Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Buying a House in Japan podcast. My name's Take. And I'm Joey. And we're two friends who just quit our corporate jobs and bought a cheap house in rural Japan. The goal of this podcast is to document the highs and lows of the process while informing you of every step you need to take in order for you to do it yourself too. We're by no means experts and we're doing this for the first time, but we hope this gives you a realistic expectation if you embark on this journey yourself and we hope you enjoy the show.
Speaker: All right. We're back for a deer diary series. Really quite an exciting one, Joey. What's happening? Very exciting one. A little bit roller coaster -y. Some, some lows and then some highs. Yes, sir. Recording directly from drum roll. So we made it to Beppu not last night, but the night before.
Speaker: And we got in pretty late. We drove for about seven hours. We was on a ferry for an hour and a half. Drove for a little bit more, but we made it. We made a fam. So from Tokyo to Beppu, drove about 14 hours total. So just know wherever you are, wherever you do look at potentially buying a house, it's not too bad of a driver. It was really comfortable. Highways were great. Very, very, a lot of rest stops, no complaints at all. It was the easiest 14 hour drive we could have asked for.
Speaker: Great infrastructure. Reason number three for buying a house in Japan. Oh yeah. Along the way, we met our friend Talasi out in, I think, where are we, Kobe? It's really, really high -end, super high -end Onsen hotel called Arima. I don't know. I forgot what it was called, but. Arima Onsen. Great rest stop. Joey, I want you to describe this scene. We had driven for seven, eight hours from there. Yes, we're tired. We were hanging with a friend that same day up until lunchtime. You know, we wanted to leave earlier, but.
Speaker: Thalassie's a good friend. So we hung out until lunch, then started the seven hour drive, you know, with rest stops and everything like that. I feel like it was a nine hour.
Speaker: in the car trip with an hour and a half of that in the ferry. We get to Beppu. So again, we're driving at night now. We get here maybe 11 PM. We had to check into a hotel and all that stuff first. So it just felt, you know, we just want to see the house. And we had so many logistical things to do first. So that's the scene with us arriving to the house.
Speaker: a bunch of very tiny roads. We're kind of in a larger minivan too, so some pretty narrow streets. We didn't know the best route in the neighborhood to get to the house either. We actually kind of picked a few, I would say, extra narrow streets. But yeah, and then we got to the house. You want to take it from there? We were burnt out, to say the least. We were on fumes, but we were excited. We were like, we got this house. We got the keys for my friend. Let's go check it out. Maybe might've been like,
Speaker: I mean, it wouldn't change anything, but in that moment, we are not, we were expecting a little bit more than what we saw, to say the least. Yeah. Especially when we had just checked into a hotel. So we're kind of like, you know, it's a normal, a nicer business hotel. So kind of, I guess we had hotel standard and quality on our mind, stepping in. I think for me, okay. Nice meek and tree is the first thing I noticed, I guess, when we pulled up, we have a nice orange tree.
Speaker: like right at the end of the driveway there. Open the door to the house. Well, first, another thing, looking at the house from the outside, it's dark, so couldn't really tell too much, but there was all this tape all over the windows, which kind of gave it an extra kind of vacant, abandoned feel to it. Later learned that that's like a tsunami, not tsunami, typhoon consideration they do. So pretty standard, but you know, it just kind of made it look a little bit more dumpy.
Speaker: What about you talking about anything else that stood out? Before we went to the roads were tight. Like we have a standard size kind of van. We had to 10 point turn a couple of things here and there and road was super tight, but we've kind of figured out the route now. So it's a little bit better, but from the exterior, you know, onto honestly, little haunted house, really, really quiet. Felt like we were breaking into the house because we were like fumbling with our keys, trying to figure out which one opened what, but
Speaker: I don't think we saw the Mekong tree till the day after actually. So we saw all these plans, things were overgrown. Definitely haunted house vibes at 11 PM. Yeah. So we get the door open. It's like a glass kind of metal sliding door. And I feel like first thing for me was.
Speaker: Well, we couldn't get the lights on. So it's dark and there's a musty smell, like kind of musty dusty old house smells gnarly. Like I've recently renovated a mobile home where a lady lived there and had an open to windows for 10 years. It was about the same. It was like, it was pretty haunted feeling, really gross, really like a thick kind of like.
Speaker: unpleasant smell and plus to add it we finally found the first light switch in the hallway and I wish I could show a photo but it was like a flickering hospital light like a light real blue kind of like really haunted haunted is all I'm gonna keep saying over and over
Speaker: Yeah, what do they call those things? They're like phosphorous or whatever lights. Anyways, pretty bad fluorescent fluorescent light. Yeah, pretty, pretty bad. I feel like we eventually found some more lights and we explored the bottom floor first. It starts off with a kind of corridor with a toilet on one side and then a tatami room, a washi on the, on the right hand side. Yeah.
Speaker: Again, the smell I remember a lot and I think maybe we had, you know, the flashlight on our phone lights on too. So even more kind of like urban explorer kind of situation.
Speaker: It felt right away much more dingy than the pictures. Yeah. Then we expect it. Definitely an expectations versus reality. I think that's a classic thing. We were like thinking like, Oh, it's going to be, it's going to be pretty well taken care of now, which, which it is now, but like our first impression, I would, Joey, what would you give it out of a 10 10 being like exceeded expectations? Surprisingly kind of low, kind of low three, 3 .5 max.
Speaker: Yep. I'm, I'm saying I was close. I'm closer to 4 .5. I'd say five low though, lower than I expected. You know, again, we were burnt out. It was 11 PM. We're looking at it. We're like, Oh boy, this needs more work than we initially had scoped and what we had discussed over the past couple of weeks.
Speaker: Yeah. Things like cracks in the walls, crack, you know, that seem to be like repaired and just like a really bad way or not repaired rips in the screens. And also some like repairs to the screens that like, I don't know, kind of look like a crazy person thought them up. Yeah. What else?
Speaker: After that, we, I think we didn't spend too long. We were like, okay, it's late. We're tired. Squishy floors. Squishy floors. We were like, okay, let's come back and check this out in the morning. I remember going to sleep that night being like, oh shit, this is going to be a lot larger of a project. Good way to sum it up.
Speaker: I don't know, I'd say after that, we fast forwarded to the day after. I mean, anything else from that first impression? I think we painted a pretty dismal picture of our first reaction. If you're in our situation or if we're doing this again, I think expecting lower conditions than what the photos and what your mind lets you come up with is probably good. You know, last $42 ,000 abandoned home, you know, this is pretty expected, I think.
Speaker: If I were to give advice to someone who's in our situation, lower expectations that first visit and expect go during the day, go during the day, lower expectations. And again, the chief houses, Michael advice up, up your budget. Yeah. That being said though. Okay. Fast forward the day after. So again, right now, day three, day one was that first night we came in day two, I guess, which is yesterday, Jerry, we had our first full day with the house, another piece of
Speaker: pro tip, but we were like, should we just go straight in and sleep there? Do not do that. We got an Airbnb, we got a hotel and we got two nights of an Airbnb. It is ugly. Do not sleep in here. Do not other things. Yeah. When we were, when we were visiting my friend Talasi with a couple of Japanese folks, they're like, you got to get this thing called Danny killer joy. What's, what's Danny killer?
Speaker: Danny is like, so Danny killer compound word. Danny is like bed bugs or mites when I looked it up. I remember them. I remember people talking about it, like in the dormitory we lived in when we were in college here, but I remember them in a similar way as I think of bed bugs. Little bugs that live in Satami come out at night and bite you. I don't know if you can see them with your eye. I feel like they big enough that you can see them with your eye, like a bed bug.
Speaker: Anyways, we got a bunch of old tatami here. So we, we basically fumigated the place. You buy these little fumigators at the drug store at water, kind of drop a thing in super easy smoke comes pouring out. We had to kind of, they say leave it for two hours minimum. We kind of had to come back at one 45 because we thought that the water guy was, was needed to come into the house. And we didn't want him to come into a house being fumigated. So like ran and open all the windows. Yeah. So chronologically day two, they, after we saw the.
Speaker: The kind of rough scene we, in that morning we bought Donny Killer, we came in here, we more or less fumigated the place. We found out our water wasn't working, but on the bright side, like during the day, the place looked a lot better. We actually, I think we had opened some windows up too overnight. So whatever that musty smell had been like.
Speaker: fleshed out. So walking in day two, I would say my expectations was closer to 6 .57 on the rating scale of what we were getting to what I thought. We felt better. We also had coffee that morning too. We went to Starbucks. We formed a plan. Yeah. So we put the Donny Killer. We went to the hardware store. I mean, we went to Starbucks. We came up with a plan. We ended up going to hardware store yesterday and picking up like general cleaning stuff.
Speaker: We're at the crossroads of figuring out, do we just hire a cleaner? We don't have a phone number here. We don't really speak Japanese too well. And we were just like, well, we'll do a once over ourselves. Yeah. And started feeling better right away. Totally. We got air fresheners. We, we mopped everything we filter or fill. Yeah. We got this sweet air filter. By the way, we are actually recording right now in the place in our tatami room.
Speaker: I spent the day jumping all over the place, but I spent the day cleaning. Yesterday was really cleaning overall. At night, after we'd done a good job cleaning, we walked to Hyotan Onsen, which is a three mission star Onsen. They jacked up the prices, Joey, but I thought it was still pretty nice. I thought it was really nice. Yeah, industrial -ish kind of Onsen, industrial, natural Onsen, really good. How much was it? Under $10 per person, I think, but apparently it used to be cheaper.
Speaker: So basically yesterday, anything else, we, we, we, we, we did a good cleaning. I'd say day two was spent cleaning. I would expect if you ever plan on buying a Nokia and moving straight in, give at least three days, I think we're a little ahead of schedule and that we're, we're, we're challenging it and sleeping in it tonight. But we really did put in some elbow grease just to clean the air, which was our first priority.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, and then we continue that today too. More cleaning. We finally got the upstairs, no shoe zone. Oh hell yeah. No, we're not wearing shoes now. Bottom floor is still shoe zone.
Speaker: Overall, we've been living out of a suitcase for the past two weeks, jumping around from Montenegro to Istanbul to Tokyo that it feels good. We finally brought our suitcases up. The place is clean upstairs at least. The downstairs is still gnarly. The toilets are still a little gross. If you've ever seen a squatty toilet, we got two of those. What are some initial challenges?
Speaker: I think where our budget is probably a little too small for what really needs to be done. Joey, what are some of your initial reconsiderations after seeing the place for the past couple of days? Yeah. I felt, you know, on the drive down here, we had some pretty big plans for the bathroom and we wanted to do a really good job and concrete and you know, that kind of stuff and get it done right away. I feel like that's going to have to get pushed back to another time. I think that.
Speaker: I think that's maybe the big one. We're really going to have to redo the walls, which is something that I didn't consider. Yeah. I think overall we had a lot of plans too of things we were going to do before we saw it. So advice to our previous or past selves that say, get to the place first before.
Speaker: jump into plans, but some of the things we did think when looking at the floor plan of tearing down a wall, I still think are great ideas. But yeah, things like the bathroom, we were like, oh, it's way bigger than we thought. We were totally off on mental picture to what was reality. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like the bedrooms, I, we had a good understanding of their individual size. Bathroom nowhere way off.
Speaker: Yeah, another thing that's helpful though is looking at that hotel we stayed at the night before we came down here. We got a lot of good inspiration on like wallpapers, specifically to Tommy Matt's, which are traditionally, I guess, to Tommy and they're like an organic material. They now make them in synthetic material.
Speaker: Similar to how in the US where everyone's moving towards like vinyl or fake flooring kind of thing, it's more durable and just, I think it's a no brainer for us. So we're going to replace these to Tommy's here in our new house with synthetic, which is just going to be, I don't think we'll have that Donnie or bug problem as much because I don't think they're going to eat the synthetic stuff.
Speaker: Joey, impressions about Beppu? Again, we're in Beppu Oita, down in Hot Spring Town. For your first time in Kyushu, which is the island we're on, what are your thoughts, Joey?
Speaker: Well, one, it's nice, perfect weather. When I left Canada, like Nova Scotia, I was already like some days wearing a jacket or a sweater. So, you know, you can walk around shorts and t -shirt here. So that's been really nice. The view, pretty cool kind of mountains ringing the city. Really green mountains kind of reminds me a little bit of Hawaii. What else? It feels much more like a city. In, in Nova Scotia, Halifax, I think has about like 400 ,000 people.
Speaker: And Bepu has 125 ,000, but I don't know. It just feels like a bigger city than Halifax feels like. I think that has to do with maybe like the commercial activity. I feel like there is a lot of 24 hour type places here, whereas I don't know if there's anything like that in Halifax. So definitely, even though it's a smaller rural town and a rural prefecture, it feels like a city. Definitely. One of the things I was looking for when moving or buying this house is walkability score.
Speaker: As we walk around, I think we're in a pretty, we picked a really good location. You know, we're walkable to a 7 -Eleven, which is a convenience store. We're walking to ramen places, oncents, hot springs. Uh, it seems like a very good walkable city, which I'm really, really happy about, coupled with the really good weather. And actually, Joe, you mentioned that views. We found out we have a frigging ocean view from our house. What? I don't know how this was missed, but no one mentioned that. Yeah. And we walked in and we went upstairs and.
Speaker: Although the room has squishy floors, which also no one mentioned, but you know, it is what it is. We have a freaking ocean view, which is amazing. Two rooms have ocean view. Our home office also has the ocean view. Yeah. Observations for Ryan. It's a quiet, quiet neighborhood. You know, one of the things we're thinking about doing is Airbnbing might have to slightly reconsider or figure out, you know, how can we be here without disturbing
Speaker: the neighbors. I think that's a pretty top priority here in Japan. People are quite sensitive and we do not want to be the nail that sticks out.
Speaker: So we're kind of assessing the scene. In retrospect, had we been local and visited, that might have shown up before we bought this place. Again, we moved pretty quickly, bought it sight unseen, neighborhood unseen. Had we done it again, I would definitely have visited in person just to be like, here's the atmosphere. That being said, though, I think we did a pretty good job. I'm quite happy with where we ended up.
Speaker: Yeah. Another thing I noticed with an eye towards, I guess if you're going to do some repair or even if you're getting contractor that there's one outlet per room in the, in this house. This house is 1977 and there's only one outlet. So I mean, I don't know how many outlets in the normal Western bedroom, at least three, I feel like. So there's that. So not very many outlets. You might need to get an.
Speaker: electrician to like rig up some more outlets if you want a more modern Western living standard. And the other thing is there's only 40 amps coming into the house, which my parents house, I'm living with my parents right now, my parents house in Nova Scotia has a hundred amps coming in. So this is less than half of what I guess I'm used to.
Speaker: Another big thing, again, we're just jumping all over the place, but no rules. Cost of living. It's so, I know the exchange rate's great. One dollar to about 150 Japanese yen, but everything is so cheap here. Yeah. Crazy, crazy cheap here. If we were to live here, I think we could save so much money. People don't tip here too. So we're coming out, I'd say our average restaurant spend is like sub 10 US dollars. Yesterday we had a pretty good sushi dinner, which by an American standards would have been like great.
Speaker: I think we each paid about 10 US dollars, which felt expensive here, but also comparing, well, New York, this would have cost 30, 40 bucks minimum each. Honestly, that restaurant, so it's like a sort of bottom tier sushi restaurant here in Japan. It's the ones where the thing spins around. If they just like put in like a fancy design there, and if that was in America, like they could be charging a lot of money for that.
Speaker: Yeah. And then another observation, learning a little bit more about Beppu, it seems like this is a very much a student town. There's a big university called APU or Nitsumeikan. I actually connected randomly with one of our friends who lived here who got our keys. She works there. We got some Intel that it's quite an international, which is cool, but very much a student population. So we are considering maybe seeing if we can rent out to
Speaker: Students or maybe MBA masters grad students. We don't want none of the undergrad party partyers here if we can avoid it Oh my how we have aged Joey Another fun news. We talked to my friends. They're actually moving out. They're moving to Oregon and
Speaker: Looks like they're trying to get rid of a car, so our car problems might be solved, Joey. Hallelujah. Wow, lots happened, huh? Yeah, it's like a little K car minivan thing, but not like the cool K vans that I feel like most people would think of when I say that, but kind of a little bit more. I don't know, like a small hatch, a snub nose hatchback looking van thing. Yeah, we've learned that in Japan, if they have a yellow license plate, it means they're a K car, which they're like a lower CC engine. They can only go so fast, but they're so compact and it seems like
Speaker: 50 % of the cars here in Bepu are maybe K cars. If I'm looking around quite a, quite a high percentage. If you, I think someone said it might've been on Zib's podcast. If you, you know, if you pay taxes in Japan, you buy a K car, you get some like deduct deductibles that way. Speaking of the podcast and things we need to do. So we don't have gas set up. It looks like we can't get each, each house here in Bepu has like its own specific fuel tank.
Speaker: kind of thing, we're a propane tank. But also we need to get our title. We talk to our Japanese friends and they're like, do you guys not have the title yet? We're like, hmm, we think we do. So we'll fill you back in on that. But I think that's something important, just getting our paperwork and doc. But other than that, the intermediary company sent everything correctly. We have wifi set up. We're recording this on the wifi, which we might actually change out to get something faster, but overall pretty satisfied with their services and getting us to the point we're at.
Speaker: Yep. It's looking futures looking rosier than than that initial night. Again, just, I feel like when we got back to the hotel, we didn't even really talk about it. We just like kind of, I wish we were quite an episode. Like that was, that was really, we were, we were in the dumps, but we're on the, we're on the upswing here. There's, I think there's a lot of potential here, a lot of learning potential for anyone.
Speaker: whether you've done construction or not, or just being in Japan, knowing like seeing the materials they have at these home improvement stores, we'll be reporting back on what we can do. Our goal at the end of the day is just to fix things up, make it nice for our standards and hopes of renting it out. I'm excited to bust down a wall downstairs. Are we doing that tomorrow? Yeah, brother. All right. I'm excited.
Speaker: Um, last note for me, luckily we're getting connected with one of Reiko, my friend's friends, who is hopefully going to be maybe like a property manager, project manager for us. If you're coming into this, like we are, it's super helpful. I think we're missing one on the ground person that we need to get someone who's going to contact the contractors. If we need toilets swapped out, someone who's going to change our internet, like we just need like kind of like a translator almost.
Speaker: I imagine this is going to make things a lot easier. It'll cost a little bit more, but I'm confident that this will help expedite things, especially if you're on a timeline.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, I, so I kind of was like learning from you throughout that process and really, and I noticed you kind of like, I don't know what the, not, not, I guess networking in a sense, like trying to work on that connection to find someone on the ground that can help you out with stuff. You know, there's a onsen down the street that we want to be part of like a membership onsen. So like, just, you know, that kind of stuff. Oh yeah. Helping by the car, whatever.
Speaker: A lot going on. We're going to try to keep updating this. Again, if you're listening to this, this might not make sense to you, but this is more of a documentation for us. I think looking back, it's been, it's been a lot of fun. You know, I think a lot of people think we're coming out here and just like cruising or hustling. I think since 9 AM this morning, we've been moving nonstop, cleaning, going to harbor stores, building stuff.
Speaker: Tomorrow's there's a lot on the deck. We're going to tear down a wall. We're going to, I think, gloss out some windows, do some electrical work. I might try to put up this wallpaper, but yeah, a little bit of reform reform today. So far it's only been a SOGI. Okay. What does SOGI mean? Yeah. So far we're doing some, yeah, we've only been cleaning up till now.
Speaker: Okay, well, if you listen to this, thank you very much for listening. And the first episode in our new place, overall, very happy. Started out a little bleaker, but happy to be here. Excited for the future here.
