Monday, September 17, 2007

Counters for Length and Area: Shaku and Tsubo

Japan has its own unique system for measuring area and space, which is called “Shakkan-ho”. Made up of “Shaku” a measurement of length and “Kan” a measurement of mass.

One shaku is equal to approximately “one foot” or more accurately 30.3 centimeters, and all other units of measurement in the system are fractions or multiples of the “shaku”. The shaku was derived from nature and is described to be the average distance between nodes on bamboo. Shaku is still used in construction in Japan; for example plywood is commonly manufactured in 182 x 91 cm sheets, known as “Saburokuhan” or literally “3 x 6” shaku. Saburokuhan is effectively the same size as a Tatami Mat that are measured in “–JO” (please see my entry of September 12th), and therefore shows how the different measurement types all relate to the “Shaku”.

Another very common measurement counter in Japan is the “Tsubo”, which is how area is expressed in Japanese society. 1 Tsubo = 2 tatami mats or 2-JO. Tsubo is still commonly used in the Real Estate Industry in Japan not only for land, but also for describing floor-space in both offices and houses. A typical plot of land used for the building of a Japanese home is 40- 50 tsubo that equates to approximately 130- 150 square meters, or slightly over 1,000 square feet. It is very common for office space to be quoted in yen per tsubo. In Nagoya for example, the market for office space in the downtown area fluctuates anywhere between 10,000 yen per tsubo (approximately 3,000 yen per square meter) through to 30,000 yen per tsubo (or 10,000 yen per square meter), which is what you would pay to have an office in the new Toyota Midland Square Building. Naturally, 30,000 yen per tsubo is the starting point for offices in many locations in Tokyo. One tsubo = approximately 3.3 square meters, or 35.58 square feet.

Hopefully this helps you to work out what the hell your Japanese acquaintances are talking about when they throw the tsubo measurement in your face!

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Japanese Tatami

Some of us have been brought up on feet and inches, while the younger of us know only meters, centimeters and millimeters. However, if you live in Japan, you need to develop a “third sense” when it comes to measuring area. Japan has its own unique measuring system brought down from ancient times.

This starts with the Tatami Mat. Anyone who has been in Japan for a period of time knows about tatami (woven straw mats), and probably know that it is how Japanese people communicate space (or lack of it) in a house or an apartment. A 6-mat room or “roku-jo no heya” in Japanese, is the standard sized room; 4.5 mats would be considered small or slightly cramped, where as an 8-mat or 10-mat room is generally considered to be quite a large room. Contrastingly, an 8-10 mat room would probably the standard size of a bedroom in a western-style home. The tatami mat and its “counter” – jo, are not used only for bedrooms however, but for each individual room including the living / dining / kitchen (known as LDK). A 20-jo LDK would be considered very spacious in a Japanese apartment, where as the standard would probably be 10-15-jo.

You can easily see the use of tatami mats as a counter of room area by taking a look at the floor plans displayed at local real estate agents such as “Mini-Mini”, Apaman-shop, Nissho, etc. Quite often they are referenced by a “J” for the counter “-jo”. For example, the LDK might read 13.0J and the bedrooms 5.5J and 6.0J respectively.

So, how big is a one-jo (ichi-jo in correct Japanese!). Well, it depends where you live in Japan! The standard is close to 1.8 meters x 0.9 meters in a good part of Japan, but due to space constraints in cities such as Tokyo, often tatami are slightly smaller (and this is not an advertised fact- owners are very cunning in populate cities!). Standard Tatami sizes in Tokyo are 1.76 meters x 0.88 meters.

While tatami are used as the “size indicator” of rooms in Japan, it is not so typical to express the overall size of a particular apartment or house in “so-many tatami”. ie. It is not common to add up the tatami count of all the rooms to express the total size. Total size is expressed in either square meters or “tsubo”. Where does Tsubo come from you ask? Well, historically 2-jo = 1 tsubo. I will cover tsubo in my next entry!