Transcript
Speaker: Fumi tells us that Sato is in jail. He's out now, but he needs to be paid in cash.
Speaker: Welcome back. Welcome back to another episode of the Buying House in Japan podcast. I'm your host, Joey. Joined by your co -host, Take. Take, we have had quite a whirlwind past 10 days. I keep saying that I'm like, every day we were in and put ourselves and in a new, completely different headspace. Every day is a grind, but we're sitting here in Beppu, in our first Akiya Disoji Lux, and boy, it is a different place now.
Speaker: It's coming together. Which way you want to go first, Take? I'm happy about it. Let's just cut to the chase. it's It's feeling good. We did the same mistake where we rocked up after a super long day of driving and we're like, yeah, let's go check it out at night. And so I will admit when we first rocked up, I was expecting a little bit higher quality of construction and it was a little bit... man this the guy definitely rushed but i do agree with you after a day or two of being here man this place is it has a lot of potential yeah and maybe because i got a check in april maybe i had more and and i had also spent more time here i feel like
Speaker: It's more or less what I expected, I feel like, minus some of the like smaller details. Like Takei said, there's definitely a lot of places where you can see it was rushed, gaps and things and paint splatters here and there. What's your favorite part though, Takei? Yeah, before actually going into that, rewinding the clock for anyone new to the our podcast here, this is our first property in Beppu. We call it endearingly Jisoji Lux, because that's like where the the mountain next to us is called, so we call it J. Lux for short, so maybe you've heard that before.
Speaker: ah We bought this place for about 40 ,000 U .S. dollars. It's built in the 1970s. We bought it about a year ago. Actually, we I think we got the keys about a year ago. And we started construction probably in the new year. And here we are finally. Again, we have a three meter monkey podwood table, black synthetic. to Tommy really went full on custom. I like some of, unlike some of our other places. So, first off Jerry, come by. We have beers in the hands. Come by. Come by.
Speaker: Okay, what was your question? What are your favorite parts of the house now? We have effing regular toilets now. i was there with However long we've been here, we have the traditional Japanese, like, squatty toilets and, like, gross tile bathroom. we We're like, oh, jeez, this is gross. Joey, what about you?
Speaker: I like the monkey pot table. I think the table with like Takei said, we have a 3 .2 meter long table. I don't know how many people it'll seat, a lot of people. And on top of black tatami with a Horikotatsu underneath it. I feel like we've talked about this Horikotatsu before on the podcast, but it's like so a sunken table. So your feet, you sit on the tatami floor and then your feet go below the floor level.
Speaker: And yeah, this really nice live edge monkey podwood table here is sitting here. I think this room's great. We're going to have a pizza party right after this podcast ah actually inviting Fumi and her family. I got it. Yeah, we got to make sure we get those pizzas. Yeah. But yeah, I think overall, but I'm feeling pretty good about the place. So we could and say it's like a little bit like a lipstick on a pig. But at the core of it, you can't change the bones of this building. These houses were built very cheaply enjoyable.
Speaker: talk a little bit more about that, but I'd say it's pretty good considering we only spent $35 ,000 to $40 ,000, bringing our total, everything in here, about $80 ,000. Yeah, you do see, that's a cheap renovation, $40 ,000, right? You wouldn't get that in America. Can't get this in US, absolutely.
Speaker: And even so great deal, I think we were hoping maybe for a little bit of a miracle with the $40 ,000 that Sato -san would do, like just a phenomenal job. Sato -san is the name of our contractor. Like he would do a phenomenal job for $40 ,000. I do think, and we got quotes from some other contractors that were higher, maybe I think it was like 8 million yen or something. I think some other people had quotas like 50K, 60K. $50 ,000, $60 ,000 US. Now we're thinking, would would they have placed more attention to detail on certain things? and Because we walked back into the house and where we're noticing that we want Sato -san to fix a few things up. So I do think you we're seeing
Speaker: the quality you get for $40 ,000. And it's not a smash out of the park. It is still a $40 ,000 renovation. And it's a one man job. So this is like a one man army. He was a a local carpenter that who we've gotten recommended to us. So you can see that he definitely was rushed near the end. But I agree with you. If you're thinking like you think japan Japanese precision kind of work. And I think it started out that way when he saw him like leveling the floors. But from the crossing of the finish line, there's definitely like wallpapers not cut straight, or we have gaps all over the places. Things are aren't don't look great, but at the core of it, he did. We just recorded that podcast with Coon. We didn't really clearly outline everything we wanted very clearly, yeah and that could have helped. And we would do that again, actually. We would do it differently if we did it again, and and really map it out every small thing. Yeah, we did. like lee We were also gone, right? so
Speaker: Maybe we could have done better getting with instructions, maybe more picture inspiration pictures, that kind of stuff. But ah overall, I'm happy. I agree. Initially, we came in and were like pointing at a lot of stuff that we thought was sloppy work, but I'm happy. And I think after putting sort of our touches on it. like We made the upstairs pretty livable even before the renovation, so i no doubt in my mind that this would be a nice space once we once the renovation is finalized and we can start filling it with furniture. Yeah, so now it's really focusing. We did a quick walkthrough actually with Santo Santo and we'll give you the backstory juice on this, but from a functionality perspective, I think we have everything nailed. We have air con or air conditioning in the rooms, we have insulation,
Speaker: but We have regular toilets and we have a toilet and sink upstairs now that we can brush our teeth up there. Maybe the shower. let's What do you think about the shower, Jerry? And give a little context on what you wanted. Right. A lot of this came from right before we came here. We were in an Airbnb in Montenegro.
Speaker: a small town near the Serbian border and there was some kind of shower in this A -frame cabin we were staying at and I really didn't like that it couldn't relax in it so when we first got to Beppu and we were starting the renovation and and talking to Satosan about it, I really wanted to prioritize a shower that eventually would be really nice in there, a really nice space where, I don't know, you can relax in the shower. I don't like the Airbnbs where and you can't relax in the shower a little bit. So I had high goals for the shower and one idea
Speaker: that we went, the idea that we went for was to make it like a concrete box, very industrial looking and maybe have some nice hinoki wood accents in there and some green plants in this kind of concrete box was what I was envisioning. I don't know, I see on Instagram sometimes like places in Tulum or something like that that are very like ah some brutalist Airbnb that someone made in Tulum and they have lots of plants and and concrete and that kind of look.
Speaker: How did it turn out, Joey? Close. On first glance, I thought it was very far. In fact, when Fumi sent us photos not too long ago, maybe three or four weeks ago, I thought we were just like, all right, let's just put subway tile over it. And we made a mistake. Sato -san didn't understand the vision or couldn't pull it off, or the vision was wrong. For whatever reason, we were just like, i let's just subway tile over it. We got here, and on first impression, I still thought that. Too far gone.
Speaker: But on closer inspection, so one problem that we just learned about today is I actually like the concrete that he put up. He put concrete up on all four walls, not the ceiling and the floor, and I actually like it. ah At first it was a little shocking, but I actually do like it. The biggest issue is that he went for a little bit of an accent wall on the far back wall, the main wall that you look at when you enter in, and you put a kind of shiny gray paint, it looks like on it.
Speaker: And honestly, that's the worst part of the entire shower is like when you went off script here and tried to put in this accent wall. It looks like a wet gum. Yeah. It looks like wet gum, wet clay, and then everything else like patchy concrete and.
Speaker: like the patch of concrete. I think it's going to work well with how we're going to try to save the shower. We're going to try to put shinoki floor down and then on that wet gum wall, shinoki wood going up and maybe even hinoki wood on the ceiling. So hopefully in the end it's going to be like this mix of nice smelling Japanese wood on the floor. Cover up that back wall, cover up the ceiling with a nice wood.
Speaker: And then we'll have this cement on either side. I'm still hopeful for the cement look. We went really custom on this. So you as you can tell, the custom shower or the custom table.
Speaker: Not all contractors would have been down for this. So I do think at the end of the day, we are we're very thankful to find someone who was down to do this versus the first company, big corporate company who wanted to put in, you shower units and stuff like that. And there's also, have we done that? Things would have been a lot simpler. Things would have been more predictable. And I guess I'm glad we did it this way because we learned. I think if we were to do this again, I most definitely would recommend you have to be here.
Speaker: to course correct the contractor. yeah We thought we could do it remotely. We didn't in some to some degree, but also at the same time in the United States, you have to not micromanage, but you have to be there to course correct your contractor very often. I thought it could be a little different here.
Speaker: but it certainly isn't, I think, any renovation project, anything that you have in a vision. If you don't put it on paper, if you don't put it down into an architectural type file and write detailed notes, they're at the end of the day, they're never going to know and that's not their fault. Yeah, I agree with you. I also think if yeah if you're doing anything custom,
Speaker: Like one way we would potentially do this over if we could go back in time would be go with the bigger company that's done this a million times before for every room that isn't custom. Let's say we still wanted the custom shower and we still wanted this custom big table with the Horikotatsu. They didn't want to do both of those things they pushed back on. So I would get the bigger company I think to do every standard room, every room that you just want the standard freshen up the refreshing, new wallpaper, new flooring, new ceiling, etc. And then maybe hire a carpenter to do the specific things you want in the house. That's just an idea. I don't know if they would like splitting up work like that, but potentially.
Speaker: If time is a constraint, absolutely, I think doing it again, go with the big company as they will get it done. They will get it to Japanese standards pretty good, yeah to foreign kind of creative standards, maybe not. And I think, yeah if if we were to redo this again, I would have gone maybe with big company and then after that done the custom stuff. and I do think getting boilerplate and then putting your personal touch might be easier, especially if you're doing this remotely like we did.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a good point, too. Do everything kind of standard cookie cutter, Japanese renovation, and then once that's done, then you find another contractor. It's going to cost more money, but I do think you'll end up happier that way. The one -man carpenter that we went with just took too long, and we can see that he rushed near the end. Yeah, not everyone is going to—it took a lot of we We were the right people to take on this challenge. I don't think everyone would be down for something like this. It required, I think a lot of, we had to, we lived in the place and understood like what it was to use a ah really old aquia. And it's not really thinking back. We didn't have air conditionings or windows and clothes or toilets or whatever. Like, how do we, yeah i'm I'm surprised we, we you especially you, Joey, lived here for so long.
Speaker: I got lucky, or I think had we done this in the summer, like Tokyo in July was so hot. Had we come to Beppu like June of last year and then me try to live here for two months with no AC, holes in the walls, et cetera, I could not have done it. couldt have done it and Another thing I was thinking about, we're in Bapu, which is like a very popular onsen town or hot spring town. We did not shower once in our shower. And luckily we are in this hot spring town. So we went to a lot of onsens, but we had a kind of communal onsen we call Jisoji Onsen, which is just like awesome. The water is always going is very clean. Had we not had that place, clean place to shower, this would have been miserable.
Speaker: Yeah. One thing I did want to talk about is how my thoughts have changed a little bit on these houses, these kind of the 1960s, 1970s era homes in Japan. Taki, I'm sure you've been slightly noticing this too. and and We've also been talking to a lot of people about how these homes were prefabricated back in the day. Japan's population was growing in the 60s, 70s, and the nuclear family was becoming a more of the default standard instead of having like everybody
Speaker: grandparents, great -grandparents, all living in one big kind of kominka -style home. The nuclear family was becoming a more popular option, and also city life was becoming a more popular option. So Japan needed a lot more houses quickly, and they came up with these cheaper construction styles. Some were prefabricated, some were not. Apparently, this house, Gsoji Lux, was not a prefab, but it shares many of the similar characteristics, I think, as the prefab homes. Long story short is, these homes were constructed quite cheaply back in the day, thrown up quickly and and constructed quickly. The burndown lot near Gsoji, we were looking at the foundation, it's really just rocks.
Speaker: sitting on the ground there, that they there's like a concrete perimeter and then there's just rocks in the center of like big -ish rocks. That's what they put posts on. Just generally, it seems that construction was cheap in those times. And I remember my parents telling me like,
Speaker: We think now, oh, Made in China is a sign of something being cheap, but back in the, I guess, 70s, 80s potentially, Made in Japan was actually the what people were thinking what was cheap goods. And I think this is all reflected of that time and space in Japan when population was growing, income was growing, more people wanted their own homes, and they came up with the solution of cheap construction thrown together quickly, whether it's prefabricated or created on site. And Taki and I have looked at so many listings over the past year and we see the same thing everywhere everywhere. We see the same bathtub, we see the same kitchen in so many of these places, the same sort of layouts, the same shape of the house.
Speaker: And I believe the reason we're seeing that is because they are the same house. So many of these are prefabricated homes by the large mega builders, Sekisui House, Daiwa House, <unk> etc. So the spending more time in Japan, learning more about the real estate world here, i'm certain I feel like the layers of real estate in Japan are starting to unravel. Another thing we've noticed about our home Jisouji Luxe is all the things that are like misaligned or part of it might be from earthquakes, but it is cheap construction materials. Like I i feel like I tell a lot of people about the subfloor here. It's not a big piece of plywood. It was like two layers of eight inch plywood on top of each other. And then in the closets, it was just one layer of eighth inch plywood. That's all that's keeping you from falling through the floor. So I'm just starting to see
Speaker: that these homes were cheap when they were built, and they're still slightly cheap. And so I'm coming around to the fact that a lot of Japanese people We used to say, oh, Japanese people, did they don't see the treasure here. Like these homes are cheap. This is such a great deal. This is such a great deal. But I do believe now that Japanese people know that these homes were created cheaply. And and it was us that had that misunderstanding. we We did think these, they are still a diamond in the rough to some extent. But I'm coming around to the fact that these are created cheaply and they are still made of cheap materials, e even these many years later. And when
Speaker: Japanese people do think about old homes that they like. It's all that kominka style, and much more strongly built homes, much like our interview with Koons. Those are the kind of homes he's interested in. That's where you get that Japanese craftsmanship throughout the decades. With these mass -produced homes, you're not getting that craftsmanship.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's all or also we were talking do the other day. This is like the postwar baby boom. There's a big burst of people that needed housing and in the 60s and 70s. So Japan was building these left and right. And with that, to echo Joey's point, a lot of these homes are very similar, but I also think they're pretty functional. You'll see the same in in unit know bathrooms and it was very efficient to get these up.
Speaker: And I still think that these have a lot of value just coming from California, seeing how much even the plot of the land, this is definitely worth it. So it treats their own. Definitely don't expect the that house to be perfect. That's built in the 70s. Don't expect to have installation, but.
Speaker: to the right person, it's definitely still a crazy deal. Like I got a new build in Santa Cruz in my mobile home. it's It's definitely not good quality construction. So I'm also just doubtful in general that unless you're going really luxury build, no new constructions or prefab stuff is ever going to be really high quality.
Speaker: Yeah, I like that you are living in a prefab in America because you can probably see the similarities. Oh, absolutely. I'd say it's even more rushed. And so walking into Gisogilux this time, um this is how I felt when I first got my new, quote unquote, prefab mobile home. And it's going to take a little bit of elbow grease, but I really think we can knock it out of the park with this place.
Speaker: All right, switching gears a little bit, let's talk about the drama of our contractor. So our contractor, his name is Sato -san, great guy, a lot and a lot of speed bumps throughout this renovation process. We first contracted and I think signed the contract probably January, February, I would say maybe even earlier, like November. Actually it was November, I blame her. And he had first initially quoted us as, hey, no problem, we'll have this done by the end of January.
Speaker: We are now 10, 12 months later, almost, and we're still knocked out. Yeah, 11 months later. Joey, walk me through the challenges and the the legacy or the adventure of our contractor, Satosan.
Speaker: started Okay, started off great. We liked him right away because he everything we said that we wanted custom, he was like, yep, no problem. Whereas the other company that we worked we we were got a quote from, they didn't want to do custom stuff. So started out on a good foot with Satsang. We all had high hopes.
Speaker: I first thing you did was tear up the floor downstairs so made the downstairs unusable good news is we were I was staying upstairs at the time but to the ah the only sink was downstairs so it felt like I was coming down into the basement every time I wanted to brush my teeth Other than that, it did had high hopes still because he just he came in and sort of tearing stuff up away. so Classic. I've learned that's like classic contractor. like They make it seem like they're tearing up and they're really getting a lot of work done really fast. Interesting. Yep. I definitely had that feeling. like that yet but He's moving fast. February, this is going to be fast and cheap and custom. and yeah Great job.
Speaker: I go home for Christmas in December and we get a text that he fell off a ladder. And I forgot about this until Fumi reminded me today, actually. Fell off a ladder and got a piece of metal impaled in his leg. Wasn't on our property. It was somewhere else. And he's going to be out of commission or the work is going to be slowed down for a few more months.
Speaker: He sent us a photo of his lego bandages and looked like, looked really sus. He didn't need to send us a bit, but just the fact that he tried to get ahead of the story a little bit. Yeah, and it was like, you're not in a hospital, man. I am. So, took a look at how he is in Matsuyesh.
Speaker: how It took him like a couple months and we had to give him the benefit of the doubt. and And we're going to keep giving him the benefit of the doubt here. We really don't know what's going on is in his head. But fast forward kid comes summer. He's recovered. He's back here. We are telling him like every month, hey, we we want to come. We've set a couple of timelines of, hey, we're visiting Japan. We want to come and and live in this place to try to add pressure.
Speaker: None of that pressure worked. ah He kept continuing going and be like, hey, yeah, all these kind of small excuses along the way. I don't know why he just never told us like, hey, I need more time. And he never once was like, I just need more time. He always had an excuse, it seemed. Yeah. And that that's something that we were discussing with Fumi later too. Come April, I come back to visit and I guess I was expecting more.
Speaker: happened. He did do a lot of work. The downstairs was like pretty much done, apart from putting the flooring in and wallpaper. He said all those kind of final touches he was going to do last and he was going to start on upstairs next. But yeah, April, I came back to check in on the construction. There had been progress, not as much as I expected, but there had been progress.
Speaker: Good go. What happened next? Go back to Canada. I was back in Tokyo in July, but I didn't come down to Beppu to see. Around... It wasn't too long ago. The next bit of drama. We didn't get many pictures from him or anything along the way. like Every time I came, I would like definitely be messaging him online, which is the Japanese messaging app.
Speaker: trying to just get the communication a little bit more flowing. He really seems like he wants to go through Fumi, our friend here, instead of talking to us directly, even though I was using chatTBT, etc., to make sure that conversation flowed. But anyways, not a lot of communication back and forth. And then maybe about a month ago, month and a half ago,
Speaker: Fumi tells us that he's been arrested. He's like in jail or something or had just got out of jail. And I think I'm not sure. Did we tell him we were coming back? may Maybe this is all another elaborate excuse. We're not sure. But the long story short, this is my understanding. There's actually two issues here.
Speaker: He's getting sued by another client, so potentially he was shirking his, maybe he promised another client a similar quick timeframe, probably, and instead has been focusing more on GSoG Lux because we're putting, we're like, hey, it's been a year, like.
Speaker: where stuff at. So he refocused back on our property, GSoGLux probably didn't communicate very well with the other client. The other client thought he he went missing or something like that. And that client is suing him. That's problem number one. Second problem is something with his ex -wife. She's also suing him or something. I'm not sure what it is. But anyways, Fumi tells us that Sato is in jail. He's out now, but he needs to be paid in cash because if he doesn't get paid in cash,
Speaker: these people that are suing him, the banks are just going to let them know that he has cash and then the banks are going to take his money and and pay the people that are suing him or something along those lines, but now he needs to be paid in cash. And we got these like long, long elaborated messages and it was just like, What dude, what is happening? What do you want us to do? And obviously we we paid 50 % in the beginning. We had another installment of stuff we added and then we had the remaining 15, 50%, which is about 16 K USD. And he told us this about like a week. I think when we got to Japan and we're just like, dude, how we we can't get this much cash this fast. And also just seems really sketchy. So we pushed back.
Speaker: little bit and fast forward today we actually we found a way to withdraw some cash we thought we didn't get it all to him it's just not feasible but we gave him a little bit of red meat to some degree to keep him going because we have some we had some other things we need to get touched up here um but it's really interesting when we are here today he is that same good guy kind of energy where he was like just saying yes to everything. He was smiling. He looked good. Didn't seem like he was really distressed at all. um But something was really interesting as he was leaving, he was just like, I haven't eaten in three days. I was like, what? He's also homeless. He said he doesn't have a apartment. Yeah, homeless and good on you, Joe. You just like hand him this little pastry we have. And he took it.
Speaker: I mean, he was like, you haven't eaten in three days. And we had a little yeah piece of cake on the table. as I was like, take the cake. yeah Like our friend Fumi. And again, absolutely, you have to if you're doing this like us, you need to have someone like Fumi, you need to have someone on the ground to be micromanaging or just managing checking it on the property. But.
Speaker: For me, it was like really skeptical. she's i like He's saying the right things when he's here, but something feels very off. He's definitely... Either he's not... He's very afraid of saying, I need more time. and Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I do. Okay, I want to give Satos on the benefit of the doubt. Sounds very complicated in a lot of drama in his life, if true. And also he had it's he's homeless now and hasn't eaten in three days. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and make sure he gets paid. Well, we gave him enough at least to last for a while. We also yeah actually offered for him to stay here yeah because we aren't going to be here. So he took really well to that. and they get At the core of it, we're we're trying to be friends with him or or trying to help him out here. but Yeah, help him out. we Yeah, exactly. we don't want leave it were We're not trying to be bad clients here. So yeah, so we're making an effort to get him the cash. We offered him to stay here, et cetera. But I do agree with Fumi that and you, Takei, that he seems afraid of just telling us that he needs more time.
Speaker: And if all of these excuses are really just to cover up for not being able to tell us that he just needs more time, it's like you get the feeling that the guy might be a compulsive liar. yeah Definitely. Like, some of these excuses just sound like extravagant. I'm just like, dude, if you just need more time, just apologize and say it. Yeah. But it seems like he's he might be doing this for so many people, like pyramid of a cart.
Speaker: Pyramid of cards was it perhaps the cards? Yeah, and it maybe is coming down. He's lost my apartment having even three days There's like oh, I feel bad, but I don't believe him at the very core when he said I was like Matt dude heavy I really don't get the sense that he's in that zone. What's your gut feeling say? I'm gonna give him the benefit of the doubt for now. Okay, but I do agree stepping back like objectively it all does seem fishy and the logical
Speaker: Yeah, all signs are pointing to him being but lying to us about him needing more time. I think all signs are pointing there, but I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt. Yeah. So at the core of it, I looking around right now, I feel pretty good with the work he's done. I think for me, when I first saw it, I was a little salty just because what this took 10 months, but he could really be going through all the shit. He really, yeah he was helpful. We did get this done. It's great to know that we he probably gave us a discount, but he's feeling
Speaker: probably a little bad that it took so long and I do think he's gonna do the touch -up asks that we asked for pretty well he did make some good decisions too design wise he made some okay decisions but he also did make good ones he made some good ones he made some okay ones and he made some bad decisions on his own mixed bag yeah but And if just close this podcast off, if we were to do this again, I think starting out with the bigger company, one, you must have if you can't speak Japanese, you must have someone on the ground that's project managing or.
Speaker: being able to check in, ideally, locally. I know we have a couple of people we're helping by and we have our agents. They're great, but they're not going to be as good as someone on the ground who can go in and check very frequently and talk to the contractor. Second, definitely would have probably gone with a bigger contract got bigger contractor to get the Acia from.
Speaker: real real sketchy to livable, and then figure that out. And then three, how we've learned this lesson, I should have done this is we should have got like an architectural drawing or kind of 3D sketched out the place and been very clear. But overall, I think we he did a good job.
Speaker: Yeah. And i would again, I would just add four and this is like my own realization is set your expectations a little bit accordingly. This is a quickly made, cheaply made affordable home for the masses built in 1970s Japan. It's not going to be that Japanese craftsmanship that that you're looking for. Yeah. Or and may not that you're looking for, but like that you romanticize.
Speaker: So we will take a video. We're still in the midst is a little bit messy. We're not actually going to unpack because we originally, we thought we were going to unpack and get this ready for Airbnb right away, but it still needs a couple months of work I'd say. So we're looking to come back hopefully in the winter. Hopefully it'll be warm. We have five ACs now or heaters, so it'll be good. Yeah.
Speaker: And lastly to push the contractor to put in insulation like I think absolute just after spending the summer here we We'll see what winter's like soon, but I experienced a summer here this past summer you need insulation ye Well, they're excited about that booth. We've done a tour of Japan I can honestly say this is one of the best spots. So if you're looking Take a look at that boo. I think the hot springs make the Akia renovation in tandem much more doable yeah definitely ah right any last words on jlukx
