Tokyo apartment basics for foreign residents

You unlock the door at 8pm. The bag is on the floor. The genkan (玄関, genkan — the recessed entryway, half a step lower than the rest of the apartment) is two slate tiles wide, with a small wooden step up to the hallway. A pair of guest slippers sits on the step in plastic wrap. The fridge hums. Everything looks like the photo.

I have walked into a dozen Tokyo apartments after a long flight. The first time, I broke three rules in the first hour and did not know I'd broken any of them until later. The fixtures look like the ones at home. The rules underneath them do not.

This is what the first week looks like, room by room.

The genkan rules the whole apartment

The half-step up from the genkan is where shoes stop. You take them off in the lower tile area. You step up barefoot or in socks. The slippers in plastic wrap are for the hallway and the living-room floor. They are not for the tatami room if the apartment has one, and they are not for the toilet.

The tatami (畳, tatami — woven rush-grass mat flooring, sized in the traditional 90×180cm panels) is sock-territory only. Slippered feet wear the surface fibers down, and the operator notices on turnover. If your apartment has a 6-mat washitsu (和室, washitsu — Japanese-style room with tatami), the slippers come off at the threshold the same way the shoes came off at the genkan.

The toilet has its own slippers. They sit inside the toilet room, usually by the door, sometimes printed with a small "WC" or "トイレ." You step into them when you enter. You step out of them when you leave. You do not wear them back into the kitchen. The rule is simple and the violation is unmistakable: anyone who sees you walk out of the toilet in toilet slippers knows. The slippers stay in the room they belong to.

If you forget once, you will not forget twice. The host who finds toilet slippers in the living room writes a quiet note in their head about you. You don't want to be in that note.

The washlet is mostly two buttons

The toilet seat warms when you sit on it. The control panel is on the wall to your right, or built into the side of the seat itself. There are eight to fourteen buttons depending on the model. Most of them you will never press.

The two you need: 止 (tomeru, stop) and either おしり (oshiri, rear) or ビデ (bide, front). The big red button labeled 止 stops whatever the washlet is doing. The blue or green button labeled おしり starts the rear-cleaning spray. Most panels also have a water-pressure dial. Turn it down for the first try. The default is set for a Japanese salaryman who has been using a washlet since 1997. You are not that person yet.

The flush handle is separate, usually on the tank or on the wall. 大 (dai, big) is full flush, 小 (shou, small) is half-flush. Only toilet paper goes in. Wet wipes, cotton swabs, hair, anything else clogs the line. Tokyo plumbing is older than the building and narrower than you expect. The trash can next to the toilet is for everything that is not toilet paper.

The bathroom is a room, not a stall

The bathroom is one waterproof room with a tub on one side and a small tile or vinyl floor on the other. There's a drain in the floor. There's a handheld shower wand on the wall.

You wash outside the tub. The wand sits in a cradle at squatting height; you sit on the small plastic stool, you rinse, you soap, you rinse again. The drain in the floor takes everything. Then, if the unit has a bath, you get into the tub clean and you soak. The water in the tub is meant to be reused. The next person in the apartment uses the same bathwater, often kept warm overnight by the reheat function.

The reheat panel is a small box on the wall, usually outside the bathroom by the kitchen. There's an "ofuro" button to fill the tub, a temperature dial (in Celsius), and a 追い焚き (oitaki, reheat) button that warms the existing water back up. The exact button layout differs by unit; the binder for your specific apartment shows which is which on your panel. The point to remember is that the bath is filled and reheated from outside the bathroom, not from inside.

Drying takes longer than you think. The wall fan above the door runs on a timer. Three hours is normal after a shower in summer, six in the winter when the room stays cooler. Leave it on. A bathroom that stays damp grows mold along the tile grout in under a week.

What the drains will and will not take

The kitchen sink takes water, soap, and small food crumbs. It does not take cooking oil. It does not take coffee grounds. It does not take the hair from the chopping-board rinse. The pipe under the sink runs to a building line that is sixty years old in most central wards and forty in the new ones, and the joints are unforgiving.

Used cooking oil goes into a plastic bottle and into the burnable-trash bag on the right day. Three teaspoons of oil in a 250ml bottle is fine. A frying pan rinsed under hot water with the oil swirling down the drain is a callout to the building's plumber, and the bill lands on the unit.

The shower drain has a hair trap. It's a small plastic basket sitting in the floor drain, with a flat metal cover above it. You lift the cover, you pull out the basket, you throw the hair in the burnable bag, you put the basket back. Once a week. If you skip it, the trap fills, the shower water pools, and after about five days the floor smells like a pond. Easier to do it Sunday morning before it ever gets there.

The bathroom sink has a smaller version of the same trap, easier to clean, often forgotten. The half-minute it takes once a week saves the hour of standing in a bathroom that won't drain.

The boiler and the AC speak to each other through panels

There are two control panels on the wall and they look almost identical. One runs the boiler: bath temperature, fill, reheat. The other runs the air conditioning: heat, cool, dehumidify, fan.

The AC panel has four modes and an icon for each: a sun for heat, a snowflake for cool, a raindrop for dehumidify (除湿, joshitsu, also labeled ドライ — dorai, dry), and a fan blade for circulation. The first three are summer-and-winter staples. The fourth is what gets forgotten.

The dehumidify mode is the magic of the Tokyo rainy season. June through mid-July, the air outside is 24°C and 88% humidity. You can run the cool setting and freeze yourself indoors, or you can run dehumidify at 26°C and pull the moisture out of the air without dropping the temperature. The room dries. Your futon dries. The mold on the bathroom grout stops advancing. The electricity draw is also lower than cool mode for the same comfort level.

I learned this in my third Tokyo summer. The first two, I ran the AC on cool from June to August and woke up cold under three blankets. Dehumidify is the mode you reach for first when the air feels heavy, not the cool button. The local cashier at my Lawson taught me that, not the manual.

The washing machine speaks Japanese, but only four buttons matter

The washer sits in a small alcove off the bathroom or in a corner by the balcony. The panel is in Japanese. There is no dryer.

Four buttons get you through the week:

• 洗濯 (sentaku): wash
• すすぎ (susugi): rinse
• 脱水 (dasshui): spin-dry
• スタート (sutaato): start

The default cycle is 洗濯 → すすぎ → 脱水 on a 40-minute timer. You press スタート, the lid locks, the machine fills, and that is most of what you need to know. Detergent goes in the small drawer or directly into the drum, depending on the model. A capful per load.

Clothes dry on the balcony. Every apartment has a fixed bar across the railing, and most include a folding rack. Cotton shirts hang in direct sun for four hours; jeans take a day; thick towels take two. In June the rack lives on the balcony until rain, then moves inside next to a fan. In January the balcony works but takes twice as long, and you discover the radiator-as-rack arrangement most residents end up with.

One rule, not negotiable: the washer is loud, and Tokyo walls are thin. Running it after 22:00 is the fastest way to a complaint from the neighbor below or beside you. The cycle takes 40 minutes; if you have not started it by 9pm, it waits until morning. The same rule applies to the vacuum, the dryer fan in the bathroom (which is loud at full speed), and anything else with a motor. 22:00 is the line.

The rectangular paper slip at the door

There is a small rectangular paper slip stuck to the door or sitting in the mailbox. It is from Yamato, Sagawa, or the post office. It is the same shape every time: roughly 10×20cm, white or pale yellow, printed in Japanese. It is a redelivery slip (不在票, fuzaihyō, "absence ticket"). It means a package arrived, you weren't home, and the driver wants you to schedule a redelivery.

The slip has three things you need: a phone number, a 12-digit tracking number, and a QR code. The QR code goes to the carrier's website where you pick a redelivery time slot. Most carriers offer 8-12am, 12-2pm, 2-4pm, 4-6pm, 6-8pm, and 7-9pm windows. You pick one for tomorrow. You confirm. The driver comes back in that window.

You can also call the number on the slip. The English line for Yamato is 0570-200-000. For Sagawa, you can use the website in English at sagawa-exp.co.jp. The driver who shows up speaks no English and does not need to. They show you the slip, you confirm, you sign, they leave.

The slip itself is the artifact. Save it until the package is delivered. Throw it in the burnable bag after. Most of your slips will be Amazon or konbini orders; the system is identical for both.

What changes after the first week

By Sunday of the first week, the apartment has stopped being a hotel and started being a place you live in. You take your shoes off without thinking. You wear the toilet slippers without thinking. You wipe the chopping board into the trash bag, not the sink. You run the dehumidifier in the morning before the air gets heavy. You start the washer at 9am on a Saturday because you remembered Friday at 11pm that you wanted clean clothes for Sunday.

The fixtures still look like the photos. The rules underneath them have moved into the back of your head where you no longer notice them.

The one to remember if you remember only one: the toilet slippers stay in the toilet. Everything else, you learn by living in it.

— HalfKey runs furnished Tokyo apartments for stays of 30 days to 12 months. Browse listings for your dates.