03.23.2026 I love my room in London too much

House hunting in London is a battlefield.
Unlike in Japan, where real estate agents introduce you to a variety of properties, it feels more like the person looking to rent is the one being 'chosen'.

After moving three times in five years, I am now living very comfortably in my fourth flat, but the journey to get here has been full of lessons.

In my next paid article, I plan to summarize in detail the specific methods, stories of failure, and items you absolutely must check when looking for an ideal room in London.

Before that, this article is just me bragging about my current room. lol

Since my family home was in Tokyo, moving to London was my first time living alone and searching for a place to live.

In London, unless you have a mid-level or higher salary at your company, it is difficult to rent a place entirely for yourself, so a flatshare is the only option.
There are layouts called studios, which are like one-room apartments in Japan, but the rent is so high that you could never live there as a student or part-time worker.

(There seem to be different kinds of hardships if you are sent here on an expat assignment, but I will omit that here.)

I arrived in 2021, which was the second year of COVID, so I didn't have the luxury of viewing places in person, and I moved directly into a room I had viewed remotely from Japan.

My first time living alone.
I remember being excited rather than lonely by the quiet time I couldn't experience at my parents' house, thinking, 'How luxurious and free this is.'

Luckily, the landlords of my first flat were very kind people, and they were very good to me when I had just arrived from Japan and didn't know my left from my right.
They prepared simple food for my quarantine period right after I arrived, showed me the nearby supermarkets, and even threw a Christmas party.

However, as I heard stories from others later, this experience seems quite rare, and it seems that in flatshares where you live with the landlord, you often struggle with the relationship with the landlord and the many house rules.

My second and third rooms were also decided based on where I wanted to live and the environment I wanted, so I have many good memories of each.

However, my current fourth room is ideal in every way—location, rent, hygiene, and environment—and every time I tell friends or colleagues about it, they are surprised, saying, 'Is there really a house with such good conditions?!'

I think half of it is that I am very lucky with house hunting.
And I think the other half definitely depends on 'how you look for a room'.

When I viewed my current room, I heard there were about five other people viewing it, and dozens of people had already dropped out at the inquiry stage.

I felt a strange 'click' when I viewed the room I decided on, so I'll tell you about that time.

The woman who was the previous tenant showed me around. She was a wonderful person from the first impression, and although the room, full of her things that hadn't been packed up yet, couldn't exactly be called tidy, it was a warm space surrounded by many paintings and plants, and I liked it at first sight.

After I finished looking around, she suddenly said, 'There's a reason why I'm leaving this room...', and I intuitively sensed what she meant.

When I said, "What...!!!" in surprise,

"I'm having a baby in six months,"

she told me happily.

"Congratulations!!! That's so wonderful!! You're going to be a great mother!!!" I said, feeling as if I had been given a share of her happiness.

She had that kind of warm, embracing quality about her from the very beginning.
It made perfect sense why I had been instantly drawn to that room.

There were other people viewing the room, so they told me they would discuss it with the other flatmates and get back to me, and that was the end of the day.

The next day, they got back to me sooner than expected, saying, "Everyone welcomes you!"

Whether you call it luck or fate,
these wonderful encounters and unexpected opportunities happen, and since coming to London, I feel more and more that each and every one of them is precious and irreplaceable.