Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back to the buying a house in Japan relaxation hour. I'm your host, Joey Stockerman. It's joined by my co-host, Taki Kurosawa. Kick back, relax, don't touch the dial, and let's talk about property in Japan.
Speaker: That's really creepy, Joey. We're recording from Yakushima in probably the most scenic spot we've ever recorded podcast from. Definitely. I don't think there's been anything that compares to the view we're looking at right now. We're looking at what is like a huge, it seems like a Hawaii mountain ridge with like a waterfall in front of us with these trees. We're we're basically at a really bougie hotel called Hotel Iwasaki to kind of close out our Japan tour here in the treat yourself moment.
Speaker: What are your initial thoughts, Joey, of Hotel Iwasaki and Yakushima? This is my first time here. So everything is new to me in this past day. Takehead told me it's a lot, looks a lot like Hawaii. I had checked the weather beforehand and I was like, it seems way colder than Hawaii.
Speaker: But upon arriving, I saw a papaya tree, monstera is growing wild here. There's banana trees, there's palm trees. You get the same vegetation as Hawaii. On top of that, you get the coastline and you get these huge ridge mountains kind of in the background. So for anyone that's been to Hawaii, you get the mountains, you get the ocean view and you get the plant life. It really does look like hawaii here we're like sitting on these huge pane windows that go up like 100 feet or whatever and we can see this perfect view what's really creepy about this hotel right now is that we are the only guests here right joey it's very the shining and we have like 20 people staring at us right now just like what are these guys doing in the lobby it's like they're staffed for peak tourist season but it's literally me and take and
Speaker: are the only guests in this 300 person hotel. Actually, there's one other guest here and we went outside at night and just like looked in and we could see it by stuff like what lights were on. And the only other guest is the guest directly next to us in our next room.
Speaker: I don't know why they put us in the rooms beside each other. We had dinner last night in this morning too. both meals we had in the two different dining halls here full of tables it's just us sitting there and then there's like 15 staff members kind of standing behind us just like watching us waiting for us to ask them to get more coffee or something like that it's a little unsettling great service though home to hotel iosaki five out of five stars we'd love to do like a party here we're thinking about maybe doing our next akia mart direct off-site here for are all our agents stay tuned if you're one of our agents
Speaker: But um Joey, what are we here for today? We did a lot in the past three or four days. The whole Nagasaki aspect of our trip made it to Beppu, did a bunch of stuff with the Beppu Hot Spring rental house or JLUX.
Speaker: And then our next stop was Nagasaki for a special project. We purchased a house there. Akia number five in a city called Aigawa. Joey, initial impressions of Aigawa and the Akia purchase.
Speaker: Akia purchase was smooth. We worked with our real estate agent, Mika. I think we have a first video podcast coming out with Mika soon. Check that out. Mika's great. This house that we purchased was her grandparents' house. My initial thoughts on the iGawa location were...
Speaker: kind of lukewarm. I wasn't sure. I'd never been to Nagasaki before. would never been to Aigawa before. It's about 25 minutes outside of Nagasaki. But I kind of had a feeling i knew what to expect. I knew it was going to be a small, you know, we've driven on the highway past so many towns that seem like they're not doing well at all, probably only filled with old people, no jobs there. And I thought that this town would be like that. So I came at this property actually from a low expectation point. But I think it exceeded expectations. Again, southern Japan, bottom of Kyushu. It was not too far of a drive. I think there is a really nice JR train station.
Speaker: For anyone that's been to Japan and been to Shinjuku, it's like, honestly, clusterfuck. Nagasaki, like you could do jumping jacks in the station. It was very, very spacious. Just felt much more livable. So we took our car. We drove from Nagasaki. We were staying downtown and we drove to what is known as Aigawa, about 20 minutes away We showed up and honestly greatly exceeded expectations for this area, I think as a whole. As we kind of drove through a tunnel, we were like met with like this awesome view of what looked like Portugal or maybe even California coastline a little bit.
Speaker: Awesome rocks, awesome islands, great view. was little colder than we thought, but overall, we got to the place and we're like... We scored on this one. But anyways, we we rocked up to the spot. we We'll have a whole video with it, but it's it's awesome. We have a good parking spot. Mika's aunt just moved out last week, so it is well taken care of. i think it's probably the property in the best condition we've purchased thus far.
Speaker: Joey, what are we planning to do with this property? So we're trying to sell this house, trying to really tee it up for whoever's coming in to buy it. Throughout these past 1.5 years, two years that we've been on this Akiya adventure in Japan, we've purchased five homes.
Speaker: We've helped people purchase homes and we've been working on the process for foreigners to make it easier and easier. And with This home purchase, we're trying to explore if we were the sellers of the house, can we make this process even easier? Like what would we do to to really tee up a property? I've been calling it in my own head, the lazy mode button. Maybe that's not the right term to use, buty mode button but but like we already say easy mode for our Acumar Direct buying process. So like this is like easy mode button times 10. True, true. We're really going to be white gloving Except we're not renovating it for you, but we figured whoever's going to come in is going to want to renovate. But the house itself is in good condition, good location, have a parking spot. We're going to be actually selling our minivan with it.
Speaker: Yep. The minivan is included in the price of the house. Originally, I think our big idea, if you've been listening to pod, we call this Nagasaki Crypto House. We are going to be accepting Bitcoin for this. But we also realize like if someone's coming at us with a cash purchase, we're also open. We think we're maybe packing too much if we did crypto. But either way, think of this as if you are wanting to purchase and you need a property manager and a car and have everything set up where you can actually just save a lot of headache by going through this.
Speaker: I think that's kind of our... goal with this Acumart seal of approval property. Yeah, check out the video. We have a video coming out about it that goes over the house as well. We have an interview with Mika and her aunt and her mom talking about the property that they grew up in. Yeah, a lot of benefits coming with a property manager listeners of the podcast. Fumi and Linda have been our property managers in Beppu and Tokyo. And absolutely invaluable. So we're teeing up the property with someone on the ground as well.
Speaker: Joey and talked about this. We really are not trying to mark up and make a ton of money here. We are trying to recoup our costs. Our main goal here is to understand the sales process a little bit better. Joey mentioned with Acumart Direct, we are now helping people buy. We haven't plugged it too much, but we're helping close to i think 60 people currently. We've helped 20 people close. So we are feeling very comfortable with the purchase process. Now it's like, how do we sell a property is kind of the new frontier for us. Yeah, our Akimart direct buying process, I would say it is the easy mo button, but there's still things that, you know, once you purchase the house, you know, there's still things you need to figure out. So again, this property, we've figured those things out for you.
Speaker: yeah And if if you're an Akimart direct customer listening to this, we are iterating with every customer. We are learning, you know, it's hard to fully understand the buying process for foreigners without doing it enough. So our goal this year and last year has been trying to get the most reps in.
Speaker: Our next is trying to see if we can identify these distressed properties and set up folks for success who have not gone through the pain that Joey and I have for the past year and a half or two. So anyways, Aigawa coming out soon. Really, really bullish. We hope to sell this quick.
Speaker: um Highlight, Joey turned a 180 on an Nagasaki champon, which is like a famous noodle and and in Japan, in Nagasaki. How was your champon experience, Joey? Champon looks like someone making ramen when they just look in the fridge and take all the leftovers. Kitchen slop. Yeah, kitchen slop and throw that on top of ramen noodles. That's kind of what I always thought of champon. It's almost like surf and turf ramen. I think it's a seafood broth and then they throw seafood on top. There's also meat on top and baby corn just looks completely random to me. And so I was never excited about it. But... but
Speaker: We had it. It was delicious, I would say. We had good, it wasn't ring or hut. We went to, i think, hotel's recommendation or someone's recommendation. It was it was really good. Nagasaki is, I think, one of the top places in Japan I would now want to live. Given the infrastructure, people seem pretty nice there, too, and very welcoming.
Speaker: And I think there's a big Akiya problem. We're actually trying to work with the city government to see if we can help people buy more in Nagasaki. Okay, Joey, after Nagasaki, where did we head after? We drove up and around and then down south to Kagoshima. And we spent the night in Kagoshima.
Speaker: It honestly reminded me of my experience in China, I feel like, or or maybe even Korea a little bit. I feel like the city had a different energy to it than most other Japanese cities. To be fair, we were really tired after driving five, six hours from Nagasaki to Kagoshima. It was like the emperor's birthday or something like that. So everything was closed.
Speaker: But yeah, I think the bright side though, I had that volcano. I don't know what that volcano is called. yeah, the volcano is really sick that you see from the city. We'll have to spend more time in Kagoshima. If anyone's listening who's in Kagoshima and wants to show us a good time, please do. We'll be back. So our friend Kat, who helps us out with social media and marketing, aca we mentioned to her that we we're in Kagoshima and she told us, oh, I love Kagoshima. Get some raw chicken shit sashimi for me. And I thought, okay, I don't know. how i don't know about that.
Speaker: I did not get the raw chicken sashimi. Kat, maybe it is a delicacy. I wasn't going to risk it. wellll try it on your way back. Definitely not. Okay. Anyways, so the next day, we're at the end of our three-week trip, and honestly, logistically, we're burned out. We've been booking hotels, back-to-back kind of things, and honestly, let this one slip through the crack. We're supposed to take a ferry from Kagoshima, which is, again, very southern Japan tip there, to what is where we are now, Yakushima.
Speaker: Joey, we had been talking about ferries being very convenient, but We're proven wrong on this one. Stop the press, guys. Stop the press. Let me set the scene here. We got out of the hotel.
Speaker: We looked for coffee. We found the Saigo Takamori statue. We got some coffee. Oh, yeah. Fun fact. Then we decided to kind of push it. We got like a really nice shabu-shabu lunch.
Speaker: And then it was kind of like 30 minutes to when the boat is leaving. And Taki puts in Kagoshima port tor and we're driving along and then we get there and then Taki's like, all right, Joey, can you yeah you know show me exactly where it is? And um I have it in my map and I'm like, we're in the wrong place. We're like 15 minutes away, both leaving in 25. So we're trying to drive as fast as we can to the actual ferry. And like, we have to find the long-term parking. We've preserved online, but we don't have the paper tickets.
Speaker: We parked the car. We're trying to hustle. I went into the wrong place to get the ticket. She's like, the ship's canceled. And I'm like, we canceled. She's like, been canceled since October 5th. And then I'm like, what? I have a reservation. I showed her and she's like, oh you're in the wrong spot. So then, you know, with all our heavy luggage, we'd already parked the car.
Speaker: Sprinting. Sprinting to the other side of the port. Sprinting to the other side of the port to get on the toppy rocket ferry. to Yakushima. I run in and the ticket booth, it all says like close for the day. And I'm like, sumimasen, like trying to get someone's attention.
Speaker: And ah luckily she was like, okay, you got you like giri giri. I asked her, i was like, ah you know, ah did we make it? And she was like, well, you you caught it real close kind of thing.
Speaker: Hontoni giri giri. And so we got the tickets, we get on the toppy rocket ferry and kind of crappy ferry. It's like one of those hydrofoil ferries though, where it it actually elevates out, which is pretty cool. So typically the normal ferry takes like five to six hours. This one only took two.
Speaker: So I would say, although you know comparatively to the other ferries, wasn't as luxe, this ferry did get the job done. Did it have a bathroom? i didn't even know it had a bathroom. Didn't even even check. But one of the things i wanted to call out, if you are visiting Yakushima, the ferry's schedule has changed. We wanted to bring our car, but we couldn't. We had to, like, it would thrown off our schedule. So we left our car.
Speaker: Hopefully our car is still there in the parking lot. um And we had to rent a car here, which didn't cost too much. cost like to less than 200 bucks for five days, which is quite reasonable. The whole Kagoshima thing, like ah one, you know, it was Emperor's birthday. Nothing was open. We got there late. We were tired.
Speaker: We messed up our plans. We could no longer bring the car onto the boat. So we had to like do these other last minute plans. We were giddy giddy with those last minute plans. It was just kind of like, A lot of stress all in like a one and a half day period. Moral of the story, don't slack on planning the last tail end.
Speaker: It's a little stressful, but hey, we made it to Yakushima. After we got here, tides have turned. It's definitely all all good vibes, I think, at this point. Again, as Joey mentioned, lot warmer.
Speaker: um Just kind of like island vibes, really. Yeah. Island Pace, too. We got iced coffee from like a little local cafe this morning. It have taken 25 minutes to get the coffee. So for anyone who has never been to Yakushima, Yakushima is really famous for like, so Princess Mononoke is based off of this. And you can see it as you go through the the forest, absurd amount of deers and monkeys, I think. But they're really famous for what is called Jomon Sugi or Yakusugi.
Speaker: which is like these thousand-year-old trees. I think they're like cedar that like wrap around rocks. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the whole island. Take, do you think, based on what you've seen so far of the port town, the town of Ambo, where we had lunch, you know given this hotel, do you think it's in a good place? Are you bullish on the future of Yakushima?
Speaker: Yes, I absolutely want to consider living here. I think this is like Oahu Kauai from a nature perspective. The vegetation, a lot of monstera plants, a lot of tropical plants here. People are very nice.
Speaker: It's not somewhere to be if you want to be in the city, but if you're looking for like a tropical forest escape, ah. I think this is the spot. Maybe the surf isn't great. We're gonna check out some surf breaks tomorrow, but we just went to a onsen on the ocean.
Speaker: We were actually looking at a house close to this, and we can get into that in a second, but we went to two different onsens back back. First one, We go in there and, you know, it's a little bit confusing with these kind of wilder onsens without like, you know, someone working there or anything. Like it's always like a little bit, do you go in with your bathing suit? Do you go in naked? How do you pay that kind of stuff? So we were in like a little bit of a state of confusion and this but there was, it was windy.
Speaker: We're right on this like rocky coastline and there's natural onsens right on the coastline there. There's waves crashing on them kind of thing. Very cool. And there's like this lady who, way in the onsen down there like yelling at us something and like can't really and at one point i thought she was yelling at us about the buckets and so you put the buckets back and then we're walking down again she's yelling at us about something else oh you have to pay before you come in we didn't have the money on us it was in the car so we we're going to pay when we go back up to the car afterwards kind of thing but she was like kind of being a little bit of a bully this is a natural onsen where you're not allowed to wear swimsuits
Speaker: She was a pretty old lady. Not pretty, but like she was a very old lady, kind of witch-like. Yeah, you bubba from a Spirited Away, if anybody knows. It was like she was trying to call us, in and we're like, me Joy are like about to get naked. We're like, um... I wasn't sure if she was calling us in or telling us to go away or like yelling us to pay. or She was not naked, though. She was wearing her swimsuit. Yeah, so we went back to the car to go get some money, and then we realized I only have like a Ichima-en Satsu, so like a 10,000 yen bill, 60 for 70 bucks.
Speaker: So we're like, ah, and it was just like this thing you drop the money in. So we're like, I'm not dropping 70 bucks in there for a 300 yen onsen experience. We're like, let's go to the next one, which is actually closer to the house we were looking at. we go to the next one and they're doing construction there. They're like rebuilding the road, but we asked the construction workers if we can like walk past them. They said, yes, we out of the car, we go to walk past them they're like pouring asphalt at this time. And I'm like, I don't think we can walk around. That looks like hot asphalt.
Speaker: And they're like, no, no, no, there's like a secret path around. So they showed us where that is. We go down the secret path. Again, type of onsen that probably exists nowhere else on the planet. It's right on the water. If anyone's been to Capri in Italy, off the coast of Naples, it's that same coastline, but with hot springs. The hot spring itself was and lukewarm. The water wasn't too hot, but it Actually, my skin's feeling really good after.
Speaker: Extra smooth. Yeah, they weren't hot, hot. But I've been to wild hot springs in New Mexico. I've been to wild hot springs in Beppu. And they're always like ah a little bit random temperature. Yeah, but yeah it's such a good location. And we again, we're looking at Akiya pretty close to it.
Speaker: um So from a location perspective and and what it is, it's absolutely beautiful. i could see it being like really weird if it got more crowded because you're not supposed to wear bathing suits when you're in these natural onsens.
Speaker: The smaller the tub is and the more people in it, the more awkward it gets for sure. Yeah. So we have a couple more days in Yakushima. We're going to try to explore, do some hikes and whatnot. and We're trying to meet with some realtors to figure out what's the situation. Yakushima's got a ton of Akia, but because it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, I think there's a little bit of a hesitation for folks to sell and understandable. you know They want to preserve and have more people living here. So the Akia we have in mind, that we found on the Akia Bank.
Speaker: We actually went to go check it out. It's like two concrete structures on the main road. ah Unfortunately, we looked at and there's like this huge puddle in the middle, just like Definitely causing water damage at some point, but we can't get it either way. So what's the deal, Joey?
Speaker: It might be harder to buy property here than Niseko or Miyoko right now. It seems difficult. The Akiya banks, we were working with one of our real estate agents, so they contacted them on our behalf and they came back with a whole bunch of criteria. Interview. That's Application form. to purchase here. You need to either be a long-term resident or moving here for the long term. And, you know, they're trying to sniff out people that are not going to be those things. I mentioned that, oh, maybe if I get a business manager visa, we'll set up an office here kind of thing. and they're like, no, no, no. You have to be married to a Japanese person for a gaijin to buy here. So this is the Akia Banks though. And that's just the rules.
Speaker: that the Akiya banks have once an owner submits a property to the Akiya bank. If you're buying through maybe something like At Home or Sumo, they might not have those rules, but there's no shortage of abandoned homes here. It definitely feels more territorial because it's an island. You know, you don't want people just buying up your shit and putting a hotel and and renting it out. I think we're very cognizant of that. We are intending if we do get somewhere here, this is kind of like such a good, not corporate retreat, but like a defensive spot in Japan where we can't take meetings in person, but can still be in Japan and kind of heads down, build some stuff, hacker house or something like that.
Speaker: Heads down, build stuff location. Everything is, is much more like comfortable here in my mind than Tokyo. Another thing about the island, we were warned, bring a lot of cash. There's like one ATM on the island back by the port and most places don't accept credit cards. So it really is a rural island.
Speaker: wanted to actually, Jerry, throw a couple of topics at you, a couple of recurring themes. One of them is obviously the aging population in Japan, but there's a lot of abandoned corporate businesses. So we saw an abandoned school next to Aigawa where kind of an abandoned hotel right now. Like, do you think there's a big opportunity for folks to be buying these older businesses and and running them at this point?
Speaker: I've not done that yet, but my gut says yes. i met a friend who has his own business that helps the employees of dying Japanese businesses take over ownership of that business themselves. So, I think there is a lot of interest and need for people to take over these businesses from elderly Japanese people that want to retire and enjoy their retirement. I think like the Akia and how many there are, I think the same is happening with businesses.
Speaker: Absolutely. there's There's some things like take my money, but there's a lot of coffee shops, there's a lot of restaurants that... If you are technologically savvy or more business-minded or even just younger, there's a lot of refreshes on these shops that I think could be really beneficial and bring some income in. Like take this hotel, for example. This hotel this looks like it was awesome built in 1995 and they have not updated their design since then. The workout room or gym room later has like three bicycles. It's a huge room. There's like a massive...
Speaker: fake tree in the lobby which kind of like feels a little Disneyland-y or like Mall of America-y almost. Bed sheets are like quite dated. i think we could do a better job potentially but we definitely don't have the capital to do this. so Another thing I realized that driving through Japan for like the fifth time the past year is like damn, the Akiya problem is really bad.
Speaker: ah Aside from Tokyo, there's really just no shortage of these abandoned homes. And every Japanese person we talk to, they're just like, there's no real solution. Like we all know it's happening, but there's nothing to do here.
Speaker: For me, the Akiya mondai, mondai means problem. The Akiyas themselves aren't the mondai. I think the Akiya problem is a symptom of the economy not doing well, the aging population, potentially not enough immigration. Or local migration. Everyone's only going to Tokyo.
Speaker: But that's where the jobs are. Yeah. If you're a young person in your 30s and you want to make money, like how would you make money here in Yakushima? You'd have to be a remote developer, maybe tourism, hotels. Yeah. Figure out a way to make money off tourists. But in cities like Kagoshima or some of those other cities that are not like huge tourist hub spots, like what can you do? I do feel a little bit of despair for young people who want to stay in their hometowns because there's just not very many options.
Speaker: Japan needs to embrace more remote work. I think even in Tokyo, where you know there's just not enough trains for all the commuters to go downtown into the city. like There's too many people. Jobs need to be spread out a little bit more.
Speaker: I don't know how. Yeah, it's ah it's a tough problem. But I do feel pretty empowered that what we're doing is helping bring good people to some of these areas to help revitalize. I know that people say that, but I think people we're helping through the purchasing process are all really good people that are looking to help the community versus just like monetize it. And that's something we've talked about a lot this trip is like, if you're looking to buy in Japan for the ah ROI, probably not the right move.
Speaker: If you're trying to buy in Japan for the lifestyle, I think it's definitely there. We did a whole episode on this, but we've made zero yen so far. All right, Joey, any final thoughts for the podcast listeners? Yeah, if anybody knows what's great about Kagoshima, I would love to know. I'm heading back there for one more day. Let me know if anybody yeah loves Kagoshima.
