Jan 25 (Japan Today) - 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.â€
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.
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.