Olivia Burrell, a 32-year-old Canadian gospel singer, was fed up with living in Lilliputian studio apartments in Tokyo where she could see (and smell) her kitchen from her bed.
32岁的加拿大福音歌手奥莉维亚•波瑞尔(Olivia Burrell)再也无法忍受自己在东京的蜗居，她躺在床上，都能看到自己的厨房并闻到厨房里传来的味道。
Three months ago, she took the plunge and moved in with five Japanese women living in a spacious 6-bedroom apartment in Harajuku, a buzzy neighborhood in the city center.
三个月前，奥莉维亚经过一番考虑，大胆地决定和五个日本女人一起住进原宿(Harajuku)一套有六个卧室的大房子里，那里是位于东京市中心的一个繁华街区。
But, so far, her roommate experience hasn't quite been the Japanese version of 'Friends' she had envisioned. Ms. Burrell walked into the kitchen one evening to find no fewer than eight separate bottles of dishwashing liquid on the kitchen counter, all neatly lined up and labeled with their owners' names.
但到目前为止，她的合租生活没有成为美剧《六人行》('Friends')的日本版。一天晚上，奥莉维亚走进厨房，发现操作台上立着至少八瓶洗涤液，摆得整整齐齐，上面还写着拥有者的名字。
'My roommates are neat and very courteous,' says Ms. Burrell, who has lived in Japan for seven years and who had lived with roommates in Canada. 'But this whole concept is new here, and people don't naturally want to share things as much.'
“我的室友很爱干净，也非常有礼貌。” 奥莉维亚说道。她已经在日本住了七年，以前在加拿大也跟人一起合租。“但这里的观念跟西方完全不同，人们很自然地都不喜欢共用东西。”
Japan has no real tradition of roommates: People have preferred to live in their own tiny places. Now, fed up with a dearth of desirable, reasonably priced apartments in desirable Tokyo neighborhoods, a growing number of relatively affluent women in their 20s and 30s have started to create demand for a radical new segment of the Japanese real-estate market: apartments to share.
日本没有真正意义上的合租传统，人们喜欢住在自己的小房子里。但现在，由于东京地区缺少条件好、价格合理的公寓，越来越多二十到四十岁经济收入尚可的女性开始自发地形成一个日本房地产的全新领域：合租市场。
The timing of the trend coincides with a glut of upscale apartments in Tokyo, which have flooded the market since the collapse of Lehman Brothers last year. Foreign bankers decamped, leaving behind many three- and four-bedroom apartments, popular with expatriates, which have been vacant for months.
这一趋势正好赶上东京高级公寓的供大于求，2008年雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)倒闭后，这类住宅大量涌入市场，外国银行家纷纷搬家，留下很多三四个卧室的大房子。这类房源以前深受外派人员的青睐，如今却会空置好几个月。