microhousing or otherwise known as kyusho tako. you have the tiny pieces of land and they build up from there. you say this is kind of becoming the rage, and part of it is certainly a space issue but when i first heard about it, oh, small parcel of land surely they re saving money but not necessarily. not necessarily. it s expensive so that house we re looking at was $500,000. that did include the land, and in fact that particular house on the corner used to be a parking place. and they built up, but the skill, t.j., that it takes some of the houses are shaving off the corners and using windows on the side to create light. and this one we re looking at, how many people? this is a sons who son and mother two share a bedroom on the third floor. they only have two mugs.
someone living in that space. but building up. sort of. we re talking about tokyo, japan, where land is so expen expensive. the reality is in tokyo there are 127 million people around living in japan, they live from tokyo in and around tokyo. land is expensive. in this particular home you have a son, yohito mori and mother moto. it s three floors up from 30 square meters. look how clever and well designed it is, look at the microwave. that s a half size sink and look at the amount of light that comes in the spiral staircase, the shoes that are inside a closet, so no space is spared at all. this brilliant utilization of space, you notice the triangular shape of the staircase, that actually saves an enormous amount of space as opposed to a circular staircase, so you have the top architects in japan, creating what they call