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: And we're back episode 13. Uh, how you doing, Joey? Hey, what's up? We're both back, uh, state side. Uh, interesting fact. Most podcasts don't make it past episode 12. So I think this is official. We've made it to episode 13. Hopefully this podcast is here to stay around. I was just about to say that too, actually. Cause I remember you told me that fact back in the pan, lucky number 13.
Speaker: I just got back to California. Joey, where are you at? I'm in New York, opposite sides. What a dream, huh? I think we've said that a couple of times. The two months we've spent in Japan and setting their Aki up and down in bet. Boo is behind us now. Yeah. It does feel like a dream. I don't know how to scribe it more than like.
Speaker: I don't know, like I used to live in New York, so now I'm like back into like my New York routine kind of thing. And this whole like Japan experience, I don't know, it seems like almost like if you have the Venn diagram, it's like almost like two mutual exclusive events. Yup. Today we're going to go over five things we got wrong and five things we got right. Looking back as a kind of post -mortem, but before that, want to do a quick update on.
Speaker: our last few days. Joey, what's the construction looking like at our house right before we left your last image? What did it look like? Yes. Our contractor Sato son. So the day I left, so the day before I left, he asked me when are you leaving again? And I was like, leaving tomorrow. And he was like, what time? And I said, lunchtime. And he was okay. And then the morning of the day I left, he came in and he
Speaker: absolutely gutted the kitchen. I think I forgot to tell you this talking about ripped up the entire floor. I don't like it. He didn't even ask if I still had stuff in the cupboards or whatever. I had cleaned everything out already and I'm part of the fridge like signal. Okay. Free rain here kind of thing, but like completely ripped everything up. Yeah. All those floors are gone throughout the vanity we had in the bathroom kind of thing. Like he was going like full speed ahead. That a boy Sato son. Unfortunately, we didn't go out to drink with him. I got a little sick. So.
Speaker: Still getting over the sickness, but we'll definitely take him out drinking next time. Good guy. I'm glad I didn't get sick. I thought I was getting sick for a little bit. So we basically packed up everything. We went to the hardware store, bought like five big boxes, threw everything in the shed. How would you say it was, we procrastinated, but I think it worked out. It wasn't too bad, right?
Speaker: Yeah, I did another like clean up the morning that I woke up early. I woke up like way earlier than I needed to. But yeah, I did another like kind of sweep through all the rooms. I moved more stuff in the upstairs, just consolidated it into the plant room, which actually looks kind of sick. We put all the plants in one room. Such a good look. And then I also, I marked out outlets. I just put like duct tape on the wall and then I called Sato -san
Speaker: to come look and I was just like, Hey, I put tape everywhere where we want outlets. Cause these rooms in this house, there's one outlet per room. I don't know. I need outlets like at least on every wall kind of thing. So yeah. So I put tape every there. He was like, okay, good idea. That's really easy for me to remember.
Speaker: Yep. It's going to be crazy. Next time we walk in, hopefully this place was looking real fly. Yep. He said something. He was like, I'm excited to work on the upstairs. So, uh, full access. I think as an hour timeline is we're trying to come back in March. We've let them know that we're coming back in February, hopefully to keep the pressure on. We have Fumi, the fixer, our person on ground going to check in maybe every other week, just to give us status updates. I know a lot of it will.
Speaker: not go as planned, but it's good to have kind of that, that there's quick pulse checks. Yeah. Since we're back in the U S both of us now. Yeah. I wonder how much we're going to be have updates to give going forward. What are your thoughts there? It's okay. I think it's a good opportunity. I know we have those eight steps to how to buy. I think we are so much more well -informed now to go over those steps. So there's plenty of stuff to chew on. We are launching Akiya Mart again, AKI YA dash Mart .com.
Speaker: Version 1's coming around the corner, right, Joey?
Speaker: It's coming around the corner, so for everybody listening that uses the website now, unfortunately, it's currently completely free, but I am going to put some features behind a paywall coming soon. Part of the inspiration behind this project was to generate some passive income for ourselves during this period where we took off from our jobs. Sorry to everybody out there, but it's going to be affordable, so don't worry. Hey, we'll make a promo code or something, and in the meantime, you guys are free to chat with us. We've done a couple consults actually, met some really interesting people.
Speaker: So if you are interested in Acia and want to chat with us, we'd love to hear your process. We are trying to understand what people want basically and can navigate and pivot our tool to that. So smash that Spotify like button and also smash that console button if you want to chat. Also last thing before we go on to updates, the fairy from Beppu to Osaka is dope.
Speaker: If you are ever in Kyushu and you need to move a car or you need to get from Beppu to Osaka, it's 11 out of 10, Joey. Most comfortable transportation I've ever taken.
Speaker: You're like, this is like the Titanic. It is like the tight, the good part of the Titanic. You walk in, there's like super high ceilings. There's all this music. There's all this like crazy lights and stuff. It looks real lux, I would say. Did I, my only concern, I had a feeling it was going to be real luxurious. Did, was there like like rocking and rolling on the high seas? Negative rocking. There was like no rocking. The room was so comfortable.
Speaker: They have the onsen or like a bath spot in the, in the ship that looks out to the sea. So it's like pretty cool. They're, they have a Michelin guided buffet breakfast and dinner. They're so freaking good. I was like, wow, I'm, I'm never taking a plane to Osaka and I'm always going by ferry. That's awesome. Yeah. All right. You can walk there from our house too. We should do like a walk to Osaka day.
Speaker: Yep. It costs with the car. It costs San Mancosan, which is like $200 ish in U S dollars. And it was like, you got the hotel room equivalent. You got a ferry, like the car ferry. I don't know how much it is without the car, but I imagine it's closer to a hundred dollars. So totally worth it. If you're going in between those, um, Oh, I'm a ferry boy now. Sunflower is what it's called. I think that's what we call. Yeah. Sunflower. All right.
Speaker: Let's move on to it. Five things we got wrong, five things we got right. And 2020, hindsight is 2020. Is that what they say? So talk to Joey. There's a couple of things I think we got wrong if we were to do this again. I know we actually surprisingly have some listeners now. So if you are considering doing what we did and are still doing, these are some pro tips I think that were really helpful. So we'll start off with the wrongs first. I'll start it off by going down the list of number one thing we got wrong is not seeing it in person.
Speaker: Joey, thoughts here? Yeah, I think for me, yeah, for me, this is top of the list for things we got wrong. The biggest reason being we got to this neighborhood and two, two different aspects of it. One, again, for the listeners out there that might already know we showed up after an eight hour drive when we first saw the house, it was dark.
Speaker: We were tired and the house was in worse condition than we expected. So that I believe is something we would have noticed having been there in person. We did a virtual like tour while right before the building and right before we made an offer. I thought that was great, but clearly it wasn't a hundred percent adequate. And the other reason I think we should have seen it in person is because we're very close to our neighbors, very close. There's three or four feet between houses here, our immediate neighbors and works rounded on all sides as well. Yeah, at first I was a
Speaker: I think a huge concern, but it got better as we spent time there, unfortunately, or fortunately, like now some of the neighbors are gone. So we have abandoned houses next to us. So we might consider jumping back on the Airbnb train, but totally agree. If you have the luxury and I wish we had actually just spent the whatever thousand dollars for the ticket, just to go see it in person once. Cause I think that would have, I don't know that I believe in us moving fast was our strong suit, but also the same time.
Speaker: We did see another house on the other side of the hill, not as good location, but for the same price would have been a better deal. But again, it's hard to say what was right or wrong, but I agree. Number one thing. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. We would have a hundred percent the other house you're talking about there. Had we seen both at the same time, yeah, we would have bought the other house. But again, I'm happy we did it. But if you're doing it again and you have the ability, go see the house in person. I think it makes a big difference.
Speaker: Okay. Number two thing we got wrong. We did not have a cell phone number, nor did we have, we had to struggle with line access. I'm gonna blow up Joey in a second here, but in Japan, it's, I feel like everyone asked for a phone number and we kept giving our international number, US based number. We were using just like a data plan only called you biggie. If you're visiting Japan, definitely sign up for this is UBIGI. I think it's a, the data was quite good. But we found that for things like delivery, things like
Speaker: What other things do we need phone numbers for Joey? Like reservations for things? Yeah, delivery, just contacting our friend Fumi who was helping us out, contacting our contractor. Yeah, my, get my shoe. I bought some Nike Air Max 90s.
Speaker: Uh, yeah, they need a phone number and whatever form on the Nike .com website didn't accept my American number. When we bought the table, when we bought the slab of wood for the table, they went on phone number two. Yeah, we needed phone number. For sure. So next time we go, Joey, we definitely need to get a phone number. And if you're doing this, I'd say if you're landing in the airport, just, just get a SIM card. I think that would have made our lives a lot easier. Even if you can't speak Japanese, I think just having that phone number to use as a placeholder helped unblock a couple of things agreed.
Speaker: Same vein, line access. Everyone in Japan uses line. WhatsApp is pretty prevalent, but I'd say line is definitely the go -to one. I don't know if WhatsApp is prevalent. Everyone was asking for line. Yeah, I had trouble getting line access. I don't know what it was. I downloaded that. It wasn't like I had an outdated version of the app on my phone because I don't use line at home. So I downloaded it for the first time when I was in Japan.
Speaker: And it like would never send me the verification code. And then like the, it was like four days before I left the country. And for some reason I finally got the code. Yeah. So yeah, line's super helpful. We have all our contractor, we have the cleaners, we have everyone on there. Actually there's like a local government line. I'm subscribed to the Beppu city line and they like send you notifications on trash days. Actually, Joe, I should have mentioned that. Oh, that's sick. It's pretty cool. Yeah.
Speaker: Okay, number three, similar to number one, seeing in a person, but I think we would have got a better deal if you, the more time you spend on ground in the neighborhood, I think the better of a deal or kind of the better setup you can get. Again, this is, it's hard to say, you know, how to do this, but this is generally for all the real estate. I think the more time you spend in that area, physically on the ground, talking to people, the better deal you're going to get. Joey, anything to elaborate here? Yeah. And you'll know like different neighborhoods that you like better as well. Like we ended up really liking,
Speaker: areas around this river, the Haruki River in Beppu. So maybe we would have focused our search around there. And then the other thing is that we're building this Akiya Mart product. It's great, but truth of the matter is not all listings make it and we Japanese websites, but not all listings make it onto those Japanese websites. Sometimes real estate agents in Japan.
Speaker: These properties are cheap. They don't think it's worth their time and effort to even list some of these properties. The only way to get access to these unlisted cheaper properties is to actually talk to a real estate agent in person and see what they've got. Yeah, this is your first property. I'm still again very happy with the route we took, but if we had the luxury of spending like two weeks on ground,
Speaker: Even more like really getting to know the neighborhood and talking to people, we would have probably got a bigger lot, better condition, probably cheaper price. But again, a lot of variables that we, it's hard to predict, but I'm quite positive. If you were to spend a month there prior to buying a house, you would probably get a better situation. But again, opportunity costs of time. We spent that month like hauling ass, remodeling our place. So happy the way we did it. But if we were to do it again, and hopefully we did get to do it again, Joey.
Speaker: We'll get to know the specific area and talk to people on ground before buying our next place. Yeah, we got a home base now, so that's a, that'll help us out. Totally. Next up, number four, getting our address ASAP for Amazon. This was a constant battle. Amazon is awesome out in Japan. Had we had our address earlier and successfully had packages delivered, we could have feasibly got there day one with all our furniture and hit the ground running.
Speaker: Joey, what was our process? Did you find what our correct address was? So we got, I, there was some on the billing inspection. That was it. The billing inspection had an address and some of the names match. So that's what we were using. And I was sending some test packages, some unsavory magazines to our, to our house. And I kept getting notifications on the Amazon app that they're getting on delivery. These are just cheap 300 yen.
Speaker: And yeah, they kept getting undelivered for whatever reason. And so there was actually two issues that was preventing us from just getting our packages delivered. The first one was, this was some sort of like building lot address that's only used by the city or something like that. It was not the postal address, which is interesting. Had no idea this kind of thing exists. That may or may not be true for.
Speaker: the case of anyone else buying a house, but at least for us, our house seems to have two separate addresses for two separate purposes. So we needed to get the postal address. Finally got that from Ziv. The second issue, and even when we got that address, it was still a little bit confusing if we had, so like in our neighborhood, there's Nikumi Ichi, Nikumi Yon, and those divisions are a little bit nonsensical. And our two neighbors on opposite side of the street, actually one is Nikumi six and the other one is Nikumi one.
Speaker: So I didn't know which one we were. We just had to pick a guess. I actually don't think that mattered in the end. That's a little bit of an aside, but the second main issue apart from having the building lot address was that our house looked abandoned. So to the person delivering mail to our house, they like our mailbox had like sticky tape over it and they're looking at the house and it was
Speaker: clearly abandoned. I believe that we weren't getting packages because whoever was delivering our mail, the Amazon driver, they're like, this has to be wrong. No, there's no one living here. Like how, why would this house be getting mail? I wish they didn't do that. I wish they did. We're just lazy and threw the package in the driveway.
Speaker: They didn't do that though. So we ended up writing a sign and putting that up saying like, yeah, any addresses for any mail for this address. And we put my, and Taka's names there, just leave it at the front door kind of thing. I don't know how someone buying a house could achieve that, but I think that sign really helped us out. Yeah. Yeah. So Google translate a, we wrote like this Japanese sign, like
Speaker: Deliveries for Take and Joey, please drop it here and Google translate. I think that helped break the ice for a lot of male people who are coming to our house and walking away looking intimidated by the band in this.
Speaker: One final thought on getting an address that works in Amazon is that Japanese homes have a name plate on usually at the end of the driveway. Ours happened to say Takamori. And so what I did on Amazon is there's like optional fields you can add. And I put the name of the building as Takamori so that I feel like that was like an additional like signal to the postal worker that like, okay, this is the house on the address.
Speaker: Joseph Takamori, that's what I call him now. So Japanese addresses are nonsensical. They don't have specific numbers associated with a house. So just know that whatever house you're buying, it's going to be categorized by neighborhood and then the male people figure it out from there, which agree with Joe, it's a little nonsensical, but it is what it is. Figure that out sooner than later. I think it's a high priority. We would have pushed our
Speaker: comfort level, a lot higher. We were sleeping on some pretty bad sleeping in some bad conditions for a while and Amazon could have upleveled that early. Yep.
Speaker: number five thing we got wrong, bring a lot of cash. Japan is such a cash -based society that credit cards work, but a lot of places, especially like construction, and if you're buying things, cash is super, super helpful. Cash is king. I had brought a decent amount of cash my first trip and had actually used my Charles Schwab debit card to pull out, I think you can pull out only Gomanen, which is $350, $400 US at 7 -Elevens every day.
Speaker: Near the end when I, we had to pay for this big wood slab table, I was just going to seven 11 every day to pull out cash. But the second time I came to Japan, I brought a lot of cash that I converted over here in the U S. So that was super helpful. Joe, any thoughts there? Yeah, I relied on you for a lot of the cash and I just fed emoji back, but yeah, definitely in cash society, like the grocery store bias cosmos, like it's like a cash grocery store, which is wild, but yeah, you need cash for everything.
Speaker: Yep. All right. So those are our five things you got wrong. One, not seeing it in person. Two, not getting a cell phone number and get line access right away. Three, not spending time on the ground to find a better deal. Number four, not getting our address set up ASAP for Amazon. And then lastly, number five, we didn't bring a lot of cash, but I'm excited, Joey, to now talk about the right things. I think we got a lot of things right. I'll start it off execution, moving fast and not overthinking. Take it away.
Speaker: Yeah. I think this was like a real strength we had here and it made it happen, especially with me and you, we were in two different countries while like the bulk of this was happening. Yeah. We just, there were some downsides in that, like we didn't see the house in person, but we just wanted to make it happen. I feel like it was one of the main goals here. Like it's such like a little scary adventure that we wanted to do here. And we really just wanted to get to the finish line.
Speaker: and gain some experience here. So yeah, we could read the, I feel like the very first day we ever even talked about this, let's not overthink this. Let's just have fun. Do it for where we're at in life right now. It wasn't a huge financial risk and the fact that we're splitting it made it even more palatable. So yeah, that was fun. And I think that was a hundred percent the right move. Yep. The best time to plant a tree was yesterday. Next best times today. So if you're listening to this and you're on the edge and you have the financial means and freedom to do it, I think.
Speaker: Yeah, not overthinking it's, there's so many, there's so many choices in Japan and so many chief houses. I think it was really helpful just getting it done. And I think the experience we gained was super, super valuable. That's something we kept mentioning during our newspaper interview. It was like, K -ken is number one experience in Japanese. I think we learned so much and our next one is going to be better. And I think a lot of people get caught up on, I'll think about it. I'll do it, but encourage you just execute. Don't overthink and you'll be happy you did it.
Speaker: Yeah, I agree. Number two thing we got right and we got really lucky here. I had a friend from studying abroad here who was down in Bepu was getting a fixer on the ground. We call her Fumi the Fixer jokingly, but she was our Japanese front to candle stuff. We've organized like a contract where she helps us out hourly. I think she's probably the single most helpful person that we found in Bepu to get this project done. We got her
Speaker: figured out maybe two weeks later, but had we, if we were to do it again, I'd say try to find someone ASAP, whether you contact a real estate company or just kind of network with people. But she was probably the, yeah, one of the best things that happened to us. I agree. I feel like it's invaluable.
Speaker: just helped us out so much with difficult Japanese conversations. Yeah. Yeah. I can't stress this enough. I don't know how other people could do it. I feel like we got very lucky, but kind of network, find someone that wants to maybe help you out and I don't know, offer them a little bit of money too for further time that they spend helping you out. It was great. I think, I think she enjoys the work that she's doing helping us too. So it worked out well for everybody.
Speaker: Yeah, there are crucial times where contractors are over and we're describing these crazy high impact designs we wanted. And I definitely think culturally, if we had just gotten there as our American and Canadian selves and like, we want that and that, it would have maybe rubbed the contractors a wrong way. Again, culture in Japan is a little bit different, like small things like keeping the slippers out and being very humble, I think is something we would not have done that could have came off the wrong way.
Speaker: Yeah, you really liked that good slipper attitude. She knew what she was doing. Okay. Next up, number three thing we did organizing the car. This was clutch. Luckily I had a friend Toma up in Tokyo who had a van. We knew, especially if you're going to be out in the kind of boonies or further away from the train station that
Speaker: Car is super important. This is going to be a challenge for most people. We rented it from a friend, but if we didn't have that friend, I would have just rented the biggest van I could have got or we could have got from a rental agency perspective because that van was packed every day kind of thing and super clutch. Yeah.
Speaker: You really got to think about a car, especially if you're thinking about, if you're not thinking Tokyo, you gotta, you need a car to get around. It's like America or Canada. If you're not in Toronto or New York with great public transportation, like you need a car, which maybe is something that in one of our consultations, this is something that someone had overlooked as well. So.
Speaker: You really do need to think about getting a car. We got lucky with, uh, Taki's friend. Yep. Uh, get your international license. You can get a triple A. It's like a little pamphlet costs like kind of like sketch 15 bucks or something. And that gives you quote unquote permission to drive in Japan, but, uh, you definitely need that. And also don't be intimidated about driving on the other side. I think most, if you've driven a decent amount in the U S and feel comfortable driving, you'll pick it up very quickly. It's not that scary, although it takes a little time to adjust.
Speaker: Yeah, agreed. Maybe one day to it, you're just hyper aware and focused for the first day. And then after that, it'd become a second nature. Yeah. All right. Number four thing we got right. Spending extended time and meeting neighbors. We spent, Joey spent two months. I was there for closer a month and a half ish or more like a month, but I think we just, we learned so much. I'd say just spending time there, Joey, you spend the more time there. What learnings did you get from spending extended time on ground?
Speaker: Yeah, you learn the town very well. So in our case, Bepu really explored like extensively around our neighborhood, explored the town as well. And you get a few, you get a much better understanding of the size of the town. You know what, the sort of demographic breakdown of the town as well. It was good. I feel like I understand that region very well. It reminds me very, a lot of the town that I went to high school in in Shizuoka as well.
Speaker: Yeah. I think with that also, we looked at a couple other properties for our next spot, hopefully. So just creating that network now that we are remote and away from the area. I think it's good that we have people we can lie in or a message to check in on the property, or we can still get things done while being away after spending and developing these relationships. Yeah. I feel like I know 99 % of the restaurants in the three mile radius of our house.
Speaker: I think we definitely tried. We tried, we are exploratory. We definitely tried every spot. I'm tired of eating out, Joey. I'm cooking for the next two weeks for sure. Yep. All right. And then number five, last thing we got right is spending time in our abandoned house or Akiya.
Speaker: We from day one, or actually not day one, maybe day two or something after we saw it, we were determined to understand the space and understand like 1970s Japan construction, I think is an invaluable thing we learned.
Speaker: Joey, you mentioned something about camping or that feeling of camping, right? Yeah. Like I think one thing we got right is like me and you, we have this experience from when we were in college and we lived in a pretty, pretty gross, dirty dormitory. And I just feel like that kind of resilience, like I expect anyone who does like a lot of camping would have this resilience to, okay, you can live in pretty gross accommodations for a day or two while you're cleaning it up, fumigating, maybe not
Speaker: the day you're fumigating, but when it gets like that bad that you feel like you need to fumigate this place and then you maybe you're trying to stay in it like two days later and you're fixing it up as you're trying to live there, like that sort of like resilience and every day gets better as you like change the lighting and like a carpet, get a chair, that kind of thing. I feel like we had that resilience to, we knew we had the goal in sight and we were motivated to get there. I think we got that having that, I don't know what the word is, gumption to, uh,
Speaker: That for us, I think was the funnest part too. Like we went in shady conditions and every day we'd get a new lamp or we'd get a floor, like something would be cleaner. And we're like, okay, this is where we're on the up. I think that was a great, exciting feeling for me. That was the whole thrill that for, that is why I'm excited to do it again as well. Just that like you start at such a low and then every day, like the first time we change, we got a lamp.
Speaker: We got like a paper lamp from like a recycle shop. And then we got like a mini fridge or something like that. Curtains were a big deal too. Like every, like those small things like felt so much more cozy in your home. And it was, that was a thrill for me that, and that was the most fun, like that first week looking back on it. And that's why I would do it again for sure. Good memories for sure. We had going from the kind of sketch to livable was a fun process. It hurt our bodies. I feel like a little bit, I felt like.
Speaker: I don't know. I feel physically a little beat up from the shower. Like we didn't have a shower. We had a shower. We were scared of the shower. The squatty poops, I'm happy to say. I feel pretty good with those squatty toilets. Although I found out there's a conversion. So you could buy something on Amazon that makes it like a normal toilet. Wish we'd known that a couple of months ago, but I feel like we've gotten accustomed to it, right? Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't an issue in the end.
Speaker: So yeah, I think spending time in the Accia was super helpful, even from a design perspective, just knowing where light comes in, knowing the area, knowing what the neighbors are going to be comfortable with. And I think all that stuff is going to show in our remodel design that we really lived and thought through the design.
Speaker: All right, so those are our five things we all write. Execution, moving fast. Two, second, Fumi the Fixer. Three, organizing car. Four, spending extended time meeting the neighbors. And lastly, five, spending time in the actual building as you're doing construction.
Speaker: were the things we got right. And overall, I'd say number one, that execution making, moving fast and not overthinking was a very big one. I think most people, my past self included would have got very like held up. Oh man, this isn't perfect. I say shoot for the B plus kind of situation versus trying to get a A plus every time is now my mentality.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a good way to think about it too. I do feel I lean closer to perfectionist type mentality as well. And this was like a good experience for me as well to seize get degrees kind of attitude. Seize get degrees. Let's go. Cool. Joey, good episode. We made it episode 13. We are official podcasters. Hope you enjoy New York and we'll talk to you soon.
