Today I visited my friend Thomas in Kichijoji. He is someone I met while I was in Oakhouse Kichijoji 2. He once moved out of the house and spent some time in his country and came back for another job in Tokyo. He once lived in the east side of Tokyo now he came back to Kichijoji. He is, just like me, one of the regulars who come to the Kichijoji 2 every now and then for parties. Even though both him and I don’t live in Kichijoji 2 anymore, it’s still fun to go to the house to see some old faces.
One day he contacted me saying he has a gift for my daughter Hana. That was very nice of him. He didn’t tell me what the present is but he sounded like he wanted to give me that present as soon as possible. So I decided to go to his new house in Kichijoj which is what I wanted to do for a while. He told me he found a new house to live in Kichijoji a couple of months ago and I never had chance to visit him there.

The house he lives in is run by a company called Libest. It is one of the real estate companies based in Kichioji. I knew about the company but I did not know they run share houses. It was a three stories building where almost 30 people lives. Bathrooms, kitchen, and living room is shared just like Oakhouse share houses.
The living room area is big enough to fit a couple of dozen people. The kitchen is nice and big. Thomas told me about the Takoyaki party they hosted a couple of days ago. I like it that their living room looked more like a cafe than a dining area.

A big 40-inches TV is placed on the wall in the living room. This entire living room isn’t next to other rooms on the same floor. This is probably a good idea for people who want to do some parties without annoying your neighbors.
That’s Thomas in the photo below, by the way.

There is a couple of common fridge in the kitchen too. The common areas looked well maintained overall.
Everyone has a private room just like other share houses. The size is about 6-tatami or around 10 sqm. I am not sure how old this entire building is but the interior design is probably renovated. The Thomas’s room looked new and clean. Good job looking for good furniture. It is his selection of furniture.
He told me that he had to buy all the basic furniture by himself when he moved in because the furniture doesn’t come with the room. That part might be a bit troublesome but it is nice that you get to buy all the furniture you want.
This below is how his room looks like.

We played a couple of video games that he has in his room. Thomas is actually known to be a game lover. Maybe more of a collector. These are the only a tiny bit of game discs he owns. He has three of these game binders in his room and that’s only half of what he actually owns. The rest is left in his house in France. I couldn’t believe it. I have never seen anyone who have this many games in my life. Look at how thick this binder is!

Game disks are not the only ones he collect. He has many game consoles too. X-box, Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch, Wii U, Wii… that’s why his drawer is filled with controllers!

Owning this many games was my childhood dream. I used to have a cousin who’s family was doing a game reseller business. I always envied him for being able to test out all the new games for free.
I used to play games often too. Well, I grew up in the 90s. Family computer, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Playstation. It was the golden age of gaming even though the graphics aren’t as good as now. All the great games were born around those times. I literally spent most of my time on gaming as a kid as hanging out with friends meant “playing games” without a question.
Visiting Thomas on that day reminded me of those good old days when playing games was all the fun we had.
Well, now I’ve got uncle Thomas and I know where to find him.

Just last week I got EPSON home projector in Tachikawa Garden Town. There’s a rental program on EPSON’s official website. This program is for those people who are considering to purchase their projector but eager to test it for a few days. Even though there are so many affordable projectors on Amazon nowadays, buying home projector, especially the one with high resolution, is a big expense. This rental program is only for 5 days but it was just enough to see how it is.

The projector I tested “Dreamio EH-TW5650”

This is actually something I wanted to try for a long time but I wasn’t too sure if fits well in my apartment. Although the Oak Apartment “Tachikawa Garden Town” is big enough to project something as big as 100 inches on the wall, I still wanted to test if there’s a right space for the projector itself.

Buying TV set was something I wasn’t sure

Ever since I moved in Tachikawa Garden Town in March, I’ve been thinking about what to buy for the apartment. Even though I don’t know how long I’m going to stay here, this is going to be a place where I raise my first kid (for at least a few years). I wanted to make this place as comfortable as possible. However, buying TV set was always something I wasn’t sure. Firstly, it costs. Big TVs like 40-50 inches are very affordable nowadays. My little brother got 50 inches 4K display for 80,000 yen. This is something unbelievable 5 years ago. Still, it’s a big expense and to be honest, I don’t think I cared so much about 4K display.
Then I came up with this idea of installing home projector instead of buying TV sets. These are the reasons why I think this is a good idea.

Saving space

Even if I live in an apartment twice as big as Tachikawa Gardentown I would still hesitate to buy TV sets just because I’d be putting extra stuff in the room. I like the idea of minimalism. Owning less stuff is actually about gaining more. Besides, owning a big TV set means owning a big TV board too. Setting up a projector, on the other hand, does not require any instrument on the wall side. Some people choose to buy white screens for a projector but I knew I don’t need one because the wall in Tachikawa Gardentown is so white that it actually works as a screen.

The white wall of Tachikawa Garden Town

Even bigger screen than TVs

I usually don’t watch TV programs at all but I like watching movies. I even have an annual membership that I pay a couple of thousand yen a year for watching discounted movies at a local movie theater. I know now is an era of Netflix and other streaming services but watching good movies on a big screen is something fundamentally different from watching movie on a smartphone. Good movies deserve to be seen on a big screen.

This is as big as 120-inch. Much bigger than the most expensive TVs in the market.

Great thing about home projector is that the size of the screen can be adjusted. As long as you have a white wall and some distance from the wall, even making it 120-inch screen is doable. 120-inch TV does not exist. Even if there is it’d be very expensive. I thought home projector is actually cost effective if I want to watch something on a big screen.

It is as beautiful as high definition TVs

As far as I remember, projectors were not really built for beautiful movie scenes. It is for business where someone needs to show something to a large number of people at once. In a business situation, image quality does not matter much. This was the impression of a projector until I knew about projectors for home use. I did not know there are such things exist in the first place.

This is how I installed the projector. In Tachikawa Garden Town, there’s a small storage space above the sofa space which is perfect for installing a projector.

I tested EPSON’s mid-range home projector “Dreamio EH-TW5650” and the quality of the image literally blew me away. The projection was so clear and beautiful that I instantly thought I don’t need TV if I have this little machine. If you have the same impression toward projectors like me, I strongly recommend to try one for yourself.

A high quality projector is actually futuristic

This is the editor side of me talking. Projecting something on the house wall is a futuristic design. I really think the high quality projectors can replace TVs in the near future. For now, buying TV for a living room is so natural that no one even thinks about buying a projector in the first place. I bet these time will change. In some cool museums, there are projectors with Microsoft Kinect to make their displays interactive. I think this is how future home will look like combined with Amazon Echo or something.

For those who are interested in testing projectors at home, here’s the link. It’s all in Japanese but you can basically rent a high quality projector for 5 days for 3,000 yen.

Epson rental projectors
https://www.epson.jp/products/dreamio2/rental/

The house I tested: Tachikawa Garden Town