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Possibly Japan’s most convenient apartment building, thanks to train station on its first floor

Casey Baseel Jan 24, 2018
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In Japan, it’s all about finding an apartment that’s close to the station, and they don’t get any closer than this one outside downtown Tokyo.

It’s often said that the three most important things in real estate are location, location, and location. That goes double for land-scarce Japan, making location the top six priorities, but the important question then becomes what makes a good location?

For housing in urban and suburban neighborhoods, “proximity to a train or subway station” would be the most common answer. The magic number/walking time is generally held to be 10 minutes; in broad terms, anything more than that is considered “far,” and anything less is “close.”

But while most people would envy a five-minute stroll from home to the station, even that’s several times longer than the walk residents of this apartment building in the city of Matsudo have, because their homes are built literally on top of the station, as shown in these photos from Japanese Twitter user @matsujun5213.

究極の駅チカ物件があった。

千葉県松戸市の流鉄流山線『幸谷駅』はマンションの一階がまるまる駅になっている。

駅まで徒歩0分！
だって自宅の一階が駅だから！
流鉄ユーザーにとっては最高の家だと思った。 pic.twitter.com/MA43Lj8dm0

— まつじ (@matsujun5213) January 12, 2018

That’s the platform of Koya Station, one of the stops on the Nagareyama Line in Chiba Prefecure, Tokyo’s neighbor to the east, with the station building itself on the first floor. But look up, and on the floors above the platform you’ll see apartments.

While there are only three floors of apartments in the shorter section of the structure, an opposite-angle shot of the taller part reveals 11 floors of as-close-to-the-station-as-possible homes.

▼ Running back home because you forgot your rail pass is a snap if you live here.

Of course, the immediate potential problem that springs to mind is the noise from living directly above a commuter rail stop, especially since trains stop at Koya between 5:03 a.m. and 12:03 a.m. (just after midnight) on weekdays, and 5:03 a.m. and 12:20 a.m. on weekends. Looking at the photos, though, the exterior walkway that runs above the station platform connects to the apartments’ front doors. Japanese apartments are rarely designed with a living or bedroom along the front exterior wall. Odds are when you first open the door, there’s a kitchen, dining and laundry area, and also a bathroom and shower zone, before you get to the living room and dining rooms, where you’d really want peace and quiet, and all of that buffer space just might cut down on a lot of the noise.

▼ Another benefit to having a station on the first floor of your building? You also have a vending machine on the first floor of your building.

And then there’s the obvious upside of all the time you save every day by being so close to the station. Koya may not be the liveliest neighborhood, but in about 40 minutes of train travel you could be in Ueno, where a number of Tokyo’s most useful train and subway lines are ready to quickly whisk you to just about anywhere downtown. So while this apartment building may not offer the highest level of tranquility, it does a lot to make up for that in terms of convenience.

Source, images: Twitter/@matsujun5213