the real world outside. I have seen SRO rooms in a less robust economic environment which do not have windows nor plumbing or climate control. I would prefer the Japanese version.

OK, another article here was talking about how thousands of homes and apartments around Japan are being left abandoned for years, many of these are in major cities. I don't get how there can be a "housing crisis" when these properties could be rented out by the heirs through a property management company who would do all the hard lifting or if no heirs eminent domained by the Government, and converted into apartments or group homes for relatively low rental rates.

They are in the areas with no jobs. No jobs, no people. This article is written in Tokyo. Tokyo has many jobs. Many jobs, many people.
The people in Japan are WORKING in the CITIES. The abandoned homes and apartments around JAPAN are around the entire COUNRTY, not the Cities.
Once you comprehend the areas you are talking about, you can better comprehend that space in the CITIES is DIFFERENT than space NOT in the cities.
Japan is not a motorized as the US. People there do not drive everywhere, and as is, Mass Transit in Tokyo is packed. People try to live as close as possible to work.

It's really beyond the comprehension of most Americans how an entire working culture can exist in such tight and such small accommodations, but it is a good sight into the future. One day, many cities will have such apartments, and probably even 'townhouses,' that people will purchase, not rent...