(Author: Masahiro Fukai)
I would like to explain here the problem of bathrooms in Japanese residential condominiums.
Japanese people love bathing, so they put hot water in the bathtub and soak their bodies for a long time, such as 30 minutes, to take a bath. Foreigners only use the shower, and the time they take a shower is only about 10 minutes.
Nevertheless, Japanese housing has one bathroom, one toilet, and one dressing room. However, Japanese people have no trouble with this floor plan. The reason is that the bathroom, toilet, and dressing room are independent of each other, and privacy is properly protected. Japanese houses are about 20 m2, and one-person studio apartments are unit baths, but houses where two or more people live are not unit baths.
Very rarely, Japanese houses have two toilets. There is only one reason. The reason is when the house is big and far away. In the case of a two-story building, there are two toilets because people have to go up and down the stairs to get to the toilets on the second to first floors. Also, if you have a residential condominium of 160 m2 or more, or if the floor plan is long and narrow and the distance from one end to the other is very long, a floor plan with two toilets will be designed.
I have lived in a college dormitory in Boston, USA. We were three people and lived together. There was only one bathroom. At this time, I felt terribly inconvenient. I have never felt such an inconvenience in a Japanese residential condominium. In the morning, while someone is taking a shower for about 10 minutes, the toilet and brushing teeth are very inconvenient. The privacy of American bathrooms is not protected. For residential condominiums in the United States, you need at least two bathrooms. This is because the bathroom in the United States is the same as the bathroom in a studio apartment for one person in Japan.
Foreigners who have never lived in a Japanese residential condominium may find it difficult to imagine this.
Also, foreigners have different lifestyles depending on the country. Americans, Chinese, and Thais have different lifestyles. I’ve been working in housing for foreigners for over 20 years, but I still don’t have a 100% grasp of the lifestyle of foreigners.
There are two possible problems.
(1) Foreigners cannot understand and imagine Japanese housing design.
(2) I cannot understand and imagine the lifestyle of foreigners.
What I can say without a doubt is that no matter how high-income earners are, the floor design of Japanese residential condominiums (one bathroom, one toilet, one vanity) is perfectly fine for all Japanese people.