Living in the future! Expat reveals the VERY clever features in her Japanese home

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Living in the future! Expat reveals the VERY clever features in her Japanese home – including retractable shelves, space-saving floor storage and a toilet that uses recycled sink water

  • Expat Caitlin lives in Iwakuni, Japan, and has become a TikTok sensation
  • Caitlin, who is from San Diego, moved to Japan in the summer of 2019 
  • Travel vlogger has shared a series about clever features in her Japanese home 
  • Highlights hacks like under-floor storage and retractable kitchen shelves
  • The videos have had millions of views and won Caitlin thousands of followers 

By Stephanie Linning For Mailonline

Published: | Updated:

An American woman living in Japan has wowed millions of followers with videos revealing the futuristic features of her Japanese home. 

Travel vlogger Caitlin, who is from San Diego, regularly offers her 1.5 million TikTok fans a look inside her ultra-modern two-story house in Iwakuni, which boasts high-tech toilets, space-saving storage in the floor and neat retractable shelves for kitchen appliances. 

The TikTok series, which boasts ten videos, has been watched millions of times thus far – with the first clip alone racking up more than 36 million views. 

Scroll down for more videos 

Space-saving storage under the kitchen floor

Travel vlogger Caitlin, who is from the US, offers her 1.5million TikTok fans a look inside her ultra-modern two-storey house in Iwakuni, Japan, which boasts clever features like retractable kitchen shelves (left) and space-saving under-floor storage (right)

Followers have been blown away by the simple solutions that make the most of the space in the compact home and make life more efficient. 

Giving a tour of the kitchen, Caitlin, who moved to Japan in the summer of 2019, explained that the cooker is optimized for the Japanese diet and includes an automatic ‘rice setting’ on the stove and an in-built fish broiler. 

Next to the stove there is a door with windows that slide up and down to offer ventilation while cooking.  

Followers have been blown away by the simple solutions that make the most of the space in the compact home and make life more efficient. Pictured, a toilet that recycles water from the sink above the cistern to flush

Sliding doors that allow for a compact hallway

Followers have been blown away by the simple solutions that make the most of the space in the compact home and make life more efficient. Pictured, a toilet that recycles water from the sink above the cistern to flush (left) and the sliding doors that allow for a narrow hallway (right)

Shelving under the counter is cleverly designed to extend and retract and are deep enough to fit appliances like the kettle and toaster, allowing them to be kept off the counter and freeing up more space for cooking.  

There is also a hatch in the kitchen floor that serves as storage for long-life dry goods.

Clever space-saving features have also been incorporated into the shower room, which offers space to dry clothes, and the wash closet, which has a toilet that uses water recycled from a sink above the cistern. 

The simple yet effective solutions have proved a hit with fans. One wrote: ‘The Japanese are just better at being human.’

Another wrote: ‘That’s it. After the quarantine I’m moving out to Japan!’

Giving a tour of the kitchen, Caitlin explained that the cooker is optimised for the Japanese diet and includes an automatic 'rice setting' on the stove and an in-built fish broiler (pictured)

Next to the stove there is a door with window panels that lift up and down to allow for ventilation

Giving a tour of the kitchen, Caitlin explained that the cooker is optimized for the Japanese diet and includes an automatic ‘rice setting’ on the stove and an in-built fish broiler (left). Next to the stove there is a door with window panels that lift up and down to allow for ventilation

A third added: ‘Science fiction movies don’t need to take place in the future anymore, just say it’s happening in Japan and we won’t even realize it’s sci-fi.’ 

As well as sharing glimpses inside her futuristic home, Caitlin also regularly documents how her lifestyle in Japan differs from her day-to-day routine in San Diego, where she was living before moving to Asia. 

The travel blogger has since expanded her ‘random things’ series to include Japan as a whole, recently revealing that the majority of people in the country reverse park in order to make things easier when they are leaving their space. 

‘It’s definitely an unspoken rule in Japan to reverse into your parking spots,’ she said. ‘The Japanese culture is actually a like-minded race so they do things on the same page. 

‘And yes, they will wait for you to back into your spot – and have a little less patience if you are reverse parking out of your spot. This creates a really easy flow of traffic in major parking spots and creates ease of evacuation in case of an emergency.’

In a YouTube video, Caitlin revealed that she and her husband had been living on the East Coast before moving to San Diego for his job.