Kinds of Rooms in Japan

At next I would like to write about the rooms of Japanese houses. Japanese house have two kinds of rooms, which are Wa-Shitsu and Yo-Shitsu. Wa-Shitsu is Japanese –style room, and certainly we would get more Japanese experiences in Wa-Shitsu, but it's more comfortable for you to choose a Yo-Shitsu. Because, we might sleep on our bed and the room has wood flooring or a carpet on the floor.

In the Wa-Shitsu case, there are Tatami, which is a Japanese-style carpet made of rushes that are one of the plants, on the floor in the room. But, we can't use the chairs and beds on the Tatami. The reason is the chair and bed hurt the surface of the Tatami, so we usually use our Futon on the Tatami except our bed.

Entrance Hall (Genkan).

Japanese take off their shoes in their house. When I stayed in Canada, our Canadian friends and American friend live in their house without their shoes, but my European friends didn't have such customs. How about your custom? General Japanese houses are enough clean to walk around in except our shoes. Therefore, our sole of our food wouldn't get dirty in Japanese house.

So Japanese need a place to take off their shoes before enter their house by their custom, and the place is called Genkan. And there would be special furniture called Geta-Bako at Genkan and we can keep our shoes in the furniture, but it's usually for the family only. So, when we visit to our friend's house, we can't use the furniture and we need to arrange our shoes on the floor. Usually, Japanese mother guess the personality by our shoes.

Bicycle Parking Area

A lot of Japanese use their bicycle to go the station to take the train to work or to study. So we need the place keeping our bicycles at outside of our home. (You know? Inside is clean.) Therefore, general Japanese apartments have the function or place to keep our bicycles. But, sometimes we need to pay little money to keep our bicycles in the big cities, for example Tokyo. So, don't forget to ask about the cost when you'll contract to move in.

Parking

It's illegal to park your car on any roads in Japan. And if we don't have any parking places close our house or at our house, we can't own any cars except the light vehicles with a cubic capacity of less than 660 cc. So, Japanese house usually have some parking places. And if they don't have any places to park their cars, they would have the public or private parking places where they can walk.

Wash Room

There are three kinds of toilet seat in Japan, and one is a urinal for man and two kinds of chamber pots. One of both is general in the world and Japanese call it "Yo-Shiki" and the other is Japanese-style called "Wa-Shiki", which have been used from olden times.

I can guess that you already know how to use the Yo-Shiki. The size of the toilet seat is bit smaller to fit for Japanese. And we would sometimes find the function called "Washlet" in the room, which is a kind of showers to wash our dirt after the business. When I was in Canada, I had never seen it, so I think there are no Washlet in North America and Europe. There are some chances in Japan to try it, please challenge it! You would love it after getting used to. Probably...

And I need to refer to the other "Wa-Shiki". We can't sit on the toilet seat, and we need to sit down on our heel to do our business. And the merit is that we can do business except touching the seat, so unexpected it's bit popular with some of international visitors. By the way, Wa-Shiki doesn't have the Washlet.

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