Have you ever had to leave an apartment in Japan and worried if any of your deposit money would come back because of the damage your furniture has done to the flooring? Well, fear not.
Sometimes the little scratches on hardwood floors can be filled in using a brown or black wax-like crayon sold in hardware stores or Tokyu Hands (called Kakurenbo). Simply match the color of crayon to your flooring (using a cellphone camera for a picture is handy), and shave off a few centimeters of the wax. Press the wax into the scratch. Then, using a flat surface (like the edge of a ruler), shave the filled-in scratch so that the filled-in portion is level with the floor. Then shine with an old rag.
It might sound like a lot of effort, but two hours of work on our floor (scratched up heavily by chair legs) made the scratches invisible. We saved over Y30,000 in reflooring costs, making for a much higher recoup on our deposit. At Y15,000/hour, that’s not a bad investment of time. The wax crayon, by the way, retails for about Y400.