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OK This is a Type A apartment inside Residence Hane. Inside this building we have 16 Type A apartments. And the majority of the apartments in Residence Hane are this current layout. I'm standing in the main room, this is the bed and study room obviously, and I'll show you the kitchen area and bathroom next. now inside Residence Hane we have a number of features which are common to all of the apartments. And I'm just going to very briefly explain some of the key features. We'll start over here with the bed.

Inside the Type A apartments we're using what we call a pipe frame bed. OK. A pipe frame bed basically, has a solid base, (knocks) you can hear that. Thats where we put on top a foam mattress. Its a 5 to 6 centimeter thick foam mattress, this is supplied with the apartment, makes it very very comfortable when you're lying down. On top of that you need to place futons. OK. The futons I'm holding here you can either buy them through Yamasa and have them ready for you when you arrive from overseas, or if you're living in Japan or you have friends who can lend you these, you can arrange your own bedding, whatever suits you best. You can see there, very very comfortable.

Now the advantage of a pipe bed is that it is not fixed to the floor. You can move this bed around the apartment and re-arrange your living space. If uh, as you prefer. So ah, thats the bed. One other thing is there is lots of storage space.

If you look underneath the bed here, you can see nearly 30 cm of clearance between the bottom of the bed and the floor. So if you wish to for example put your suitcases and things out of the way thats a very good place to put them.

Now the apartments have very good sound insulation. Behind me the double sliding doors, these are glass windows letting in a lot of natural light of course but they are also double glazed so theres no noise coming in through from outside. If you close the glass doors of course you get no noise but it also retricts the air flow so to fix that problem if you look over here on the wall, you can see that we've installed an adjustable filter. OK this filter is adjusted from the bottom here. OK. By turning this I can alter the space inside the vent and so air can pass through the wall from the outside quite freely. But inside here we have a removable filter. You can take that filter out and just hand wash it and put it back in, and that allows you to enable air to flow freely into the apartment without the dust flowing in with it. OK so a much more comfortable environment in terms of the air quality.

Now the sound insulation is not just the double glazing, in addition to the windows we've also got a lot of sound insulation in all of the walls including the interior walls. as well as the floor and the ceiling, so if you're living downstairs you're not going to hear your neighbour stamping around upstairs, similarly you're not going to hear noise coming in from your neighbours.

next we look at the balcony. Now the Type A apartments come with 3 different external features. 6 of the Type A apartments do not have an external balcony. 3 downstairs ones have a very small one, the 3 upstairs ones have only windows. however on the second floor, on the ministop side which is the convenience store side, you can see that we have these very large balconies. ok These are large enough for up to 4 people to sit outside, dining or group study etc. You can see here that yamasa provides you with the garden table and also with 2 garden chairs. If you wish to obtain additional garden chairs these can be purchased very cheaply from local hardware shops.

We will at the end of this video show you also what the other balconies look like, for the other rooms. at the moment I'm standing in room 210 and the same layout applies also to 211. and we'll explain the rest of the features later.

Now next we're going to look at the desk. Obviously this would be a very large amount of your time, spent here. what we provide is quite a large desk. this is a lockable desk. you'll see here plenty of storage space and yamasa provides a key for that. another feature of this desk is that we have elevated the desk about 6 cm. one of the problems we had in terms of feedback from students was that there wasn't enough clearance space between the knees and the bottom of the desk. So for people who are taller than say 180 centimeters, this is a much more comfortable environment for study. We also provide a gas lift chair you can adjust the height of the chair quite freely, maximize your comfort, make sure you don't get back aches or other problems distracting you from your studies.

Lighting. You have a very good reading light, so you won't need to keep the lights on in the entire apartment when you're studying and that should help you save some of your electricity bills etc.

Now climate control. You want to be as comfortable as possible when you're studying, so lets have a look at the air conditioning unit. Above me here you can see the ac unit, ok this is a reverse cycle air conditioner, so its not only for heating but also for cooling. ok the remote control that I'm holding here is in japanese only,

but if you come to student services if you have any trouble reading japanese we can explain how to use the ac. it can be used not only for heating and cooling you can also set it for dry, just to take the humidity out of the room, or you can set it and use it just as a fan, whichever suits you best.

Above the ac is a feature common only to the second floor apartments in Residence Hane, you can see above me that there are two skylights letting in additional natural light into the apartment, and these two skylights are possible because the ceiling in the 2nd floor apartments of Residence Hane is 3.2 metres high, so its quite a high ceiling. The downstairs apartments, 2.6 meters is the height of the ceiling so you don't have the skylights but still quite a large high ceiling compared to your standard japanese apartment.

Now lets look at the bookshelves. the bookshelves are adjustable. You can see that these shelves can be freely moved around, so that if you have large items, filing, binders, large dictionaries, anything like that, or electrical goods that you wish to store on the bookshelf you can freely adjust the height of the shelving.

The reason why we've chosen this bookshelf is it gives us access to the panel behind. Now if we zoom up on that panel, you can see that there are 4 powerpoints here, the tv plug, the internet connection - this is using the ethernet technology - as well as jacks for telephones if you wish to install your own landline phone. OK on the other side of the bookshelf here you can see we have the tv. the tv also includes a tv stand. OK now this tv stand is on casters, and you can move the tv either to change the angle so that you could look at the tv from your desk or from your bed or even from outside, or if you want to re-arrange the room you could actually move it around.

the only requirement being of course that you still be within reach of the powerboard. OK. The tv is quite a new tv, a panasonic. It does contain a tv stand here.

Plenty of room, if you wish to install a DVD player, a VCR, games etc, there's lots of room there. Remote control again is in Japanese. However if you have any problems using the remote control please come to see us in Student Services.

Next this telephone handset. this is not an external telephone, if you wish to have an internal line, a landline as it were, you'd need to contact the telephone company this one is for the intercom so that when visitors come to Residence Hane you can buzz them in, unlocking the security door downstairs. OK

Now finally in the main room, we can separate the main room from the kitchen area which is behind me, simply by sliding that door shut. That means that if you're trying to cool the room down in summer time or heat it up. you don't have to heat the entire apartment, which is one of the disadvantages that we were having with the other apartments before we built Residence Hane. so by closing this door you can restrict the amount of space that you need to heat or cool, and save quite a lot of money on your bills.

And finally while we're still in the main room, some of the storage space. Over here you can see we have a built in wardrobe. Residence Hane is the only apartment in Yamasa's portfolio that actually has a hanging rail which is quite common of course outside Japan but very unusual to find in a Japanese apartment. Again we have lots of very strong shelving, plenty of storage space. Large suitcases won't fit into the wardrobe however you do have plenty of space under the bed if you wish to store suitcases out of the way.

Finally we also have more power outlets. The main room alone has 8 different power sockets, all 100 volt of course. The only disadvantage is that we don't have the 3 pronged plug. So if you have a 3 prong plug brought with you from overseas you'll need to use an adaptor before you can use the item. Thats the main room. Lets have a look at the kitchen next.

OK let me explain the kitchen layout for a Type A apartment. OK first of all if you just look here, one of the main features of the apartments are the height of the surfaces. So everything in the kitchen has been elevated by 7 centimeters. That means if you're standing at the sink, somebody who has slightly above average height, umm, say 180 centimeters, does not need to bend over all the time when washing dishes. So if I'm standing up straight I can actually touch the bottom of the sink with my fingers so I'm not going to get a backache washing dishes etc in this apt. Its quite unusual by Japanese standards. In terms of the hieght.

Now I'll explain some of the features. All of the Type A apartments come with a toaster oven installed. OK. This can be moved around freely, so if you wish to create additional space, for example when you're chopping vegetables if you wanted to cook in a small group, you can do so.

There's plenty of power outlets. The kitchen alone has 6 power outlets, so plenty of room to plug things in, move them around etc.

The stainless steel area. (In) the other apartments this is practically the only food preparation area you have however at Residence Hane you have these additional formica areas on both sides of the sink so plenty of toom for chopping vegetables, mixing things etc.

Now with each apartment we provide a saucepan, a frypan and a kettle. There's plenty of storage space, if you look below me, apart from the areas below the sink, you also have a large number of drawers, a very large cupboard underneath the gas range here, plenty of room to put pots and pans and other things in there. Plus if you look above the sink here we have another 4 cupboards, so a lot of room, you'll never have any shortage of space in the kitchen. OK.

Now if we look at the gas range, as you can see here we have two gas jets, OK and in addition to the two gas jets, there's a grill here so if you wish to grill fish or other items like that.

And we also provide you with a rice cooker. Again if you have any questions regarding how to use the rice cooker please contact the Housing Office for an explanation.

Now above the gas stove you can see here, the extractor fan. Smoke and other fumes aren't going to be a problem. You can adjust the speed of the fan, and of course there's also light here, makes it much easier when you're cooking.

One of the features of the apartment here in Residence Hane is lighting, so for example if you look above the sink again, we have plenty of lighting, when you're cutting things with knives you're not going to have any shadows or any safety concerns regarding the quality of the light.

Now at the end of the kitchen of course is the entrance to the apartment. First of all we have a very large shoe rack box. You can see inside here, these shelves are adjustable in height. You can take them out if you wish to put in for example a handbag, or large boots etc. Very strong internal shelving in the center, with the lighter shelving being adjusted. so lots of space, you could easily store about 20 different pairs of shoes, if you had so many shoes of course.

Now just behind me is the front door, this is an insulated door. Helps keep the sound down but also of course reduces your energy bills. There is a small peephole there so if you wanted to look outside to see if anybody is outside the apartment you can have a look there before you open the door, so plenty of security.

And of course nobody can get into the building without you either buzzing them in, or they having a key. not likely to have salesmen or other people turning up outside your door, because they simply won't be able to get into the building in the first place.

In addition to the peephole

plenty of protection there as well. standard lock, you don't need a key to lock it from the isnde. Above me, you have another window. this window can be opened and left open improving the airflow through the apartment. this window can be located on the quiet side of the aprtment so you're not going to have noise

the microwave oven and the refrigerator. opoosite the sink convection oven microwave first if all the microwave.

cakes and casseroles and things like that. not quite as good but still very very practical. for space reasons another 2 electircal plugs behind us now the fridge, we have quite a large freezer a lot of the students say frozen food.

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