When building a house in Japan, you come to realise that Japanese people don’t get a lot of non-Japanese things. For example, I’m wanting to have an en-suite. Simple enough, right? Well when it comes to having a shower that doesn’t have a bath attached... yeah good luck with that. They exist, but they’re either made to retrofit a closet, or with quite distasteful design. I’m having to meet half way and go for a ‘shower room’, which is an entirely enclosed thing. It’s not so bad, just not what I wanted.

Then there is the ‘island kitchen’ which in Japan means that you have to have either your sink or your stove on the island for some reason. People were shocked to hear that an island could just be an extra bit of workspace.

Well, those are the big two. The other one to add would be having rooms specifically for long-term residents to help pay your mortgage, but we don’t need to get into that.