I keep trying to convince my friend Reiko to burrow. "You'd have much more living space," I told her. Other than the underground shopping areas and a few pipelines, you'd have as much space as you wanted. "But this size apartment is normal in Japan," she said.
Reiko is a typical single woman with a career. If she had stayed in her hometown, she would live with her parents until she got married. But her job brought her to Okayama, where she lives alone in a six-tatami mat room with a kitchen and bathroom. We'd call it a studio apartment in the United States, except that this is much smaller, so it would be more like a micro-studio apartment. The first time I walked into Reiko's apartment, I realized how kittens feel when people put them inside cardboard boxes.
The Japanese use of living space is, well, amusing. The veranda is for the washing machine and hanging out laundry. The entrance to Reiko's apartment is on one end of a hallway, which happens to have a kitchen in it. There is a sink, a gas burner and a mini-refrigerator just sitting in the hallway.