After 20 different stays over 4 visits to Japan since 2013, so many Japanese innovations surprise and delight our American family
From the sunny, cozy comfort on our Japanese apartment, I’m thinking to an early travel memory: The first time the simple, everyday brilliance of Japanese home innovations struck me, I was in the shower at a hotel in the Shibuya Ward’s Hatagaya neighborhood of Tokyo.
Ever since, I’ve realized that Japan’s thinking-ahead, innovative, considerate culture has brought about so many simple yet brilliant things that just make sense in accommodations and housing throughout Japan.
But what was it about that shower?
Cleaning hair out of a shower drain in America vs. in Japan
As the only short-haired member of our family of four, I was long accustomed to cleaning out the bathtub drain at our house in Oregon. Multiple times a year, someone would tell me that enough hair had gotten stuck in the drain that water wasn’t draining properly anymore. If I were lucky, I could fish out the clog. Sometimes I’d have to get out a drain snake.
Often I’d wind up calling a plumber and fork over around a hundred dollars for the sake of a working drain.
Yet in Tokyo, when I realized the shower was draining a little slowly, something else happened.
I leaned down to the drain and flipped up its cover plate. Beneath, a removable cylindrical filter screen held all the offending small animal’s worth of hair.
I took out the filter, emptied it, put it back in place, continued my shower, and marveled at how at home it was such a difficulty to keep the drain clear. But here in Japan, a solution was simply a built-in part of daily life.
As of 2025, our family has visited Japan 4 times, beginning in 2013. From homestays to hotels, ryokans (traditional inns) to, now, our very own Japanese apartment in the Osaka area, we’ve been surprised, humbled, and delighted time and again by so many everyday innovations that make life in Japan easier.
Here are 19 of those very things that just make sense in our Japanese apartment.
Things in Japanese homes that surprise Americans
Especially now that we have our own holiday home in Japan, we’ve gotten to know up close and personally so many things in our Japanese apartment. Some were initially weird and unfamiliar to us Americans. But we quickly realized how brilliant they are.
Drain booties
Sinks and showers throughout Japan come in a variety of designs, but they pretty much all have a built-in, removable, cleanable filter.
Something that makes the job of cleaning the filter even easier?
Each drain style can fit a mesh disposable drain bootie. Booties come in packs that you can buy at pretty much any shop in Japan. We usually change ours every few days. The bootie goes into the trash for incineration.
Automatic washing machine soap dispenser
No matter how many times a week you do laundry, do you know something that makes the task even easier?
An automatic detergent dispenser.
We first encountered this at a vacation rental in the Osaka area. Then, as we were kitting out our condo in 2025, we found that new washing machines typically come with these.
It’s pretty simple: you fill a reservoir with liquid detergent. When you add a load of laundry, the machine weighs it and dispenses the appropriate amount of detergent.
This little innovation makes laundry day that much easier.
Separate combo drawer for produce and beverages
Also on our condo shopping list, of course, was a fridge. We chose a model that had a handy feature we’d seen at a couple of vacation rentals.
Besides the main French-door top compartment, a tall, full-width compartment below the main had a dual function.
The compartment’s larger size made it ideal for holding large vegetables, such as big daikons or cabbages.
A recessed area at the front also could hold beverage bottles.
Japan has so many fun beverages that we like to keep an assortment on hand. This way, not everything has to go in the main fridge. Plus, the lower compartment is easy to access and get out whatever we want all at once.
Ice maker without a separate water line
Having a teeny water line to our Oregon fridge’s ice maker always freaked me out. As I saw on a home renovation show once, a guy was pointing out a line just like the one on our fridge.
“This small pipe and washer,” he said, “is the only thing keeping full-pressure city water from flooding your kitchen floor.”
Yikes.
However, in Japanese fridges that we found in rentals and in the appliance section of where we shopped for our condo, there was an ice maker, but no line to the water line.
Instead, Japanese fridges typically come with a small pitcher. When filled, it can make ice for days before needing a refill.
We find this keeps things simple. There’s no line that could fail (or get broken, such as in an earthquake, of which Japan has its share). And it’s one less thing that could need repair on the fridge itself.
A tatami-floor room can be a multi-use space
Our stay at a ryokan, or traditional Japanese inn, clued us into this simple innovation.
At ryokans, rooms are typically in a tatami mat style. Guests sleep on floor-level futons. The tatami itself is made of compressed rice straw, adding a warm and subtle give to the space.
However, futons on tatami have another bonus: During the day, you can put away a futon in the same time it takes to make a bed. (Tatami rooms include a large closet, designed in part for futon storage.)
In a country where usable space is always in limited supply, putting away your bedding turns a sleeping space into a multi-use space.
From the mountains of Matsumoto to the riverside flats of Oita City, we now put this same simple idea to work in our condo.
The kids have loft beds in their own bedrooms, by the way, so they also have usable space under their beds.
We adults have futons in the tatami room that’s just off our living room area. During the day, Jodie and I fold our futons and put them in a closet at the back of the room. With the sliding doors open, the tatami room goes into daytime mode as part of our day-to-day living space, augmented with floor chairs and a low table. We can hang out there and use it as a functional space for anything from gaming to schoolwork.
During the day, it’s part lounge, part productivity space. And at night, it becomes our tatami bedroom.
Japanese toilet
Odds are you knew we’d mention this. And that’s because Japanese toilets are truly a delight to use.
That’s right.
A delight.
The built-in bidet can clean either front or back body parts. Many styles can warm the water (which is quite nice in winter, just saying) or even the seat. For those sensitive to bathroom noises, some models play music or water sounds as a sort of audio camouflage.
We all need the toilet. The Japanese decided that this didn’t have to be gross or unpleasant. It could be hygienic and comfortable too.
Entryway with shoe shelf and other storage
The Western concept of the foyer is such a smart bit of design. A home’s foyer is a transition space, where you shift from the outside world to the innately more intimate presence in someone’s personal space.
The Japanese genkan builds on that same thinking, except you leave your shoes.
For starters, as someone raised in a Western culture, I have come to revere the simple idea that shoes for the outside world don’t need to be on your feet when inside your home. Not wearing outdoor shoes cuts down on mess, and it’s much easier to keep your home clean when you aren’t tracking in grossness from the outside world.
The genkan is also one step lower than the main level. It’s a subtle visual and physical reminder that you are entering a different space. Your shoes stay there, and most genkan include a cabinet or shelving to keep footwear neat. There’s also usually a stash of house slippers.
Our own genkan includes not just space for shoes, but a built-in cabinet. We use our cabinet, the top shelf, and the surrounding wall space to store a variety of things that come in handy in the outside world, such as:
- Umbrellas
- Hats
- Shoes
- Sandals
- Tissues
- Sanitizer
- Wipes
- Keys
- Point cards for stores and restaurants (pointo-kaado in Japanese)
- Wall-mounted mirror
- Reusable bags for shopping
Remotes for lights
While room lights often have hard-wired on-off switches, Japanese home design keeps remote controls in mind. It’s one less bit of hard wiring, plus it gives you more options for the lighting you want in your space.
When we were getting lights for the children’s rooms and our room, each light came with a remote control. While a standard wall switch can turn each light on and off, we keep the switch in the on position. The kids keep a remote bedside, and Jodie has a compartment-style bin next to her futon, where she keeps the remote for our fixture.
Light fixtures often come with different color modes (such as warmer amber lighting or cooler blue-white lighting), as well as different brightnesses or even timers. These options are nice when we want a cozier, dimmer light, or when we want maximum light for activities.
Plug-in ceiling light fixtures
What if installing a ceiling light fixture was as simple as plugging it in?
That’s right. No wiring needed. No caps, no twists, no checking that you’re connecting the right wire to the right wire.
And no worrying you’re about to short out your home, or destroy the fixture you just bought.
Most Japanese ceiling light fixtures attach via a plug and socket system that’s more like just plugging a plug into a wall outlet. It has a twist, though. No, literally. To lock the fixture into place (you know, so it doesn’t crash to the floor from gravity), you plug in the fixture, then give a twist.
Typical installation time? A minute or two. We found it took us longer to get the fixture out of the packaging and set up a footstool than it did to install.
Fish oven
When you stay in a Japanese place that has a stove, but you’re used to an American-style range with its cooktop and oven, you notice something:
There’s no oven… but usually, there is.
Below the cooktop on many units, there’s a handle for a pull-out tray, usually with a grill rack. The space inside looks about the size of a shoebox. Called a fish oven, or fish grill (魚焼きグリル, or sakana yakiguriru in Japanese), this handy little broiler has become one of our favorite parts of our kitchen.
Sure enough, the fish grill can cook up beautifully tender salmon or mackerel fillets for our family of four. But it’s also handy for roasting vegetables or making toast.
Plugs that swivel or angle
You know that annoyance when you need to plug something in, but the angle to the outlet doesn’t work, or there’s furniture in front of the outlet and you don’t want a huge gap between the furniture and the wall?
Many Japanese electronics and power strips either angle down along the wall, or the plug can swivel for different angles, or be shifted to a right angle for a less bulky footprint.
Folding floor tables and chairs
Like we mentioned earlier, our tatami room is our bedroom at night, but during the day we open it up to expand our living room space. Part of what makes that possible? We have folding chairs and a low table with folding legs.
We can set the table and chairs wherever we want. When we’re done, we fold them up and tuck them away.
Folding furniture like this helps us do so much more with our space. Plus, it makes it easier to live fully in a smaller space. Instead of needing more room, we simply have more, yet compact, options.
Rice cooker
For Japanese cooking, a rice cooker is essential. And we very much wanted to snag a really, really nice Zojirushi rice cooker. A few things that just make sense?
- The cooking process accounts for soaking and cooking
- One-button cooking options optimize the cooking for porridge (okayu お粥) and for rice cooker meals, such as when you add protein and vegetables
- It’s a happy wee appliance that sings to us when the rice is ready
Automatic filling bathtub
Let’s say you really, really want to take a bath. A deep, hot, proper soak. But you don’t want to spend a bunch of time going back and forth to see if the tub is full enough.
An auto-filling bathtub has got you.
In our living room, a control panel on the wall controls hot water throughout the apartment. It also controls the bathtub. By pressing one button, the tub automatically starts filling. It stops at a pre-set volume, so we don’t have to worry about overfilling or getting into an insufficiently full tub.
Instead, we press a button and go back to doing whatever we were doing. When the panel tells us, we go enjoy a luxurious hot bath.
Wet bath for shower/bath
Speaking of our bathtub, there’s also a shower. And both are contained inside their own room that’s designed to get wet.
There’s no need to worry about keeping water in the tub or being careful with the showerhead. You can rinse with abandon, and all the water stays in one room.
Sleeping on the floor
A high, luxurious bed? Sure, that can be nice. But with each trip to Japan, we’ve realized how much we enjoy sleeping on the floor. The kids like to say that sleeping on a tatami floor is like indoor camping.
Our backs like it too. We find sleeping on nice futons on a tatami floor to feel great for our backs and joints. Plus, that work getting up and down off the floor helps us keep a good range of movement.
Another plus? Futons fold up. Since we don’t have a dedicated bed in our tatami room, it’s easier to repurpose the space for daytime use, as we mentioned above.
Drying clothes outside… or under a heated drying fan in the bathroom
From Malaysia to Mexico to Morocco, when we do laundry, it’s line-dried either indoors or outdoors. Some places have a rooftop line. Others have indoor spaces, such as a utility room, with a line or other hangers.
Our Japanese apartment takes this one step further. Our apartment’s balcony has built-in brackets for laundry rods, so we usually put our laundry outside on those to dry. But if it’s cold or rainy, what do we do?
We take our laundry into the shower/tub room. Rods hang over the bathtub for hanging laundry. And above that?
The ceiling has a large fan that’s not just for ventilation. A heating setting can dry out the room after a shower or bath, but it’s also there when you need to dry your laundry indoors.
Separate rooms for toileting, bathing, and vanity/getting ready
Many Japanese residences aren’t designed to have the toilet, sink, vanity, and bathing facilities all in one room.
Instead, our apartment has a separate room for the toilet, another area with a vanity and sink, and one other room that has the shower and bathtub. Everyone can use the space they need at the same time.
Toilet sink
One potential drawback of having the toilet in its own room: How do you wash your hands?
There’s a simple solution.
Many Japanese toilets have a small sink on top of the toilet’s water tank. Clean water comes out the tap, you can easily wash your hands, and that same water goes into the tank.
It’s a compact, sensible, simple way to be hygienic—not to mention an easy reminder to wash your hands.
So many things in Japanese homes just make sense
Every society has its own way of figuring out solutions to day-to-day situations or problems. These sensible, simple solutions in our Japanese apartment make our space even more pleasant to be in. They remove some of the little frictions of everyday life. Every time we leave, those little things add up into some of the big reasons we can’t wait to get back to our home in Japan.
Watch more about homes in Japan
Looking for apartments in Japan, part 1
Looking for apartments in Japan, part 2
$33K vs $55K Osaka Apartments — Which Would You Buy?
$33,000 JAPAN APARTMENT: What did it get us?
You Asked, We Answered: The Truth About Buying Property in Japan
