last year my parents and I went to Tokyo for a vacation, we even went to the famous Nikko I think it's a few hours drive north of Tokyo. Anyway we stayed in a three beds suite at a 3 stars hotel. One of the thing that had me thinking about is how tiny our suite was. The question I wanted to ask the entire time how do Japanese people live in such a clustered space.
it's not like I think the small space and their architecture is absolutely disgusting.
no offense, I just had a very hard time eating my ramen and trying to move at the same time at that ichiran place.
I posted these early messages from you just for my own sake.
First of all, are you even aware of how people live here? Your post seems to show that you are complaining of hotel and ramen restaurant size. That is not home size. Yes, some apartments are very tiny, but those "rabbit hutches" are meant to conserve space for single people. In other more "normal sized" apartments, what a lot of foreigners find difficult to handle is the low ceilings (especially between rooms) and shorter kitchen cabinets & bathroom sinks. The Japanese are a shorter people, so you shouldn't complain about that.
How tall are you?
City space is at a premium here, so if you encountered a tiny restaurant that barely fits half a dozen people, it may be a very old business where other shops built up around it many decades ago. The land it's on is worth more than the shop itself, too, so whether you talk about shops or homes, there is money in that property. The tiny business stays in business because of its quality of goods, and the fact that the clientele (in the case of some ramen shops) don't stay longer than it takes to eat the food, so they have little time to feel uncomfortable. (I encountered a similar tiny restaurant that had a long line outside it in Minneapolis
every day, so it's not just Japan.)
I live in what's called a mezzonet (sp?), which is a 2-floor apartment that might otherwise be called a townhouse in America. It is connected to another one on the side, so we share an entire wall. I used to live in a 1LDK, which was plenty big enough for one person, and I know some cases where couples lived in it. The question to ask is how much living space do you actually need? Having a small place forces you to not keep a lot of junk lying around. It also promotes family closeness to some degree. You grow up learning to respect each other's privacy, but only partly because of the small living space. The rest is cultural politeness.
If you can't take it, don't come here.
BTW, I lived in Seattle for 7 years. Never got used to the winter crappy weather. Daily rain and temps a degree above freezing. No wonder it was the suicide capital of the USA.
