There’s living small and then there’s living small – and Emma Felice, can show you how it’s done. Her apartment is a tiny eight square metres in Tokyo, and narrow enough that she can touch both walls at once.

Even for Tokyo her apartment is particularly tiny. She chose to live there because of its split levels – there’s a loft to separate the sleeping and living areas – its proximity to a train line and its availability on a month-to-month contract, handy when juggling visa time limits.

It also has a small balcony, ideal for her plants, and still somehow managed to be bigger than her last place. It costs 69,000 yen – approximately $800 – a month.

And it does have nearly everything you could ask for – a kitchen (of sorts), a bathroom, a bed and some living space. Admittedly the toaster oven and microwave don’t quite fit in the kitchen – they’re near the front door on a cabinet, which also stores her dishes and fry pan.

She has a table that she uses for a variety of activities – applying her make-up and working on her laptop – and the living area has a small chair and has just – just – enough room to exercise.

The toilet in the bathroom is concealed beneath the basin, which needs to be swung out to access it.

Emma tells Domain that one of the biggest challenges she’s found is being surrounded by so many things she wants to buy.

“You have to be very conscious of what you’re purchasing, and have a solid plan for it at home otherwise you will run out of space really fast”, she says.

“Minimal is good, as you begin to value every centimetre of space you have.”

It’s also important to get out of the house every day. At the start, she explains, she found the apartment’s size fairly liberating, but “over time the space feels smaller and smaller”.

In winter it’s more difficult to create a sense of space because it’s too cold to have the door open, and it can get stuffy inside.

And there’s the issue of cooking in a tiny kitchen. With one stovetop element, no oven and no bench space, preparing meals has required some adaptations. She says that she and her friends also “fantasise” about baking.

“If we know someone with an oven they are immediately a close friend,” she says.

On the upside, having guests around isn’t completely out of the question. Emma has had visitors during the day, and a friend stay overnight, downstairs on a spare futon that had to be “folded over her like a burrito”.

Emma is a freelance English teacher, actor, model and YouTuber with her own channel, and her long-term plan is to stay in Japan while studying Japanese. She is, however, ready to move on from her tiny apartment.

She thinks she’s learned a lot from living there: “I don’t need many material things to be happy, and that it is possible to avoid clutter.” And, she adds, from now on she’ll value having more space.

But would apartments of this size work in Australia’s increasingly dense cities of Sydney or Melbourne? “I do think they are a great idea, as long as they are well engineered and well lit and ventilated”, Emma says.

“Unfortunately my building is directly opposite another apartment complex, so I get no direct sunlight. Us Aussies need our sun!”

Emma has made two video tours of her apartment – one when she just moved in, and one several months later with the apartment fully furnished. Both demonstrate the constraints of living in a such a confined space, and how a clever tenant can work around them.