As you start looking for apartments and seeking advice from people who have been in Japan some time now, or even from Japanese people, you might come to (mis)understand that the two kinds of bathrooms available are:
- Separate bath and toilet
- Bath and toilet combined (unit bath)
There isn’t any mistake in this except that, unlike popular belief, the term “unit bath” doesn’t actually mean that the bath and toilet are combined.
Unit bath simply means that the square or rectangular unit is already there when they begin building the interior space, and the contractors just plopped a bath (and often toilet) into the it. That’s what a unit bath is. Otherwise, panels are built separately for a bath and/or toilet which will then not be listed as “UB” in the blueprint. So, be sure to be clear with your housing agent on what you want—separate or combined.
