Depot Angel: Japanese company sells pre-fabricated basements (video)

Monday, January 4th, 2010

Dr. Serkan Toto currently works as the first and only Asia-based writer for the TechCrunch network, mainly covering Japan-related technology and web companies for TechCrunch, CrunchGear and MobileCrunch. Serkan also works full-time as an independent web and mobile industry consultant with a focus on the Japanese market. He is sept-lingual, holds an MBA and is a PhD in economics. Serkan... → Learn More

depot_angel

About a year ago, I blogged about Yamaha’s portable room that you could set up in bigger rooms to have your well-deserved quiet time. And now another Japanese company called Tamada brings us something similar: The Depot Angel [JP] (what a name), a pre-fabricated basement that can be, again, used to enjoy some alone time, as a storage room or as anything you’d like it to be.

The main idea is to create additional space for Japanese households at relatively affordable prices. Seeing that real estate in Japan is (generally speaking) pretty expensive, it might make sense for some families in this country to get one Depot Angel and bury it under their house.

depot_angel_2

The female buyer you can see in the (Japanese) video below says her “artificial” basement is ideal for storing rice and vegetables as the room is relatively warm in winter and cool in summer. Tamada got the inspiration for the basements from those underground tanks gas stations use.

A Depot Angel that offers between 4.6 and 6.1sqm of space costs $21,000, whereas the top model (23sqm) has a price tag of $107,000. Buyers can choose between four different models, which range from 770 kg to over a ton in weight.

Here’s a video (in Japanese):

Via Japan Probe

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