Transcript
Speaker: That's the canned coffee, your hand. I don't want to click the air horns, but cheers. Cheers. Where are we recording from today, Joey? We're in the dining room of the new Tokyo property. Let's go. We're calling it Tama Base Camp. It's located in Tama City. Tokyo Base Camp. Tokyo Base Camp. Yeah. Tokyo Base Camp. So this is day one. We literally got the keys this morning. We had our buddy George come to film like our first look at the house. Joey, how's the how's the house feel? It feels good. It's, it's very clean. It's turnkey property. So it was renovated.
Speaker: I think they just finished the renovation in May, so only less than a month ago. I couldn't stop comparing it to Beppu, even if we had our friend George here earlier, and I feel like I kept making the comparisons back and forth with the Beppu property, even though George has never seen the Beppu property, but yeah, just stark contrast. Yeah, just context again. I know we've probably said it over and over again, but we're in Thomas city, which is about 30 minutes by train west of Tokyo. We'll talk more about how. surprising it was to get here. The property itself, we bought for 114 ,000 US dollars. Let's go to exchange rates, especially good right now. I think it's like one to 160 now. The property itself was built in 1971. It's about a thousand square feet into here and 2 ,500 square foot lot, which is dope. We're sitting on lawn chairs right now, or more like camping chairs.
Speaker: onopable On a memory foam rug yeah in the dining room with just a bunch of like crap, crap, the internet stuff, like the router and the router box and an Amazon box. This is about all the furniture we have. hi So context of the scene, we walked up, it's f freaking hot right now in Japan. We met our friend George again and. The first negative impression is we didn't realize like we're pretty far up on a hill. We were like, oh, it's about a 20 -minute walk from the station. Didn't look up at the elevation gain. ah we Some of the advice we usually give is you should see some the place and in person before you buy it. We did not take that advice again, unfortunately, Joey. Twice in a row. It's OK. I think we we scored, I think, a gem. But it is much further away from the station, much harder to get to than we initially anticipated, which changes plans a little bit, right?
Speaker: Yeah, we thought we were going to be able to cycle to the station. We're like, Oh, okay. 30 minute walk, but only a 11 minute cycle. But the hill is way steeper than we thought it was going to be. And it's so hot out. You would be drenched in sweat just walking up this hill, let alone cycling up this hill. So we're thinking about an e -bike problem with the e -bike. The road is busy, almost like a lightness highway. Mm -hmm. Yeah, we, we took the bus to the nearest stop and then we met our buddy George and we walked like literally five minutes to the road and we were like drenched in sweat. So tough, but you know, when we came across the house, it was as expected. What's cool about this house is it's elevated. So it's elevated on this, like, I don't know, perched up on a, for it looks like a fort almost, right? Yeah, very fortress there, like from the street.
Speaker: There's this retaining wall. You walk up the stand and the retaining wall is cool. It looks like a rock one rock climbing wall. The way it was built, there's these stones poking out of it, almost like ah those bouldering walls. I actually bolded a little bit on it just for fun climbing up halfway, but you look up at the house and then the house is on top of that. So the retaining wall goes up and then it plateaus and the house is on that plateau or Mesa, as they say in the Southwest. And we actually we got the car. So the car officially arrived yesterday. Unfortunately, we don't have insurance yet. But the car looks pristine. It's parked in our garage. We'll do a more in -depth video tour of it. We bought it for $2 ,800. And now we're just trying to figure out insurance. But awesome that we had it locked and loaded.
Speaker: Um, we'll get the insurance in a day or so. the last The last time I did it was quite quick. Yeah. Walking up the steps. We noticed there are some cracks in the concrete, which we knew about, but look a little bit worse than we initially thought. I don't know. and Do you feel that way? I don't know a lot about concrete stuff. I'm optimistic that it's not a big deal. Yeah. And I want to say I have no idea. Okay. We walked up to the house and we got the keys. We walked in, looked around first impressions on the outside, Joey.
Speaker: out Outside. Okay. So a lot of plants like jungly, the jungle is moving in just over the, I feel like the month where we've been looking at pictures of the house sent to us by the real estate agent, the jungle is moving in. It does seem, so this house was abandoned for 10 years and there were trees in our yard. When we saw the pictures, they had got rid of the trees and defied. the whole yard. And now upon closer inspection, we can see that they, yeah, they did get rid of the trees, but it looks like they put down some sort of those black mats you put down to stop the weeds from growing up. They did that, put the gravel on top, but these weeds are poking straight through that. And some of these vines that are poking through, they're, they're real like Tarzan kind of jungly almost. They're strong. They're strong. Looking back, we're, we're sitting right on the living room and like,
Speaker: Right behind me, there's like a forest of jungle that isn't it looking to encroach. So nature is no joke here in Japan, I think from a vegetation perspective, right? That's America right there. American laws apply. Is it Japan right there? and Right there is America. Yeah. So we're right next to a US military golf course directly behind us or neighbors with the US military golf course. And yeah, their their plants are overgrown. and coming into our zone. um maybe we Maybe we sue the US Marines, the Marine Corps. and But opening are are we opening up, we we opened the doors and we took a look inside like overall, man, I'm i'm very, very happy we bought a turnkey renovated spot versus a true, truly abandoned house.
Speaker: Yeah, it's just, um, yeah, way back. I mean, that boo was fun, but it's been a contract. So I was, I've been there twice for semi extended periods and yeah, it's like living in a construction zone. It's nice. I like that boo a lot, but you know, there's something different about moving, being in the place right now. We can set it up right away. The way we want it is the thing. Whereas bet, but we started setting stuff up. but We got to take it down again for the construction, et cetera. Yeah. Our real estate agent, Yoshi was an absolute fucking legend here. He, so in our last episode, we talked a little bit about Amazon. We, Joey spent like.
Speaker: three to $4 ,000 on Amazon stuff. And with that, we have like quite literally a hundred Amazon boxes. Yeah. A room full, basically a normal Western bedroom sized room full of Amazon boxes. And our real estate agent, Yoshi, he brought them all in from the doorstep, including like bed frames, mattresses, and put them all in a room for us. So Yoshi, if you're listening to this, you're the man. Yeah. And we're, we're, we're trying to work on, uh, bringing Yoshi on board with us too, and and hopefully connect more people with him because he's been such a rock star just with everything, setting up internet utilities, handling all kinds of ACEs. He got some ACEs installed for us, et cetera. We are trying to work out some sort of relationship where, yeah, we can push more clients towards him because he's been great.
Speaker: He project managed installing five new air conditionings in our, in our house. And thank God we did that. Holy crap. He also did a scheduled cleaning service for us scheduled internet speeds. We just hallelujah. We have a hunt. We got it. fiber optic gig internet speed. It was, we weren't sure if we were going to be able to record this podcast because, um, the wifi setup was, was daunting to say the least. I don't know how you pulled that off. It was like in the last couple minutes on the clock and my talking, you know, made it work. And then, uh, Japanese outlets don't have a ground, uh,
Speaker: You know, you look at a Western outlet, it's got the two slats on top and then the third ground prong. Um, and our road caster for the podcast comes with a cord that has that ground prong. So we have to like Jimmy Riggs some electrical together to even record the podcast. But, uh, yeah, we got working. Overall though it does quality of the build seems okay. It's not the highest quality finishes. And as we poke around, we noticed stuff's done well, but. For all intents and purposes, we got such a good location. I think from a light perspective, we have so many windows, a lot of privacy, considering we're in Tokyo, Tokyo. I think we're we're quite far from neighbors and so far we've met one neighbor. one neighbor You said hi to one.
Speaker: Yeah. Next door. Yeah. Way further from neighbors than our bamboo spot and probably 90 % of Tokyo. but Yeah. I saw, went outside. We actually had a lot of visitors today one time. So I went outside postman came, but I, yeah, I saw one of the neighbors in the window and I did the proper greeting said. Konnichiwa loud and clear kind of thing, which yeah I think is good for any foreigners moving to Japan. Like definite definitely make sure you say hi to everybody when you see them just so loud. Konnichiwa, confident Konnichiwa said that to the neighbor and she smiled and nodded her head to me. She didn't say anything back, but tentative, good sign, optimistically, good sign. We're going to bring some fruit or omiyage or something to the neighbors soon to just introduce ourselves. so
Speaker: That's our number one question. I think we, or one of the number one questions we get is like, how do you, how do the, how does the neighborhood feel about people moving in? I understand like this used to be literally a dump, like this house, again, we'll post some photos of what it used to look like, but vegetation overgrown. So I think they will be happy and welcoming that we're here. Of course we're foreigners. So to Joey's point, you want, we got to make sure we're respectful and also properly introducing ourselves and bringing some gifts over. I think we'll make a big difference. What should we get? Should we get fruits? I think fruits don't move. Fruits are pretty safe. Yeah. Yeah. we're So we're 20 minutes from Costco highlight. So hopefully we'll go to Costco, get some apples, peaches, or something. Go make the rounds, introduce ourselves. Hopefully we'll be driving. It'll be like Beppu kind of driving everywhere. Yeah, hopefully. I mean, we're waiting on insurance. So car insurance wise, we made the purchase. The car is in the garage, but we can't yet drive it. I think everyone has told us.
Speaker: definitely do not drive without insurance. So that seems to be a, don't risk it, right? Yeah, I was hoping that they're, so there's like combini drivers insurance, but that's really just, if you're, I mean, you have your car, it's just insured in your name, but you want your friend to drive it. Your friend pays, I don't know, 800 yen for the day and they get this combini drivers insurance. And I was hoping we could get something like that, but yeah, it doesn't seem like that's the right move. What would you rate? this deal now that we're sitting like we're literally sitting here you knew how much money we paid in our location like what would you give this from a a to f rating scale but actually let's do this two segments like one location i think our location is pros and cons right tokyos i'd say over -populated in central tokyo now so i actually am happy we're not in the thick of it but
Speaker: We're also really far away from a station. So what do you, what would you give our location from a long -term livability perspective? Okay. Two. Okay. I agree with you on the distance from the station. The other thing about getting to and from downtown Tokyo is. ah the The express train, which isn't the whole time I was saying, okay, express train, just got to time it properly. But the other issue is that at rush hour, everyone's getting on that express train. It was, we, we got into Narita yesterday and we probably got onto the expression around 5 p .m. start of rush hour. And yeah, it was quite packed, not for too, too long, but yeah, it was like one of those packed trains for sure.
Speaker: But it seems like there's a lot of trains running and we'll we'll keep you posted. But I think it's where we're pretty close to central Tokyo. I think 30 minutes again by that express train. The problem is we are far from the train station from walking, biking, but driving. We found that there were a lot of parking spots for cheap and and near the station. They're around 1 ,500 yen, which translates to $10 for old day parking, which is pretty, pretty damn good, right? Okay. I thought about it. I'm going to give the location a B. I was debating between a C, yeah but so I would consider downtown Tokyo an A. The con is that downtown Tokyo is super crowded, but you know, location, location, location. I would still give it an A. And then I thought about like Musashi Sakai, which is, I don't know, let's just call it roughly halfway between downtown Tokyo and where we are right now. That's where we went to school. I would also give that an A, one because it's less crowded. It is not downtown Tokyo, but it is less crowded. So the location there is still pretty good. So that being said, downtown Tokyo A halfway between us, A
Speaker: I don't think I could really give this a C. i would so i would If anything, B -. I'm gonna say B -. I would go with a B, a solid B. just because if we were really Let's say we're here for a year. I think this is a much more livable location. I love city life, but also the same time. like It's too much. I really appreciate it. Again, we're on the 2 ,500 square foot lot. We're pretty far away from neighbors here. We have privacy because we have a garage. The drivability is quite good too. i was I want to cook more. I think we both want to cook more. We've been eating out a lot and in Japan, which is awesome food, but also just not sustainable, I think, over time. this is a From a long -term livability, I give us a B. Even though a walkability, I would give us a C.
Speaker: Yeah, right the minus for me, I said B minus and that minus comes from the walkability, dragging it down a little bit. Yeah. So you need to drive everywhere here ish, I think, but also don't mind, especially for working remotely and just focusing on being in in Japan. I think if you still have all the amenities here, it is a little bit of a drive, but. ah I give us a B, but from an Airbnb perspective, that will be tough to just to rent this place out, right? It's just so far. And people want to be doing the stuff in downtown Tokyo. Yeah. We've learned that like one of maybe our our target groups here is military housing. We're doing a presentation this Saturday at Yokota Airbase, and I think we should get their opinions on rentability here. We're going to try to furnish this and make this more like a monthly rental, um maybe for digital nomads or something. but
Speaker: I guess we have to keep pivoting plants here. Definitely maybe not an Airbnb, but with the location being B, I'd say pretty, I mean, not, not, not the best, not the worst.
Speaker: Yep. Okay. B B minus the score of the house, not including distance from downtown Tokyo or walkability or location. A A. Yep. I agree. Considering what we paid the, we literally just ordered all this stuff here and we were going to sleep here tonight. I definitely give it an A. ah The floors are redone. The walls are everything is livable, which we didn't really expect. And I don't know how many of these deals are out there, but. We do intend to contact whoever flipped these plays and see if there's more because I think this is a really for a foreigner who doesn't want to do. I wouldn't have, after seeing this, I would say this is like a little more easy mode and much more comfortable than the way we went about our, our first Akia purchase.
Speaker: I didn't expect JLUX to be like, I didn't expect it to be a full, fully renovated by the time we got there, but I did expect more of the process that we did today. Just like immediately livable, that kind of thing. Honestly, it wasn't for anyone that's listened to this. I really like the yard here. I think that it feels much more open compared to see Lux, a property we also made ah an offer on, but didn't get. Yeah. If you go see it, Takei, it is, I would say night and day, a lot darker really neighbors, very close. And I feel like that made it a lot darker and a lot more closed in neighbors because of the neighbors being very close. And there is even a debate of whether we could even park a bicycle in front. That's true.
Speaker: And here we've got a garage. Yeah. I love how we're perched up and we really do get a different, doesn't feel like Tokyo. Actually. Yeah. It really do feel like we're in, we are in the suburbs for sure. But again, to say we're in Tokyo and we have the space away from our neighbors, we have giant windows in every room. We hear the birds jumping behind us. I think overall pretty. Yeah. we I mean, we back into a park. We can't access the park. That's where the Marines live, but we we back into it. It's quiet. Yeah. So. Yeah. I mean, like raising a family here or like working, living here long -term, I think I don't, we don't need to go into central Tokyo. We don't need to go into the New York city every, every day. I think two or three times a week is more than enough. And yeah, I'm personally very, very excited ah to live a, what's the right word? Suburban. A little bit like, yeah, chiller diet, workout more. I don't know. but Let's see. We haven't really explored the area. It is again, day one, but.
Speaker: I'm excited we don't have to interview contractors or anything like that. For sure. I think there's going to be some small stuff we'll do, but again, I think this is immediately livable now. Overall, both combined the scores, I'd say this is a B plus. Yep. Yep. I would agree. B plus, um, Takei, uh, thankfully pushed for ACs almost in every room. bro yeah I was just like, yeah, sure. Why not? Kind of thing. But oh man, a hundred percent needed. yep Honestly, like when did we do?
Speaker: Jay Lux, when did we October? yeah Yeah, that was, that was nice. Actually temperature wise, this is very nice for anyone else thinking this. If you're not trying to push to get ACs installed, there's no ACs installed already, but man, doing this in the summer with no AC would be gnarly fall, fall, winter, sp spring. I mean, even winter's cold. but Yeah. So we have, these are all heaters. So we literally have six split unit heater slash ACs. We have a balcony, man. I'm excited about the balcony. We have. four quote unquote rooms. We're going to, we're going to again, do a video tour and show you around. But yeah, I couldn't, couldn't be happier actually from, I can't believe we got everything set up in time. We, we literally entered the door like six hours ago. What's that music? Yeah, you hear the music? Yeah. What is that? Ice cream truck?
Speaker: I don't know, a friend even listens to music playing. at And she's a vocal, they did this a lot. like Sometimes it's the school, sometimes it's just closing time music. I hear the perks. Anyways, there's there's some music playing over some speakers outside, but very chime -y music. Yeah. All right, Joey. I think we got a lot of work to do. We still got to open the beds up, make the furniture. We've been pre -cooling some of the rooms, but I'm, I'm, I'm excited to make this place homey next. We just need a car. We need a damn car so we can start driving. Yeah, I know. All right. Anything else from you?
Speaker: I mean, I'm sure we'll record another podcast soon cool and while we're here, but yeah, I mean, it was fun today. Today was tiring, but fun. I'm excited to start having the rooms come together right now. There's no room set up. yeahp Everything's a mess. We're still unboxing, but it'll start coming together soon. We'll come back. it It'll come together so soon. We learned a lot after doing JLUX. We got chairs right away. We got lamps right away, kitchen stuff. Who knows the Joey he ordered. he He was the curator of the ordering. If you need ah Amazon zero to furnish list, he's got one we'll we'll post it at some point, but I think we didn't miss. Only thing we missed are pillows. Pillows. Which we can go get. Drill bits. Drill bits, yeah. We got vacuum from Makita, sponsored by Makita, a ton of Makita stuff.
Speaker: I think we're, we're set up. Let's, let's get this car insurance. We'll go check out Ikea. Um, overall very, very happy. Would recommend anyone listening to try to actually find a turnkey property, even though again, it's not how we would have done it. It's, it's way more comfortable to just come into this versus like a piece of crap. So very true. All righty. Cool, man. Just eat them. Congratulations. We made it. All right. All right.
