Hello. This is Machiyama from Monosus Thailand.
This may be a sudden question, but what kind of house do you live in?
A minimalist room with few possessions and well-cleaned. A room for someone who loves clothes and has turned the entire place into a vintage clothing store. A charming wooden house with a garden that is many years old... There are as many spaces and lives there as there are people who live there.
This time, I would like to talk about the way of perceiving space and the sense of life that I noticed while living in Thailand.
Dreams of living that swell from the building
When I was little, I loved sorting through the piles of flyers tucked between newspapers, choosing only the ones that looked interesting, then carefully examining each one of the ones that were selected as "needed." My favorite among them was a flyer with a blueprint of a building on it.
I think many people will read this story and think, "Oh, that happens to me too!"
So what on earth do people do when they look at a building flyer? Needless to say, it's fantasizing. If only they could live in the house depicted in the flyer... the living room would be more spacious, they could put in a big TV, and even if they put in a bed, they would still have plenty of room in their own room... etc. Basically, what they imagine is the fantasy that by moving into that house, they could achieve their ideal life that is currently unfulfilled. They enjoyed reflecting their ideal life, with their dissatisfaction with their current situation resolved, on the blueprint depicted in the flyer.
I was born and raised in Tokyo, so I had never left my parents' home until I came to Thailand. My parents had never moved, and I remember being jealous of my friends who had moved since I was little. I guess I thought that changing the space you live in was almost the same as changing the way you live. That idea hasn't changed even as I've grown up, and I think there are many people who continue to hold the same idea. But does changing where you live actually change the way you live?
The feeling of inside and outside in Thailand
It is common to see houses with a shop on the first floor and living space on the second floor and above.
I think "lifestyle" is a word that includes the way one lives one's daily life, one's attitude toward life, the things that one values in life, and so on.
Different cultures result in different ways of living, as well as different underlying basic personalities and characteristics.
What I often think about the fundamental character of Thai people is that they don't put up many walls. This may be true of gender barriers, but there aren't that many barriers between people, and they don't put up that many barriers between strangers, and I feel like people are much closer to each other than Japanese people. For example, when I'm at the bus terminal, the local aunties and men will ask me, "Where are you going?" and they will kindly explain everything to me so that I don't get lost. They also share food very well. When Thai staff members eat sweets, they almost always hand them out to everyone. They even come to the desk to do that. I can understand staff members, but when I was eating gummy candy at the bus stop waiting area, a Thai stranger called out to me and asked for it, or when I went to an exhibition at a gallery, a girl sitting nearby suddenly shared her sweets with me, and I feel like there are really no barriers. I feel that this feeling is not only expressed to people, but in all aspects.
For example, regarding clothing. Many people in jobs where they have to dress appropriately at work, including part-timers and probably full-time employees, wear the uniform of their workplace to work from home. The same goes for sales clerks at high-end department stores. The name of the department store is embroidered on the chest of the uniform, so you can tell at a glance where they work. Japanese people have a strong sense that their time outside of work is their private time, so I think it's rare for them to wear a uniform that reveals where they work.
And the difference is also reflected in the perception of space. For example, you often see people sitting on the ground in the corners of buildings. This is different from people who work by sitting in the same place for long periods of time, and is a way for people to take a break between work or kill time. Many Japanese people seem to think that sitting outside is dirty, but I think this feeling is not as strong as in the Japanese.
A loud exercise session held every Friday in a space next to a supermarket close to my house.
The people participating were not particularly cool, but had a very normal attitude. They didn't seem to care at all about the looks they received from passersby.
Also, condominiums are being built at a tremendous pace these days, but despite the fact that they are new buildings, almost no Thai homes are equipped with screen doors. When I was in Japan, I thought that screen doors were a given, but after doing a little research, I found out that Japan is the only country overseas where screen doors are as standard. In Thailand, it's summer all year round, there are a lot of mosquitoes, and I want to open the windows to ventilate, but I thought this might also be a difference from the Japanese sense of the strong sense of the boundary between inside and outside.
Differences between Thai and Japanese ceilings
On a slightly different note, living in Thailand, I feel that there are many spaces with high ceilings. In Japan, ceilings are generally low. In Japan, the minimum ceiling height for a room is set at 2.1m, and the ceiling height of the apartment building where my parents live, built during the height of the bubble economy, was also 2.1m (it's the minimum for a room, so the ceiling height in the hallways may be even lower). That means that you can touch the ceiling with just a little jump, and if you're a tall man, you can reach it without jumping by just reaching out your hand.
In my previous job, I was looking for and introducing nice office properties, and while many people want high ceilings to create a sense of openness, the reality in Japan is that it's rare to find one with a ceiling height of 3m. 2.5m is good enough, but if the ceiling is 3m, it will be a popular property that attracts a lot of people. However, in Thailand, such properties are common, so I'm really envious.
In the shopping malls and cafes that I regularly visit, there are very few spaces where I feel like the ceilings are low; generally the ceilings are high and semi-open, creating an open feeling that suits the temperament of Thai people.
About the building that contains Monotai
The office where Monosus Thailand is currently located is in a building called Naiipa Art Complex . Naiipa means "in the forest," and the owner's family has left all the trees they planted 30 to 40 years ago on land inherited from their grandparents' generation. The building was designed to surround the old trees, so you can see greenery wherever you look. The office has a 3m high ceiling and a large opening that allows you to see the greenery on the premises to the fullest. The impact of the space is quite large, and I feel like I'm less likely to accumulate stress when working in such a space.
You can see that it was built around a quaint tree.
Has it changed? Wall thickness
When I first decided to come to Thailand, I was excited because it was my first time moving and living alone, and also because it was a great chance to change myself all at once by changing the country I live in. However, it wasn't like something would change all at once just by changing the environment, and I recently realized that it takes time for something to gradually seep into me as a result of receiving new stimulation, and for you to change.
It has been about two and a half years since I came to Thailand, and these days I feel like the walls between me and other people have become a little thinner than before.