Housing in Japan includes modern and traditional styles. Two patterns of residences are predominant in contemporary Japan: the single-family detached house and the multiple-unit building, either owned by an individual or corporation and rented as apartments to tenants, or owned by occupants as condominiums. Additional kinds of housing, especially for unmarried people, include boarding houses (which are popular among college students), dormitories (common in companies), and barracks (for members of the Self-Defense Forces, police and some other public employees).

At his favorite neighborhood cafe, Shunsuke Yamagata, a college student who proudly calls himself a nerd, smiled shyly behind his horn-rimmed glasses at waitresses hurrying about in black Minnie Mouse shoes and lacy, racy mini-dresses inspired by Japanese comics. The place is a dream come true for Yamagata, whose passion is collecting comics and cartoons. He giggled with glee when his servers addressed him in the squeaky little character voices they use to delight their fantasy-loving clientele.

For Yamagata, 20, it was just another night out with the pocket-protector crowd in Tokyo’s neon-splashed Akihabara district, where “costume cafes” are the latest of hundreds of new businesses catering to Japan’s otaku , or nerds. A subculture of social misfits obsessed with electronic role-playing games, manga comics and Japanese animation, they began gathering in Akihabara in the late 1990s, lured by the district’s proliferation of electronics retailers and stores selling everything you would need to build your own computer.

Maligned and shunned by mainstream society, here they stayed, their tastes and habits transforming the area also known as Electric Town into what sociologists are calling an urban first — a ghetto of geeks.

If you want to buy a house in Tokyo, it is best to hope you grew up there and your parents or in-laws have land to spare.

Japan's housing prices are second only to London for a detached house....but the amount of land you can get in Tokyo is half of what the Brits get.

New York offers the most living space but least amount of land - 185 sq meters on 150 sq meters of land. A sq meter = 10.8 sq feet.

Tokyo and London offer about 150 sq meters of living space on 200 sq meters and 400 sq meters of dwelling land.

Here in Silicon Valley where I live - our matchbox cost about the same as a detached house in Frankfurt.