Tag: Tokyo

Tiny homes, 2025 edition

While I am a big fan of tiny homes on this blog, I haven’t done a post on them in some time.

I used to do them on the regular because a) I like the idea of tiny homes b) a blog I follow called Yanko Design often posted stories on tiny homes, giving me lots of material to comment on.

As it is, I still love tiny homes, and I still follow Yanko, so here’s four recent posts from them worth checking out:

  1. First up is this cool place in Tokyo. Most tiny homes in North America are horizontal: that one is very vertical (as you can see in the photo).
  2. Next is this small but might home built from a shipping container (a popular framework for tiny homes).
  3. While many tiny homes come assembled, this incredible foldable tiny home that a single person can install within an hour with no tools .
  4. Finally, if you want even more tiny homes, Yanko has 10 more homes designed to be sustainable retreats for off the grid living.

I think tiny homes are excellent, and I wish more people embraced them. If you are a fan as well, check out those links.

On the rise and roots of our current minimalism

Minimalism is a foreign concept to some Westerners, especially as it is practiced in parts of Japan. Indeed, this line:

Fumio Sasaki’s one-room Tokyo apartment is so stark friends liken it to an interrogation room. He owns three shirts, four pairs of trousers, four pairs of socks and a meagre scattering of various other items.

You see “interrogation room” and “meagre”, which gives you some insight into how this writer sees it. The article which this comes from (and which is linked to below) does get more insightful and you gain a better insight into Japanese minimalism, from its cultural roots to its practicality (such as the real problem of how earthquakes make home objects dangerous).

Minimalism seems to be growing as a cultural concept throughout the world, and it’s good to know more about it, how the Japanese see it, and to think about how it should differ in Western cultures. To do that, see:

Three shirts, four pairs of trousers: meet Japan’s ‘hardcore’ minimalists in The Guardian