An unexpected way to stay in Japan

December 2, 2023

Before I made my move to Fukuoka, I stayed here for about 3 months at the end of 2019.

During that time, because I hadn't officially moved yet, I needed some long-term accommodations.

While hotels are on the cheaper side in Japan compared to the US, especially with the exchange rate making everything even less expensive, it still would have been a lot to pay for a stay of 3 months.

That's when I learned about...

Share houses

In short, these are like university dorms for people not in university.

They're called シェアハウス in Japanese.

While the details likely depend on the place, you have your own private room with a lock and such. Where I stayed, I had a dorm-sized room with enough space for a bed, desk, mini fridge, and some other random small furniture here and there.

Here's what my room looked like when I stayed there:

It just has the essentials, really. This pic was taken with me standing in the 玄関げんかん (entrance area) of my room.

When I stayed there a second time (when I actually moved and was apartment searching), I had a bunk bed situation and I was able to store my suitcase under it, which really opened up a lot of space. The room pictured above had some small drawers under the bed though, which were also nice.

Anyway, the kitchen, bathrooms, showers, and hangout areas are all shared with the other people who live there.

Of course, there is still privacy in the bathrooms and showers so don't worry haha. Where I stayed there was a shower area with 5 separate shower rooms, which were usually more occupied at night because I noticed that most people in Japan tend to lean towards being 夜よるシャン (evening or night bathers).

夜よるシャン and other common rivalries in Japan are taught in this lesson if you're interested in seeing where this word comes from ^^

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Anyway, シェアハウス have a lot of benefits vs staying in a hotel.

Pros of a share house

They're much cheaper than a hotel. The one I stayed at was ５万円ごまんえん (50,000 yen) a month, which means about 1,666 yen a night. Not bad!

The share house I stayed in allowed you to cancel early, so you could stay there for two weeks and not get charged more than the two weeks' worth of money. So these can be great for mid-term stays as well.

Another big plus is that you'll meet people just by nature of being there.

When I lived there in 2019, there was about a 50/50 ratio of Japanese and non-Japanese people, so there were a lot of opportunities to meet people with different backgrounds, life stories, reasons for being there, and so on ^^

In fact, since I stayed there during Christmas, we even had a クリぼっち会かい (single-on-Christmas party) where all of us single people went to カラオケ (karaoke) from about 10 pm or so.

I stuck around just wondering when people would start getting tired, thinking we'd only be there til about 2 am, maybe 3, at best.

We sang until 5 am.

Boy was I wrong haha. Was really fun though!

That reminds me. In Japan, Christmas is very much a couple's holiday.

That's why the word クリぼっち (single on Christmas) exists. You are 一人ひとりぼっち (alone) on クリスマス (Christmas).

Having a kitchen also means you can cook as well. But I tend to be on the introverted side, so there were plenty of nights* when I hid in my room and ordered food or grabbed takeout from somewhere instead.

*Every night. Pretty much every night.

But I did enjoy eating in the common area sometimes. And I did spend some time in the hangout area reading manga or playing games and chatting with people.

That kind of leads me to the next point…

Cons of a share house

If you're an introvert, you might have some trouble here because doing anything, even just going to the bathroom or brushing your teeth, might come with...

😱 social interaction 😱

That said, especially if it's a shorter stay, there are lots of cool experiences you can have if you try to venture out and talk to people.

That's actually what led me to my participation in the クリぼっち会かい. If I hadn't tried to talk to people, I would've just been in my room doing nothing. So I'm glad I went and was able to get that experience.

Share houses can also be on the louder side. So if you're a light sleeper or don't sleep with earplugs in, be prepared to have a lot of interrupted sleep haha.

To be honest though, I think needing to sleep in those conditions has helped me become good at sleeping even when it's noisy now. So this might actually be a hidden plus 👀

Would I recommend it?

If you're going to be staying in the same spot in Japan for more than, say, two weeks, I think share houses are something that should at least be considered as an option, yes.

They can save you a lot of money, give you a lot of opportunities to meet people living or traveling in the area, and are a generally fun experience ^^

If you're looking for one in Fukuoka, I believe I used this site when I was trying to find mine. It looks like lots of share houses can do contracts and such with you in English too, in case you're not feeling confident in your Japanese when you get there.

There is a way to get that confidence though:

Good luck out there, happy studies, and I hope you enjoy all of your travels and/or living in Japan ^^

Have you stayed at a share house before? What did you think of it?

Come join the discussion in the community: #newsletter channel

Weekly Japanese practice:

After you tell your potential new friend about why you learned Japanese, they respond by asking you what you think the most difficult and the most fun part of learning Japanese is.

I find questions like this really fun to answer. It also allows us to talk about pretty specific things in the language, which can be an interesting challenge as well. So let's practice it^^

Post your responses here and let's talk about them!

We're active in there all week, so don't feel like you're late to the party if you need some time before you have the chance to respond. In fact, I usually post the above prompts around Thursday JST, which means people who are in the community get a bit of a sneak peek at them!

Would love to see you in there as well.

Feel free to ask for help if you want to say something specific. Both myself and other learners will be in there offering advice and help~

Submit prompts you want to see here.

Great job from everyone on last week's prompt 💪

We had a lot of really long responses in there, which were fun to take a look at.

There were some great connections between ideas there, which are hard to fully handle unless you practice them and have the right tools for it.

Here are some lessons you could check out that can help you connect your ideas in Japanese more smoothly:

The particle から

Saying "so" or "because" with ので

We also had a discussion about the usage of 〜てみる, so here's a lesson for that:

Vてみる

And we saw how useful the て form is! Lessons on that:

Using Vて to describe a sequence of actions

The uses of て-form て-form of na-adjectives て-form of i-adjectives

Keep in mind that everything comes with time. While it can be a good idea to take another look at these lessons, you don't need to worry about much as long as you keep showing up and hitting Study Now ^^

好すきピ

We gotta throw slang in every now and then, right?^^

Even if you don't plan on using slang, it's still helpful to know. Especially whenever you find yourself on the internet in Japanese, or talking to friends who might use it. Or have some Japanese family members who might be younger than you.

In fact, I remember going to a kind of game center called VS PARK shortly after reading that lesson, and finding the slang しか勝かたん:

しか勝かたん is explained in the same lesson, which you can check out here!

If the above Japanese is difficult for you, all you need to do is keep hitting the Study Now button, and you'll understand it when you get there. Especially when using a study resource like NativShark, you'll be fine as long as you show up as much as you can. The above comes from a lesson in Phase Two, Unit 224.

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New Units will be coming out soon!

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If you have extra time and want to practice more, don't forget to…

…check out the native materials list the NativShark community has helped put together, or…
…try this week's Japanese practice and improve your production skills! You don't have to be a NativShark sub and you get free feedback~

Good luck out there!

Happy studies,
Ty & the NativShark Team