Transcript
Speaker: Any sounds you don't like me playing? I don't like the built -in road caster music that like game show. This is the game show. Okay. What is up, Joey? How are you doing?
Speaker: What's up? What's up? Doing good. We still have that long intro at the start. We got rid of that now. I think by now we have maybe a hundred faithful listeners that don't need to hear that beginning point, but who are we? I'm Joey and me and Taki have been on this adventure in Japan for the past year. We really only started about a year ago.
Speaker: that that
Speaker: Yep. I don't really, it's like weird. People ask me like, technically, what does it mean? How would you say, how would you describe Bitcoin having a one sentence like supply drop or diminishing returns of Bitcoin mining? They, they make it more difficult to mine. So what they're trying to do when what miners do is they're trying to come up, they're trying to come up with a hash that has a certain number of leading zeros. And so they just keep hashing data, changing the timestamp.
Speaker: There's certain required information they have to include. They run it through a hashing algorithm. And really, they're just looking for a string of numbers with a bunch of zeros at the start. And there needs to be a certain number of those zeros to mine a block successfully. And what they did is they made that harder. So they, I don't know if they add one more required zero or two more or whatever, but let's just say it's one more. So let's say up until now, you had to hash a bunch of information and have 15 zeros at the start of the number that you generate. Now you have to have 16.
Speaker: It's now harder to mine. Yeah. And so profitability goes down as well. So that's why you see a bunch of people sell miners around this time. And the mining equipment gets cheaper because now it's less profitable to mine. So less profitable, less profitable to mine.
Speaker: mining operations, they do the cost benefit analysis and they're like, I'd rather just put my money somewhere else. So they sell their rigs. Funny story, Joey and I, we went down to go see Akia down in Miyazaki and along the way, we're like looking at all these solar panels. We're like, listen to a couple podcasts on the solar mining Bitcoin. So feasibility of that has now gone significantly down, right? Yeah. And I don't know what percentage of profitability has gone down, but yeah, it's gone down.
Speaker: Damn. Okay. That was a little bit of tangent. Joey, we're in the world. Are you right now? Yeah. I'm at the house in Beppu. Jisouji Lux. There we go. Tell us what contractors here right now. I'm not sure if you can hear him, but there's some banging going on downstairs. He's working on the plumbing in the, the shower room. Actually Taka, he, he, we need to discuss this after the podcast, but he was asking us about what kind of shower heads and stuff we want. So he's, he's getting ready to buy equipment for the shower room and he's working on the plumbing now.
Speaker: Dang, since our last podcast, actually it's been a couple of weeks. You were at the, how was the Japan real estate summit and Tokyo.
Speaker: Yeah. So I've been in Japan since when did I fly here? Start of April, spent 10 ish days in Tokyo, did the Japan real estate conference put on by Ziv at NTI. NTI is great. That's how we bought our house. And then I came down to Beppu to check on the progress of the house. But yeah, the conference was great. Met a lot of people saw some people from the last conference too. Some people going to everyone, which is cool. Yeah. Gave a talk there, which was a lot of fun. What's that top three? What are your top three takeaways from the conference?
Speaker: Or top one is that wow, mortgage rates are incredibly low. Emil was talking about 0 .0019 % financing type stuff. That's not available to everyone. And you need to wait for specific bank promotions, but like it sounds like there was a few zeros at the start there. Maybe, maybe it was a different number, but it's got to be 0 .01. That's the absolute lowest I can imagine it going.
Speaker: 0 .019, I think is the, yeah, maybe I threw too many zeros and I 0 .019, I think was some of the rates that Emil was throwing out there. But those, that was like a specific bank promotion, which is actually interesting. If you just wait for a promotion, you can get really good rates, but those are available to people buying their permanent residence. So not investment properties rates are going to be a little higher, but yeah, just crazy to hear those numbers and then compare it to what we're seeing in America.
Speaker: Yeah. This is your first episode you're listening to. It's pretty dang hard to get a loan as a foreigner. I think it's near impossible. Is that what they said too? Not def not true. I would say if you're living in Japan, if you're a salaried employee, we're living in Japan, potentially Japanese spouse or making a good salary here as a salaried employee. Like it does not seem too difficult, especially if you're working with someone like Emil.
Speaker: I don't know. I don't want to speak for him, but it definitely does seem possible, but there are certain criteria you need to match. If you're a foreigner living outside the country, not a salaried employee in Japan, don't have a Japanese spouse or permanent residency or anything like that. Yeah, near impossible, I would say. Okay. Yeah, that's what I guess. I don't know who our viewership is, but I'd assume majority of them are probably in the States or Canada or Australia or something like that who do not live in Japan. Trust us, we have tried and we're still trying. Haven't given up yet on the loan, right, Joey?
Speaker: Yeah. So like I mentioned, you can always try to get a job in Japan and be a salaried worker. And that seems to be a good way to a stable path, a stable strategy to get a visa. Again, this is going to be like a, maybe like a five year plan for you. Alternatively, what me and Taki are trying to do is through a business. So we incorporated at the start of this month, actually, we have our business and now we're working on the bank account side of that.
Speaker: But there is a path to mortgages and loans through this business for us. Congratulations, Jerry. We have, or actually it's conditional, right? We almost have our bank account approved, right? Almost have the bank account approved. The other interesting thing about the process is the phone number. I was talking to you about this offline, Taki, but yeah, just there's friction as well and not having a Japanese phone number.
Speaker: Yeah, for anyone listening, if we were to do this again, I think finding a way to get a Japanese phone number, getting a bank account as a priority, and what else? Like getting that affidavit or like what document was that you needed to show that you were you or something like that? Are you talking about the incorporation documents or the car documents? Because there was an affidavit I had to do recently regarding the car.
Speaker: Maybe it's that. So I guess if we could have a Japanese number and a bank account, that will make this whole buying process much simpler if we were to do it again. Yeah. But to even go down the path of the bank account and creating a business, you need to have a business plan. When we were talking with SheMax illegal, which we did an interview with them, they're the Shiho Shoshi company that help us set up the company, our business in Japan.
Speaker: They ask a bunch of questions. What does the business do type of thing? And even Rob, as She -Max legal mentioned it himself, like some people, it sounds like have come to him before. They just purchased one property. They're going, they want to, I don't know, do a Mimpaku business with that. And then he was mentioning just something like that. He doesn't think is a good path forward to getting a business manager visa. So potentially it would also be difficult to get a bank account with that. I'm not sure, but it did.
Speaker: Make it he didn't make it sound like you really do have to have a real business you can't just be a business name only kind of thing you really have to do i have a business plan. Good for us we are an airbnb business and operating on a beppu.
Speaker: Actually, before jumping down to Beppu, Joey, how did people like the presentation? Did it work? The presentation was great. I had a lot of fun doing it. It was fun talking about the data. I really enjoyed that part. I'm talking about the data and the quiz, which was also about our data. So that was fun. And then I said something like, Oh, we got a, so I was giving up prizes. Some people got the questions, right? Giving up t -shirts. And then I was like, I've got more t -shirts. We made some swag. And I was like, I've got more t -shirts, like just come to the back where I was sitting. If you want a t -shirt.
Speaker: And just walking back to my seats, they were gone before I got halfway back to my seats. Everybody wanted a t -shirt. Okay. More t -shirts. I told you, man. People love free swag. I guess so. I personally don't. So I was skeptical, but people really do love it.
Speaker: We included stickers in with the t -shirts and really, you know, just so that more people could at least get something, we should have had the stickers separate. Next time. We have maybe 30 more prints, so we could maybe do a couple. We've been talking about doing our tote bag. So, Joey, you might have a AccuMart Coppa tote bag when you come back and visit. Nice. I like the totes. I've been looking at t -shirt blanks while I'm here, not wholesale, just retail. Still those Target t -shirts were the best value.
Speaker: Okay. With the, back to the conference, everybody gave really good talks there really does seem like it does seem like Tokyo prices are more expensive. So there's a lot of Blanca gave a good talk about renovating in Japan and definitely seems like Tokyo renovation prices are maybe similar to what we're seeing in America.
Speaker: But definitely from our experience in Bepu, yeah, more affordable down here. But yeah, that was an interesting takeaway as well. Tokyo just seems like prices are more regular, more comparable to North America, just in general. Tell us about the house you saw. We've been looking at a house in Mitaka. We're still at Akiya hunting in Tokyo. How was that house?
Speaker: Okay, terrible. Yeah, I liked it. It was halfway to ICU. So I walked from the train station to the house. There was a bus, but I wanted to walk it. It was only like 20, 25 minute walk. So I saw, I walked down, I couldn't remember like the bike path I always took, but whatever I took some like random streets and I did recognize some things.
Speaker: as I was walking along there. But yeah, first impression, I would prefer to have a bicycle if I were to live there. The walk is just maybe a little bit long to the train station. Second thing is it is across from this nice, it might be like an apple orchard or plum orchard or something like that. So that is nice. The front of the house faces this apple orchard.
Speaker: And that orchard is owned by the city of Mitaka. And interestingly, the house, there's no road to get to the house. You have to walk down this pathway alley thing. And that is actually property of the orchard as well. So it's part of the house. Now there could be issues there running a Mimpaku business. So we do have right of way. And it is.
Speaker: that that
Speaker: but it is good news that the city owns the land and not the neighbor, so potentially less of an issue. That being said, did not see the neighbors at all. Yoshi said, I asked Yoshi if he knew who the neighbors were. He didn't know, but he looked at the neighbor's houses and he was like, these are old people for sure.
Speaker: Okay. If we do actually end up going for it, I know where it's unlikely. We should definitely try to meet those neighbors. I feel like that's a big investment. Something goes wrong or we're not like transparent with them. That being said, I still have a bunch of videos I need to send you, Take. I took a ton of videos. First impressions of the house. Some of it had been, I think the date of construction was again, 1960s or something close to that.
Speaker: but there had been some innovations done recently ish like the bathroom the unit shower and the unit bathroom was newer kitchen some things in the kitchen were newer and one of the bedrooms had some renovations done to it nothing crazy that the cheaper and renovations but at least was in better shape
Speaker: Got it. And for anyone listening, we're looking at a house near the university we went to, ICU located in Mitaka. It's like what West Tokyo? Is that what you'd say? Yeah, I call it West Tokyo. Yeah. West Tokyo. We figured - Mitaka Kichijoji Ghibli Museum.
Speaker: Yeah. There's a lot of advice of invest in your own backyard or invest where you're running. Actually Joey, this is honestly the best we both mutually know in Tokyo. We know this pretty well. How is this like a hundred thousand is what the listing price is? 150 million.
Speaker: Some interesting things that Yoshi said about the price. The house was, so it had been abandoned, I can't remember, a while, maybe five years. It had been abandoned and, but it had been purchased in the past year, maybe 12 months by the real estate company that's selling the house. So the real estate company actually owns the house. It's not owned by the owner, the previous owner anymore, that owner or their, the inherit, whoever inherited the house sold it to the real estate company.
Speaker: Yoshi said this is interesting and not good news because he thinks that the real estate company is going to be less willing to negotiate on price. They bought it for a certain amount. They're not going to let it go unless they make some sort of profit on it. They would rather just let it sit there and rot instead of selling it. Whereas a seller might be a little bit different, especially if they've owned it for whatever the past 40 years.
Speaker: And they, or someone inherited it and they just don't want to pay the tax, the property tax on it. They might let it go for less, but because it's owned by a company at this point, Yoshi did mention that maybe they might have a hard stop at a certain price point. All right. Question for you. Are we willing to, this is the American in me here. Are we willing to really low ball or is that burning a bridge?
Speaker: which I've heard it could be a bridge, right? Yep. And I would see if what it's not gonna burn a bridge with us. It's going to burn the bridge between Yoshi and the other companies. So if he's not comfortable, he's not comfortable. And I think we, we respect that is what we should do.
Speaker: if we do want to lowball, I'm not against lowballing, but I don't think this property is really worth it without lowballing. So we almost didn't notice this. So there were some holes in the wall. I don't know if you remember in the Bepoo house, we do have a hole in the wall. It's like a perfectly circular hole. And that's the vent for the AC or something like that.
Speaker: So I was looking at that. That was the first hole in the wall I noticed. And then I saw you more here and there, but I wouldn't have noticed this if Yoshi didn't. We were getting ready to leave and yeah, Yoshi was like, let's just peek in the attic real quick. And so you open up a closet or, and you can get into the attic. So he goes up there and he was like, go and he comes back down. He was like, go up there, suit. So I went up there.
Speaker: And it's dark in the attic, but it, it looked like a star, like stars coming through the roof. Cause it was still daylight outside. So a lot of holes and some like the fist sized holes as well in the roof. Yeah. Maybe just one fist size hole, maybe a bunch of a quarter sized holes, but yeah, holes in the roof. And it rained pretty hard one day. I was in Tokyo too. And I was thinking like the day we left, the day we left and came down to Beppu.
Speaker: that's
Speaker: and only one
Speaker: Okay. What if we have like maybe Blanca or someone give us a quote? I feel like the roof is the most expensive part, especially in that alley. It's like really hard to get the roofing materials there, but are we interested in thinking about pursuing this? And maybe we can talk about it later, but yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Let's talk about this offline. I do feel like it's a, it's a real fixer up for this one. Yoshi said likely a roof, maybe three, 4 million yen, which is, I don't know, 30 K.
Speaker: Yeah, maybe we can negotiate that off the price. But yeah, let's talk about it later. 20 ,000 probably. Yeah. Damn. But that's Tokyo. It's a good location, but hopefully we can find something else. All right. Speaking of construction and roofs and stuff, you've been down in Bepu for a week now or how long have you been down there? Yep. A week over a little over a week. Okay. Give me the update. How is the house looking? Moment of truth.
Speaker: Definitely progress has been made. Yeah. Moving a little slowly. One guy, but the work he's doing is very good. Big news. We got the toilet downstairs.
Speaker: Okay. No more squatty potty. No, no door though. I just need to use it when no one else is downstairs at the moment. Yeah. As for a sliding door to go in there, which would be cool. He's putting some of the one thing on the sliding door before you go. We went to Udon spot, Udon Yamacho, where they have one corner of the sliding door has a transparent piece of glass. I don't know if that's crazy to ask him, but if that's a detail we could get, that'd be awesome. Okay. Hold on. Let me make a quick note of that.
Speaker: Yeah. So it's like just to know if someone's in there, you can like look at that light. I think that's cool. Small detail. I saw it. That's it. We don't shop in Ebisu. We went to. Yep. Um, what else has been done? So yeah. So the floor is ready for Tatami and the flooring, but he says he's going to do that last because he's going to be, you know, he's going to be working on the bathroom and more of the kitchen stuff and the guest bedroom. So he's like, I'll do that last that I, you know, they don't get damaged.
Speaker: OK OK
Speaker: felt carpeting on the inside as well. He showed it to me. It feels nice. So I think that's what he needs to do. And then we can actually get the table delivered. Tight. Okay. For anyone listening in our house in Beppu, we're on the bottom floor. We're doing like a three meter long monkey pod live edge wood table in a Horikotatsu form. Horikotatsu is like a dropdown table. So we're going to have like tatami.
Speaker: And then it's going to be like a sunken and leg part and the kind of like floor level type table. It's a pretty progressive idea design idea that hopefully, we hopefully think it will turn out really well. Yeah. And the contractor, he really, he likes our design idea. Like I feel he's, he made a few design choices himself here. And I think I would agree that they're all in line with our vision that we're trying to do down here. Matt just.
Speaker: being sensible about the colors that he picked for certain things. So yeah, it's coming together today. He's working on some of the plumbing in the shower room and he asked us to start picking out shower heads, look that we want and that kind of stuff. And we have the vanity back. He raised the kitchen sink higher, much more ergonomic to use. Is that it? That might be it.
Speaker: Okay. Overall, like you're impressed or you're happily surprised. Is that correct? Yeah. I wish that things were moving faster, but I think he's doing a really good job. One other thing I can mention to you, we want Dan Netsu or installation. How did he react? Japanese houses, especially in the seventies have no installation. So we're asking our contractor to put in a ton. How did he react to that request?
Speaker: Yeah, no, you said sure. No, no problem. I was asking him about, so there's some internal walls open downstairs right now around where the bathroom is. Some of those walls are open on one side. He's working on the electrical and we're talking about the installation upstairs. And then he also said, Oh yeah, like I'm putting insulation in all these internal walls as well. So.
Speaker: Yeah, he's on board to just shove insulation everywhere. One thing I did notice is that, so upstairs, I put like duct tape on the walls everywhere that I wanted outlets. And I'm going to go do another pass through of all the rooms too, and just make sure all the outlets are sensible. I feel, so the wall, some of the walls downstairs are already closed up and dry walled in.
Speaker: And I feel like it would have been nicer to have more, there's some outlets, but it would have been nice to have more, but I don't know if it's appropriate anymore to open up all the walls again, especially that there's insulation in it. I feel like you just, yeah, it's done. I agreed. Similarly with some of the puck lighting that we were hoping to get downstairs too. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: that's
Speaker: You have to find the balance of what they're willing to do or what they like to do or what they're good at for some of these requests. Yeah. And worst case, not enough. At some point in the future, we can get it added potentially, but I think for now, version one, exactly.
Speaker: Okay, pricing. Do you think he's so, for anyone listening, I think he quoted us originally 32 ,000, and this is also the yen exchange rate. Hell, let's go. The US dollar's been killing it. Or I guess the yen's been weakening. I'm not sure which one. Do we have any idea of how much he's gonna add on? We added, I think, a decent amount.
Speaker: onto our first bid, right? Yeah. So talk to Fumi about this. She mentioned that he mentioned at one point that yeah, a lot has changed and likely the price needs to be adjusted. I don't think anyone's thrown out a number yet, but that's what apparently that was mentioned to Fumi. And then when I was talking to Fumi, that's what she told me.
Speaker: Let's push on that. I'd rather make it uncomfortable now versus uncomfortable later when we get like a huge bill that's way, quote, maybe what we think is unreasonable. But let's talk offline maybe and figure out what we think he's been. We've added like a couple of things. So I wouldn't mind definitely paying him more, but hopefully not like double of what we initially promised him. Okay. Yeah, I agree. Let's head it off earlier than later.
Speaker: Okay. And then what was I going to say? Okay. What's your bet? When do you think our house will be ready to, when will he be done? Completely done. September. August. So I, especially when the work starts upstairs, I don't know what the living capabilities are going to be like here to come crash for a month or not.
Speaker: Yeah, maybe ask him also just like what the, we confirmed the bathroom kind of toilet upstairs. Plan with him with the wall and stuff. I'm not sure if he remembers. Yeah, I think I'll do another like a walkthrough of everything before I leave. Tell us about the burned down house. What's, how's the neighbor looking neighborhood looking since last time you came to bet.
Speaker: Yeah, some small changes, one more house. So the burned down house got torn down and cleaned up one more house that was affected by that fire. It just got burned up a little bit. I'm surprised they tore it down. I think it would look just like cosmetic.
Speaker: damage, although I didn't see the inside, so maybe not, but so two houses torn down as a result of that. One house across from Jisoji Onsen, which is the, like the little local municipal Onsen, 50 and a day, me and Takei, and actually Sato -san came to check out that house with us once. They tore that down as well. Interesting. Yeah. Betsdaiko -san, the real estate agency, they even advertise it as an empty lot for sale, even when the house was still there.
Speaker: How was it that bad? It wasn't great, but we, we saw it and it was like pretty big. You know, that was fine. I would have kept the frame, but. Yeah. Anyways, that got torn down. DMZ torn down. DMZ there's so many little secret paths in the neighborhood we live in. DMZ is one area we've, me and Tage have both names, certain areas in the neighborhood. We've just given them a name.
Speaker: DMZ was one of them and had these corrugated sheet metal bungalow one -story homes on both sides of the street. There's three or four of them painted baby blue, like the United Nations buildings in the demilitarized zone in between South and North Korea. But these ones were all rotting, rusting, and the trees had grown around it, so it was like jungly there.
Speaker: I saw, I called it the DMZ because that's how the buildings look. They tore them down and which is actually unfortunate because that kind of with the jungly kind of trees there, it used to be cool to walk through there like temperature wise. And now it's just a big open like dirt lots and actually coming walking that road myself on hotter days. Uh, I don't know. It feels more desert -y than before. So I'm sad that the DMZ is gone.
Speaker: Okay. I heard you also found out the house across the street is not actually abandoned or something.
Speaker: So one day when the contractor came, we only have one car parking lot. So I like to give him that space for his truck. I just parked it. We thought this house across the street was abandoned. Never see a single light on there. There's always curtains drawn, nothing even in the yard or in the, in the garage area. It's like an open garage area makes it seem like anyone's living there. I was here two months in the fall last year. It looks exactly the same as then. So I just parked the car in the garage there.
Speaker: thinking that it would be fine. No one lives in this abandoned house. Never seen anyone go in or out. Came, come back that later that evening to move the car back into our driveway. There's like an old lady in the garage there rummaging around and stuff. And so I just had to say, sorry, sorry for parking here. I don't know. It's a split second decision. I was like, I don't know. I was just like, Oh, what's that? No, she wasn't mad at all. She was.
Speaker: She, so she knew that I was associated with the house here. I didn't say I owned it. I tried to keep the conversation short. I don't know. I was feeling that choice. Good choice. But anyways, she on Google maps for us to be able to, when we first got here last fall, for us to be able to find the house easier. Take you added this location as a bakery, like permanently closed bakery or temporarily closed bakery. And she was like, so the lady was like, Oh, I heard she wasn't mad that we parked the car there. She was like,
Speaker: I heard the you're working on a bakery. Like when can I expect the bakery to be open? I'm excited. I was just like, Oh, I don't know. I don't know. We have the contractor working there now. Now we have an expectation. We need to be a bakery. All right. Pizza store. She gets a slice. She gets a slice of pizza when, when the house is finished. Where has she been? She'd been living inside that house. I've never seen someone come out of it.
Speaker: No idea. I've never seen someone come out. I've never seen lights on neither. Right. Like Joe and I walk around every night just to look at what's what we think is abandoned. And I swear I've never seen anything in that house or most of the houses around us. All right, man. Let's talk about the car. Okay. How about one last thing? How old was she? Was she like eighties? Yeah, old eighties. Okay. Okay. Speaking of car, you rented a car. I think, do we officially have a car Joey?
Speaker: We officially have a car. Yep. Registered insurance. So cars registered in my name and the insurance on it is in my name. Other drivers can drive it, but they should get the combini insurance first. The only reason that like everything is covered insurance wise for other drivers, except it will negatively reflect on my insurance credit score thingy. If there is an accident and that will raise the premiums that we need to pay. So other drivers should always get combini insurance, including you, Takei.
Speaker: Got it. Okay. Convenience insurance is a convenience store. So anyone listening, there's 711s, Lawson's, a couple of convenience stores nearby where you can buy, I guess insurance have never dealt with it. So if I go there.
Speaker: I need to buy insurance at like a 7 -11 nearby us. Yeah. So it's the insurance for the owner of the vehicle that the other driver doesn't cause their credit score thingy to go down. Got it. Okay. Rewinding for anyone that's listening, we bought this house. We rented a friend's car. Joey rented a car since he got there because we ended up actually buying one of our friend Kevin and Reiko's car because they moved from Beppu to Kyoto. How much does they sell that to us, Joey?
Speaker: 500 bucks? Juman, I think, so 100 ,000 yen. OK. 100 ,000 yen, which is like $700 US dollars, which is crazy. So we bought cars, a weaker engine car. Is that the best way to describe it?
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's like, one, it's like smaller footprints, a weaker engine, and also I think like better emissions. So government is encouraging people to buy these cars. So you have tax incentives and stuff like that if you own one of these K cars. Got it. So our friend Raco sold us their car for, yeah, again, $700, this K car. We have for the past couple of months been trying to figure out like, how the heck do we purchase this as foreigners? Again, we have a house now.
Speaker: So we have an address that has, I guess we're on the title, we're on the utility bills, but Joey, you've been spearheading most of this. Walk me through what and who has helped us through this process and what are the steps. Yep. So we started with the sister company of NTI, Nippon Bridge. This is a company that Ziv set up to handle everything non real estate related that a foreigner, uh, purchasing real estate in Japan might need. Buying a car is something that if you bought a house in Japan,
Speaker: It's not directly real estate related, probably might need a car if you're buying something in a rural region. So that's what his business handles is all these non real estate related things. So I think we were the second customers of his potentially to try to register a vehicle as a tourist, by the way. So we worked with them to set up, like we didn't know where to start. So they were like the overall guiding.
Speaker: figures here called, so there were two meetings, sorry, three meetings, two different people that I needed to go to and they set them up. So the first meeting that on bridge set up was with a notary public, not exactly sure why I had to go to Oita city, which is the next, the capital city of the prefecture we're in.
Speaker: And I'm not sure why they couldn't be done in Beppu, but this notary public was, I believe, maybe Shihoshoshi themselves, or one of those Beggoshi -type things. Yeah, one of those lawyer -type things in Japan. And what they did was, basically, this step of the process was to replace the Juminhio. So I'm not even sure what a Juminhio is, but something that ties your name to a specific address in Japan.
Speaker: Because we don't have a Jumi here, because we're not residents here, we needed something to connect us to this address here. So there was a document that, I'm not sure if Nippon Bridge created it or that's what this notary public said to use, but there was a document in Japanese where I filled out our address and my name.
Speaker: And normally it appears that you'd need to show the notary public a utility bill at the same time to match the address, but this was not required. And maybe that's why they chose this notary public in Oita city was because they didn't, he didn't require seeing proof that we were connected with this address. But that was the first step of the process.
Speaker: So I guess we're wanting step zero contact Nippon bridge. We worked with Kiyokasan. She was awesome. So highly recommended again. I think we're the second person they've done this for. I don't think it's rocket science, but you need to have someone that speaks Japanese to figure this out. I think this would have been really damn hard for us to figure it out by ourselves. Right.
Speaker: Yes. Yeah. Okay. Step one after that is get proof of residence. So in Japan, if you live in Japan, there's a jumin hill, which is a proof of residence. We did not have that because we were foreigners. So Joey, you went to a notice. We're tourists, not because we're foreigners, but because we don't, we're not, we don't have a work visa or any type of residency here.
Speaker: Okay. So because you were a tourist, you needed to have a, do you even know what this document's called? We walked in, do you remember what it was called? It's like a proof of residence. I don't know what it's called. It's in Japanese and honestly the title Kanji characters on it, I couldn't read. We'll follow up in the show now. It's proof of residence for a tourist document signed by a notary. Okay. Step one. What's step two, Joey? Hold on. I'm just pulling up the document right now.
Speaker: Sorry, I cannot read it, but yeah, but I'm looking at the document right now. It's literally just asked for my name in both English and Katakana birth date, my country, my citizenship country, my passport number, and then the address here in Japan, and then just a signature and date. Um, so that's all that the notary public got it. And then they put a big official looking stamp on it for me. And that was step one. Yeah. Step zero.
Speaker: contact Nippon Bridge, step one, get a notary public to sign a specific document that Nippon Bridge will provide that ties you to the address of the house that you purchased in Japan. Okay. Step two, you need the shakensho from the previous owner. In our case, it was our friend, so she sent that to us along with a bunch of other documents, but the only document that we did need was the shakensho. Shakensho is like
Speaker: My best understanding is it's like a hybrid of the car's registration itself and the, like the safety and emissions testing. It's both at the same time. And you need to renew that every two years, which yeah, that's similar to in America, I believe as well, depending on the state. But yeah, just knowing Japan, I think it's like a hybrid document where you can't get, you can't register unless you pass emissions and safety testing and I guess vice versa.
Speaker: Okay. So today's Japanese word is shakensho. Let's see what it actually pulled up. Shaken show. Okay. Yeah. It is a, the shaken law in Japan is a compulsory inspection for all vehicles on the road that happens every two years. And okay. Yep. This makes sense. So it was like a hybrid of a registration and a safety check equivalent.
Speaker: Yeah. So for example, why I say that is that eventually in this process, the step four is going to be turning, making a Shaqen show in my name, but we didn't do another emissions testing or safety testing or anything like that. We just changed the name on the Shaqen show. So that's why I'm saying it's like a hybrid between the two because.
Speaker: Yeah, it also, it also involves the testing as well as the registration. So yeah, so we need that you need to check in show. So I would guess that you get this from the dealership or you get this from whoever you're buying the car from. In our case, we bought from a friend. We had the friends just send us the second show in the mail and that's step three.
Speaker: Okay, that's good. So if you don't have a friend that you're buying a car from, I do believe this step is done by the dealership. If I'm not mistaken, I think we made it extra complicated because we were buying it from a friend.
Speaker: I agree. We did make it extra complicated. We were buying it from a friend. And so in step four, which I'll talk about right now, Yose Shoshi is the person that changed for us. You can do this yourself, he said, but we paid someone to handle this for us because the process is complicated. But yeah, changing the Shaqen show over to my name is the next step. And yeah, I think we did make it complicated because we weren't dealing with dealership. We had to do all this process ourselves.
Speaker: And giose shoshi, to my understanding, means administrative Scrivener. So they're just like a document handler. Is that the more dead document signer, transfer?
Speaker: I'm not exactly sure. It's part of the legal profession system here in Japan. I honestly don't understand the difference either. You know, we've worked with Shiho Shoshis and we worked with Gyose Shoshis so far. I don't know when you need one or the other. This is again, something that Nippon Bridge set up for us. So they set up the meeting with the Notary public. And then they set up this meeting with the Gyose Shoshi.
Speaker: OK
Speaker: And then he looked at the parking spot, took some pictures of it, made sure everything was cool with that. I had to sign a document for him. This document basically said, so he's going to the police station actually afterwards to make whatever paperwork needs to happen. And I needed to sign a document basically saying he is doing it on my behalf. So the Gyoce Shoshi came.
Speaker: the check -in show, provided me with a document I needed to sign, put my name, sign, and date, saying that, hey, this Kyosei Shoshi is going to be working on my behalf submitting these documents. He took pictures of the parking lot and then he left and said, I'll be back tomorrow evening. So that was step four. He come, basically that's just to check out the parking lot and make sure the size is appropriate.
Speaker: For this step, we had some questions. So I had heard from a Japanese friend that you don't need to have a parking spot for K car specifically. Again, those lower powered cars, but we did find out this is a prefecture by prefecture thing. So again, we're doing everything here in weight to prefecture. So things could be different, but in some prefectures for K car, you do not need a parking spot, but in our case, we needed a parking spot.
Speaker: Yeah, correct. Only change I would make there is that he said it's by the municipality, not the prefecture. It's Bepu City is the one dictating that here. So he did say, oh, if you're in a more rural area, they're not probably, you don't need it for a K car. You don't need to have that check. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And so guy came, made sure we had the parking spot, went to the police station.
Speaker: And what happened next? Yeah. Yeah. Police never come to your house or anything like that. This is just all paperwork done at the police station. So he went to the police station. I believe it's the, likely it's the police that make the final judgment on whether you do have the proper parking space or not.
Speaker: and I think he just said he's going to show them the pictures he took and give his word as a legal professional that we do in fact have the parking spot for it. He came back the next evening, so step five is receive the updated Shakin show. So he came back the next evening, needed to be signed or anything like that.
Speaker: He just gave me the new updated Shaqen show, which is a piece of paper. It's actually two pieces of paper. I'm not sure which one I need to, I'll ask Fumi later, which one I need to keep in the car and which one you keep in a safe at home or whatever. But it's a piece of paper with like a chip inside of it actually is the new version of the Shaqen show. And there's an app, which
Speaker: So he showed me this, he was like, yeah, you can, you hold, so you open the app on your phone and you hold it close to the Shaqen show and it like pulls up all the details right on your phone. App wasn't working when he tried to show it to me. So I don't know, maybe it's bugging or something like that. But that is, that's the idea. I don't know why you need to see the information on that. Maybe you get more information or something like that. But yeah, so there's like an IC card in the Shaqen show, just interesting technology.
Speaker: So he delivered that all good. I asked him a few questions at this point in time. I said, if I need a, if I wanted to buy a bicycle, like what would the process look like? And he said, he was like, you're not going to need me. I also asked for about the Genski as well. He was like, you're not going to need me. You don't need to prove a parking spot for any of these things. You will need.
Speaker: that Juminhyo replacement document again. I don't have this anymore. The police kept it. This would need to get this done again, potentially in Oitas. So step one, which is getting the notary public, you would need to do that again, probably for a bicycle or like a moped genski.
Speaker: If you wanted to do that, but he said all the paperwork will likely be handled at the place that you buy the Ginsky like the deal. I don't know if it's a dealership, but the place that you buy the moped or the bicycle from, he said, they'll handle all the paperwork. Just make sure that you have this notarized.
Speaker: Jimmy Hill replacement document. Jeez. Second thing I asked him was about car, another car. Like I was like, let's say I do have another parking spot and I buy another car. What steps do I need to repeat? And again, basically the full thing again. So yeah, I get the document notarized. And then he said, you don't need me. He was saying you can do the step that I'm doing. He said, you can do this yourself. But again, I was like, I appreciate what he charged us each month.
Speaker: 70 bucks to handle it. So if you're buying another car, maybe it's worth it just to have a pro handle it. But yeah, all the steps you would need to do again. Yeah. So the takeaway there is he brings the update to Shukensho back. You don't need to do this step if you're buying a bicycle or a moped Genski, but you do need to have that Jumi heel replacement.
Speaker: Whew. Okay. For anyone listening, we try to get bikes in Beppu and we were told we can't because you need to register them with the municipality, something different from America. You can't just pick up a bike and go for it, which is strange, but first off, great work, Joey. So the car is officially registered in your name, right? Yep. One last step though. Final step, final boss.
Speaker: that
Speaker: And just for, I don't know, for our first time doing this, I just, we were aiming to reduce stress. So we went with this English language service. You do pay a little bit extra premium on top because they, they're a middleman that take a cut, but I was impressed with their service. It was nice and they did a good explanation.
Speaker: a few different things that actually a lot of stuff gets covered. I can't remember and we can jump on a phone call with her too, but other stuff gets covered with the car insurance. I'm not sure what it is. If you need to redo this, whatever your porch steps or something like that, like a bunch of weird stuff is also covered under the insurance. I should have recorded that call with her, but we can always jump on another call. So yeah, just know when you buy car insurance in Japan, a lot of other stuff does get covered.
Speaker: we got the pretty basic package for a lot of stuff is unlimited coverage, no deductible, which is nice. If you damage someone's house or property or injure someone, we got the full unlimited, no deductible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it is a good insurance package there.
Speaker: The only thing I think that's interesting, else that's interesting here is, oh yeah, first the cost. We're paying about 9 man, so 90 ,000 yen a year for this insurance. Other drivers covered on it. The only other interesting thing that you do need to know about the insurance in Japan is, so the car is registered in my name and the insurance is registered in my name.
Speaker: other drivers are insured on this car if you're one of our friends drives the car they get into an accident etc the same insurance applies everything unlimited coverage etc that that type of thing the only thing additional that an other driver needs to do is go to the combini beforehand and get
Speaker: one additional insurance package, which is called driver Hoken. So just literally driver insurance in Japan. And this covers my liability for another driver driving the car. So our, the premium that we pay is we're paying actually the highest premium at the moment because we have no like credit record or anything in Japan. But as, as years go on and we're safe drivers, that premium is going to go down.
Speaker: If an other driver were to get into an accident, that credit score that's associated to me will go down because my car got into an accident with another driver, that's reflected on my credit score. And that's what the convenient insurance covers is my liability there. So other drivers should get this convenient insurance and then in case they do get into an accident, my credit score does not go down.
Speaker: Got it. So our insurance basically costs as much as our car per year. Exactly. Uh, a little bit more actually, just mentioned that service. I'm looking for the email. Yeah. The company is called Trinity Inc, Japan. And I believe their website is Japan insurance net. And the company is called Trinity Inc. Yeah. Great English language service. And as I mentioned, the bunch of, they do a bunch of emergency services too in English that you can call.
Speaker: So kind of like set up in a way that like, Hey, if you get into an accident, call us first and we'll like, make sure we route it everywhere that needs to be routed. Got it. And how much is that daily combini? But if I were to rock up to baboon, want to drive the car, like how much did you get a price on how much that would cost? Good question. I'm not sure. No, I don't know. Next time you go check it out. Hopefully it's not too high. I don't imagine it's too high, but hopefully it's pretty sub $10 a day or something.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. I hope it's cheap. That's actually something we probably should have done when we borrowed Tomo van last fall. It's good that we understand the, this, the system better now. Hey you. Okay. So starting from the top step, correct me if I'm wrong, step zero, six steps, a zero step. So seven steps, zero need pone bridge, contact an intermediary, someone that can speak Japanese or someone that can organize this for you. Step one is to get the.
Speaker: proof of residence equivalent in your house. Is that right? Yeah, again, I'm looking at the document right now. I don't know how to read it, but something that replaces the Juming Hill and you get that notarized. Okay. Step two is you went and got it notarized or is that step one? That's step one. Okay. What's step two again? You had step two is Shakin show from the previous owner.
Speaker: Got it, so buy a car from someone, dealership, or a friend. In our case, we bought it from a friend. Step three. Step three is the Gyoce Shoshi for us. So Gyoce Shoshi comes, takes the old shotgun show from you, double -checks the parking lot, and brings that to the police station. Okay. Step four is he comes and checks the parking. He comes back. Comes back again? Okay.
Speaker: With the new shotgun show. Okay. Step five. Insurance. We miss a step there. Yeah. Okay. So five steps to buy. Actually we should just move step zero to step one at this point. So six steps to buy a car in Japan as a foreigner on a tourist visa.
Speaker: Is that right? Sounds right. Yeah. So in, I would say in a nutshell, it's the Juminghio is the foundation here. You need to prove in some way that your name is associated with a house that you own or live at here. And for people that have some sort of residency in Japan, that's going to be the Juminghio. As a tourist, we don't have.
Speaker: the jumi hyo, so we need a replacement. So that's the foundation here. You get a document. This is the document that I don't know what it's called, but we got that notarized. So basically that ties our name to a place, a house.
Speaker: Then the process is a little, then the process is that you need to prove that you have a parking spot for the car. So that is the step with the Gyose Shoshi and the Shakin show. And that I believe is you're proving to the police that you have a parking spot for the car. With the Jumi Hyo, you're tied to this place with the Shakin show where you have this.
Speaker: car that you're trying to get registered in your name. With those two documents, bring them to the police station or have someone bring them to the police station and then they officially register the car in your name. All right, Joey, I'm playing this. Congratulations. Thank you so much for doing this. We do have a car now in Beppe, right?
Speaker: Okay, congrats. Wow, that was a mission. That was really daunting. I was looking at the WhatsApp messages happening. It was getting more and more complicated.
Speaker: OK
Speaker: Yeah, that's such a confusing process as a foreigner, but I'm glad we did it is now hopefully simpler. I get it better now and I know you can do it again. So if you have questions about buying a car in Japan as a foreigner on a tourist visa, we're your guys to hopefully answer those questions.
Speaker: Yeah. And the process was fast, actually. I thought it was going to take longer. Did it in under, under, under a week, maybe five days max. And we had it registered with insurance set up. Okay. Car secured. I'm excited to drive the new K car. We'll use it as the episode.
Speaker: Cover. So you can see our, what is it? Honda life or is it Toyota? Take some. Yeah. 20 2010 Honda life. I'm going to go take some measurements too. We should get some like decals put on it. Boys in gothic ride windshield. I think maybe better to get those done in the U S. So I'm going to go take some measurements so that we can get this printed sometime. For sure. Cool, man. Lots happened. I'm a, when are you coming back? What are you going to Tokyo again next week, this week?
Speaker: Go to Tokyo this week, just for a few more days and then back to California. I'm going to San Diego for a few days, see some friends and then back to Nova Scotia. Okay. Well, hopefully see you on the layover in San Francisco, but thanks for punching out all this work in Japan while I was surfing in Indonesia. No worries, man. My pleasure.
