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, Joey, today we're coming at you with a more directed episode. I think we'd like to talk a little bit about maintenance cleaning, especially after our week, weeknight out or weekend night out in Fukuoka. How was our, how was your time in Fukuoka, Joey? We had a good time. We met our intermediary, Ziv.
Speaker: Had dinner at Izakaya, had some drinks afterwards, had a lot of fun. Thought we got along pretty well. Super fun. Fukuoka's about a two hour drive from us. So we drove over for a night, kind of went out a little bit, had, dang, we mixed so many drinks. It was like two rum. I felt like two gin, two whiskey, two everything. And I just woke up hurting. I know the lemon sours that we had, I thought those were going to be healthy, but they didn't help us.
Speaker: So yeah, we nursed quite a bit of a hangover. So this is thus bringing the topic of just general maintenance and cleaning house. And as top of mind for us, we made some pretty big moves recently as far as cleaning. So going to start off first with talking about the cleaning service we used, especially because I wish we had used these guys earlier. Yeah. Cleaning was really good. So I mean, the thing that stood out for me was that they took all our trash. We had a lot of construction materials. Like we bust down a couple of walls.
Speaker: on closets, we had a bunch of construction materials and like the, the sand cabin, the sand wall style that they use here in like older Japanese homes. That was so messy. So they took all that junk from us. So for me, that was like the biggest win we got out of them. They also did a great job on some other aspects of the house too.
Speaker: So our friend Fumi basically, we tasked her to organize a couple of cleaners and get a couple of quotes. So we ended up going with this one company. I forgot what they were called, but they're a local company. They charged us at the N77 ,000 yen, which translates to like a little under 500 US dollars.
Speaker: What they did was they cleaned our nasty bathroom, both our toilets, our shower, our upstairs. We had them do things like when you tape the windows, that little extra sticky stuff, had them like peel that stuff off. So they peeled off all these unnecessary stickers. And what Joey said is they took a lot of our crap away. We had, I'd say we had at least, we had a freaking mountain of cardboard. I don't know how many like 10 trash bags.
Speaker: I mean, would you say about 10, 40 liter trash bags? Yeah. About 10, 40 liter trash bags. I dunno. And then two trucks full of construction with at least two trucks full of construction material, the little K trucks, but so it was a lot of kind of, oh, and then we had all the garbage too. We like went through, there was so much trash in our garden that maybe had just accumulated over decades or neighbors had dumped it there. I'm not sure. But.
Speaker: We had at least another full truckload of that garbage. So maybe three or four truckloads of garbage.
Speaker: feel bad. We had initially scoped and sent pictures to these trash guys of what we wanted. So they had quoted us around, I think 60 ,000 yen, which is like $400. And then the day before Joy and I kind of like, it was like really opening a can of worms. We like pulled one thing out of the garden and then like, we found piles and piles of trash just hidden in the corner that we, we definitely scared them with how much more we asked for in our initial ask.
Speaker: Yeah, and you called them the trash people there for a second, but they actually weren't a trash removal company. They were a cleaning company. And when they first got here, they were looking at the construction materials and he was like, oh no, we don't do that kind of thing. He was like, let me talk to my boss. He called his boss and the boss was like, okay, the boss basically said he thinks that they can handle it, but at first they were hesitant.
Speaker: Yeah, but hey, they did a really good job. They were here from, I think 8 30 am till 3 PM. There's two guys, one guy hauling stuff. I think something I am sometimes afraid of in California is getting ripped off or over quoted. I really do feel like the cleaners here in general did not rip us off. There was some mythology methodology or whatever of how they quoted us. And we're pretty clear and fair about it in my opinion.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm also really happy that they did all the windows for us. We tried to take this tape off the wind. They like put this typhoon tape up, but when you peel it off, it's so sticky and it leaves such a big residue and we tried to clean it off. Well, Taka, you tried to clean it off and I smelled the fumes though. It was so fumey, so I'm glad they did that for us. Yeah, I'm so glad they did that for us.
Speaker: I don't know. I think there's a lot of people that give advice of delegate things that you're not good at. I'm pretty bad at cleaning. I think we were really dreading this process. So paying them to help us peel the bandaid and sorts of sorts for this was really, really helpful. Had we done this over again, I would have had these guys come in like maybe be the first thing even. What do you think?
Speaker: Yeah, I like that idea. So before you arrive, at least like you would have known it was like, especially if you're buying an akyak, like we did a bandit for one year, just to come in and know that it's clean, like smell bad when we first came in here. And I'm not going to do stuff like we threw out the curtains, for example, and peeled off the tape. You might have to be explicit about take off the typhoon tape and clean it up. Or if there's stuff stuck to the walls, take it down. I'm not sure, but maybe you got to be specific with them. Difficult though, if you haven't seen the house yet.
Speaker: Totally. Yeah. So I retract my statement. I think had we seen the place and then right away just like prioritize getting them to clean instead of us cleaning, let alone we just went and bought a couple hundred dollars of cleaning supplies. I feel like just to be like, Oh man, this is a mission. We could have just hired them in the beginning.
Speaker: I mean, good to have cleaning supplies though, but yeah. Yeah, totally. But anyways, yeah. So again, they cost it 77 ,000 yen, which is about a little under $500 with their current exchange rate. They were here from 8 .30 to three. So six, like pretty good, Joey. I think it was.
Speaker: For that amount of time and that many people and the disposal part, I think the actual disposal part was the majority of that. If I remember correctly, the price of just strictly the cleaning was closer to 30 ,000 yen, which is about $200, which I think was quite reasonable. Yeah, the trash removal was expensive, but worth it.
Speaker: Yeah. So we're definitely thinking about getting them again, but we've in a sense started a clean slate here. If you've never been to Japan or actually had to sort trash, Japan is like really, really, really hardcore on sorting trash. Luckily, Bepu is a little bit lighter, but Joy break it down the, the trash rules in Bepu for us.
Speaker: Okay. I mean, I'm sure there's stuff I'm missing or maybe misunderstanding stuff. I really haven't got, if you go, so if you, they have complicated rules here and the place to go to get the, the official information is the, the, like the city website, the government website. I looked at it and it was a lot of information. I just scrolled really fast through.
Speaker: I told myself I'd look at it again later, never did. So this is just my understanding of the garbage sorting here based on what I see on the street level and like what I learned from asking people questions. The biggest thing is burnable versus non -burnable. So the way I like to think about it, again, double check the city's website for truly accurate information, but here's how I think about it. If you would burn this in a campfire at home,
Speaker: or whatever, maybe if you're trying to burn like garbage or like leaves and think about leaves and stuff like that, like cardboard, paper, that kind of stuff. Burnable. If you're okay burning it kind of thing. Then there's non -burnable, which is basically plastics and styrofoam and stuff like that. But there are exceptions. There's a certain type of plastic and it has puda, like the characters poo and then ra.
Speaker: in Katakana written on it, that is a burnable type of plastic. So there's, I think, largely, would you burn this yourself? Yes or no, that's burnable. Then plastic, with the exception that there are some burnable plastics. On top of that, I believe now that metal needs to be sorted out. Clothing also needs to be sorted out. I'm sure there's some breakdown with recycling, like glass versus cans versus a pet bottle, like a plastic bottle here.
Speaker: I don't know which of those can be combined into one bag. Do they all need to be different? Last thing I noticed is that some Gomi days, like I've seen two Gomi days, garbage days so far, and one was just for burnable. And then the one today was cardboard and clothing. So sometimes there's like more than one type of garbage thrown out on one day. But like when you bring them out to the site, you can't have, so today, cardboard and clothing, you can't put those in the same bag.
Speaker: Both will be picked up, but they need to be separated. So every prefecture thinks a little bit different, but high level for Oita and Bepu where we're at, it sounds like there's that burnable.
Speaker: the unburnable, which again, contrary to some of our thoughts, there are some plastics you can burn. So we have to look at each sheet of plastic kind of before we toss it. There's also cardboard. So with all our Amazon packages we've had to, you're supposed to tie up the cardboard and put it properly. And I think there's plastic pet bottles, which are just like plastic bottles. What's unique about this in Japan is you need to take the cap off, the label off, and you're supposed to rinse it.
Speaker: very, very good on them for following these rules. I don't think America would do so well with some of these trash rules that we were used to. Yeah. I mean, so we went to the hardware store when he first got here and I was looking for those big black contractor bags because I want to throw everything out just in one.
Speaker: Yeah. So there's that boo has a different color bag for each one. There's different trash days. People are very on top of it. Like specific trash days, the night before they'll come and drop it off. We have a trash pickup point right in front of us. It looks like they have a couple of fish nets or something that you put the trash and looks weird, but I guess it does the job. Yeah. I don't know. Like keep rats out or something. I don't know what the net is for, but
Speaker: I don't know, more to come from us, but just know if you're buying an abandoned house or buying any house in Japan, these are rules you're going to have to buy. Trust me, you can't just go somewhere else and dump it. I know they're really hardcore. They're going to find you. I don't know how they do it, but Joey, do you think they would find you if we talked about it? Yeah. I believe they will find you. So when I was in high school in Shizuoka, I know my dad
Speaker: We had like maybe a bunch of garbage one day and he didn't want to overload the one garbage spot closest to us that we were supposed to put the garbage at. So we like spread it around at a few different sites. And like at some point on a later that day or the next day, someone came brought the garbage back to us and was like, you can't, you can't do this. You have to bring your own garbage to your own site. If it's too much, like you have to pay it again and get it removed.
Speaker: Yeah. So lessons we're learning, we're trying to brand start a new page here, turn a new page. We have separate trash cans for each. We're going to do our best to try to be law abiding citizens of the trash code. But yeah, it's definitely taking a little bit longer than I'm using the states of just like recycling, not recycling and then just throwing it in two buckets.
Speaker: You kind of like got to start getting in the, the burnable versus non -burnable, like head space is like how I think about it. It's like a whole kind of like different way about thinking about garbage. You got to have to get your head in the game. Yeah.
Speaker: Well, speaking of cleaning garbage inside the house, we also, when we enjoyed decided to come and make this trip, we're like, we got to, we got to go to the gym. We got to clean our bodies of sorts. We've been eating so much that exercise is a pretty paramount importance to us. And with that, we actually recently signed up for a gym. We actually just finished our one week free child. Joey, you want to talk a little bit about our gym, gym new member experience?
Speaker: Yeah, I can try my best with the prices too. Maybe, maybe I might ask you for your to jog my memory. But yes, we signed up at any time fitness gym. Um, initially this was, I think we picked it. It's close. It's a, it's a close gym. It's also close to this Onsen Hyotan.
Speaker: like Hyotan Hot Springs onsen. We eventually decided against going there so frequently, but this is the gym we picked. It does have shower facilities, even though we haven't used it yet. Showers, they look like hotel style, like the shower, what's that thing called, where you just drop it in place.
Speaker: Yeah, prefab shower kind of thing. Yeah, prefab shower. Anyways, good enough. We're not showering at home yet, although I think maybe we can now. But anyways, that was something we were looking for in a gym. It would be nice to have some place to shower. And the gym is nice. It's new. Good equipment there. They didn't have any problems with us as foreigners signing up. What do they want? They just wanted to. No tattoos. I do have a tattoo. And the guy was like, do you have tattoos? And I was like, ooh, small one. And I was like, I'll just cover it up. And he was OK with it. But that was a question.
Speaker: that was a question, tattoos, yeah, good, good point. The other thing is like, we need to bring a utility bill at some point, I think too. Like we're on a free trial now, our free trial just ended. And I think maybe to get on their thing, their real one, we need to bring utility bill, but it also seemed like he was just like, ah, bring it when you can. So hopefully we'll get that soon, but I think we can still sign up without it.
Speaker: Yeah, roughly price -wise, again, we had a free trial for seven days, but I think the gym, they have all these weird deals where November is like 500 yen, but then it bounces probably to December where I think it was like 7 ,000 yen, so about
Speaker: 40, 50 bucks US dollars, but overall this gym is really, really freaking nice. I think all the equipment, everything's so clean. It might be the cleanest gym I've ever been to. I've been trying to do this thing called strong lifts five by five. So I need a squat rack. There's three squat racks there. It pretty much everything you need in a modern gym, which was, which was quite, quite
Speaker: Yeah, the pricing I guess I don't really have a good read on how expensive this gym is the pricing kind of like jumps around a bit I don't know I'm gonna sign up anyways cuz I'm trying to I'm trying to work out more and honestly It's like comparable to what I was paying in Canada. So I'm fine with it
Speaker: Yeah, good gym overall. So I think we're going to stick with it. But cherry on top here, we, speaking of cleaning, we had, we were worried that we didn't have a washer dryer in our unit when we were in our house when we first got here. And honestly, we were living, I felt like there was a couple of days we had to re -wear dirty clothes and stuff, which is never a good feeling.
Speaker: As we prioritize looking up, Japan's got a whole bunch, at least Bepu has all these coin laundry places. So the unique thing that we noticed is they have a lot that do wash and dry, but also add detergent. So we would pay like, I think a big load. I forgot maybe like 13 kilos. They do it by weight. It roughly totaled around like 800 to a thousand yen. So six to seven bucks or so for a full wash and clean, which I think was really good. And we actually found one next to the gym. So we.
Speaker: I think it was pretty optimal. We go drop our laundry, we do an hour workout, we come back, our laundry's done, and we head back home and we hit like the hot spring or whatever onsen or maybe lunch, right Joey? Yeah, it's nice to go to the onsen right after working out. It's different than the shower.
Speaker: Hey, there we go. So we've, we've started dialing a routine and I think anyone who's doing this to keep sanity, it's, it's probably good to take care of your physical health, do your laundry and, and get some help cleaning the place. Cause it can definitely be super overwhelming during your first, first couple of days here.
Speaker: Yeah. And I don't know, I can't remember if you mentioned this, but yeah, no, the coin on the coin laundry, the doing the laundry here, there are so many coin laundry everywhere. I mean, I don't remember too well when I was in high school here, but no, I feel like probably most cities are going to have very adequate coin laundry stores all over.
Speaker: Yeah, so that was one of our big worries pre -coming here. We're like, how are we going to do our laundry? I'm sure you can get a laundry machine. We've seen some stuff that you can buy, but I don't know if we had the water hookups. So we were just like, coin laundry, I think is the way to go until we truly remodel our house.
Speaker: Last topic, I want to talk a little bit about used goods. We've been on a kind of used good hunting store or hunting hunt. Spree. Spree. Yeah. So we've been, we've quickly identified like the three used stores here in Japan. I think they're like off house, recycle mart. I don't remember the last one, but they seem quite popular and the used stuff they have is
Speaker: It's really good. So we recently got a fridge. I think we've gotten table. I'm sitting out right now, some good furniture. Joey, what are your thoughts on reuse places? Hmm.
Speaker: I thought there was going to be, I guess tools I've noticed are lacking. I, for some reason, like I remember from high school, like my dad always going on about how great the tools were at these recycle shops. So I've been on the lookout for tools a little bit, but I haven't really found much that I loved at the recycle shops. So that is one expectation that hasn't been met, but I like the clothes too. I feel like there's lots of clothes that I want to spend a little bit more time poking through. If anyone else does thrift shopping, furniture wise.
Speaker: I think
Speaker: fridge prices were like similar to what I'm seeing brand new and also bicycles. Like they don't really seem like they go down in price. Yeah. Hard to say. I think it's hard to keep level with what is true costs. Like really that fridge was what Sammanen, which translates 30 ,000 yen, 200 bucks. Is that right?
Speaker: Or how much was that? Yeah, 200 bucks. Yeah. About just under some 30 ,000 yen. Yeah. So it's, it's hard to say relatively. Yeah. When we were looking around, we're like, Oh, this is a little expensive, but realistically when you compare it, like getting a fridge in the States for that size and that quality, I have to remind myself, I think it was quite good, but comparatively when we see what new prices are and like some stuff we've got in really cheap off Facebook marketplace, it is a little high. I agree with you.
Speaker: Yeah. So, all right. I think, so recycle Mart's been super helpful, but overall, I think that's anything else you want to mention, Joe? I have to say something. I totally forgot. Nope. Not coming to me anyways. Okay. I think that was a, if you are coming to Japan, I think these are some helpful tips again.
Speaker: Cleaners, laundry, gym, reuse shops, all these have been really helpful for our furnishing process. We're gonna go over the contractor process in the next episode. We're meeting with some contractors. We met with contractor today. We're meeting him one with tomorrow. But overall, it's really great to feel the progress that we're making. Yeah, it does feel good. A lot of the houses starting to feel very comfortable. And we're like two weeks in.
Speaker: Two weeks in. If you're listening to this, we're planning to probably rent this hopefully in the new year. It should be looking pretty lit. I would say we got some good, good design coming here. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if the, as soon as the contractor works design, it's going to be very nice. Oh yeah. Alrighty. Well, cool. Great episode. Thank you guys for listening and hope you have a good day or night, wherever you are.
