Transcript
Speaker: Okay. Go back. Everyone go back to zero. Okay. And I'm going to, I'm going to say three, two, one play on play. We all play. Okay. We're going to just jump in and like, okay. Okay. Here we go. So three, two, one play.
Speaker: We have today on our episode, a special guest. We have Asa Nakano. Thank you for being here Asa. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Thank you so much for trusting us to help list your house. We've mentioned on the podcast before, but Asa has graciously let us use her as a test case. We are trying to help her help her market and sell her house, but Asa just to start us off, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?
Speaker: Okay. I am Japanese. I was born in Japan, educated in Canada and Australia. My father's from Serbia. I'm just all over the place, but I've been in Japan for the past 20 years now, I think. And what else? Yeah. I think that's great. So your plans, yeah. What's the little bit of future for you? You're thinking about moving to Canada. Yeah. That's a big plan. And that's why I'm letting go of the house.
Speaker: And so tell us a little bit about this house. It's a beautiful cabin. We've seen some photos. Give us a high level. How long have you had it too? I've had it for about 10 years now. Well, the property itself where the house is built is a big summer vacation.
Speaker: house area so everybody has a vacation home and it's very cool because it's elevated it's right by the foot of Mount Fuji my father actually owned the house he's owned a house there for over 40 years I've been coming into this area since I was a child and I was very familiar with it I'm all grown up and I have my own children so I decided to buy a house and have a nice lifestyle there with my kids
Speaker: What city, where is your house? For anyone who's not familiar with Japan, I think from Tokyo, where would you, how would you describe it to someone who knows a little bit about Japan? As I said, it's right by what's at the foot of Mount Fuji pretty much. And it's in Shizuoka Prefecture. On a highway from Tokyo, it's less than an hour to the nearest exit, which is either Gotemba or Susono. And outlet mall. Yeah, same as for that.
Speaker: Outlet mall is about half an hour drive. And also there's a city called Mishima, a bullet train, Shinkansen stops there as well. And if you take the bullet train, it's about 45 minutes to Shinagawa, which is central Tokyo. So I hear a lot of people reside in Mishima and commute to Tokyo. And to get to Mishima is about half an hour to 45 minute drive, depending on traffic.
Speaker: Yeah. You've also got Yeti ski resort. I know that 20 minutes amusement park. There's a big, huge space piece of land for kids. There's all sorts of activities you can do around there, but it is pretty remote. Like it's in the woods. So it's very peaceful. It's very beautiful.
Speaker: What are the neighbors like? Is it mostly families that live there? I wonder what's Canada. Like I said, it was initially meant for vacation homes. So it would be really busy during the summer, between May and October maybe. But now I hear that there's about 40 households that are there permanently like us, but I don't see many kids. I think they're mostly retired or they just go to work or
Speaker: from here or just work remotely. The demography is like pretty quiet kind of. I have a busy life so I don't really know all of them but I do have some good friends on site in there. It's a pretty quiet and peaceful community I'd say.
Speaker: Cool. So just to make sure I understood from, let's say, Shinagawa driving, it takes about an hour and a half. Oh, sorry, sorry. So to go to Tokyo in the car and the highway, it's about an hour. Okay. And from Mishima to Shinagawa, Mishima station is a bullet train station. To Mishima station from our place takes about half an hour. Okay. And on the bullet train, it's another 45 minutes to Shinagawa.
Speaker: Okay, you're like an hour and a half from Tokyo Central. Yeah, like Central Tokyo. There's how often do you go to Tokyo? How often do you have to make that commute? I know a lot of people are interested in Tokyo and this is an alternative, right? Okay, yeah, a couple times a week. I'm busy, at least twice, three times a month.
Speaker: Got it. Will you typically go by car or would you typically do the bullet train drive to the bullet train? It depends, but typically because I'm a CEO, I forgot to mention of an import company. We import wine from Italy and sell them here. And the warehouse is close to our house. So we have to bring a lot of the stock to Tokyo. So I typically on a casual business trip, I take the car, but if I have to, I don't want to, if I don't want to be late for meetings and not, I just take the train.
Speaker: Got it. Here's location. Why here versus Tokyo? It sounds like you do business there. Yeah. We'll talk about the house soon, but just location wise, why? Good question. Like I said, I was educated in Canada and I'm in love with Canada and the environment provided something I was very familiar with. It's just nature -based. There's more deer than people in our neighborhood and you see all sorts of animals. And because the house is so elevated, it feels like you're floating in the forest.
Speaker: and I wanted my kids to be growing up in an environment like that with clean air and clean water and stuff like that so yeah for some people if you're in business and your head off is in Tokyo it might seem crazy but it's more than doable and especially if you're a busy person with a busy lifestyle
Speaker: It gives you a piece of mind. Just coming home is like being in a resort place. So you can totally relax and it's not noisy, stuff like that. Yeah. And this day and age, you can work from anywhere really, if you have the internet. Got it. How's the weather? Does it get like crazy snowy? Like what's.
Speaker: No, unfortunately for me, because I love the snow, it doesn't snow all that much. Although it gets very cold. The coldest I have experienced was below 14 or 15. So everything freezes. You can't live here without a snow tire. You do need a car because you're so remote. The closest convenience store is like 15 minute drive away.
Speaker: Yeah. Okay. So minus 14, that's 6 .8 Fahrenheit. I don't know if I felt that cold before. Yeah, it's cold. And I used to have a shaved head and just froze me.
Speaker: Okay, from a, I know you have four children, like from a school perspective, driving to a school every day, how's the school situation around here? Oh, that's actually quite easy. There's a small community just down the hill from us, like I would say like about 10, 15 minute drive away. That's where I set up the warehouse and to their schools, it's a walking distance. And there's a residential area.
Speaker: Okay. I don't know the exact population. It's a very small community, but there are kids in the neighborhood and there's an elementary school and junior high here. And it's not that far at all. Got it. A lot of our listeners are foreigners, I'd say. Is it primarily, let's say they bring their kids, they want to live a similar lifestyle. Is the school all in Japanese? Are there any English options for international folks?
Speaker: Not in this area, possibly Mishima or Gotenba. I can actually, so I knew, I went to school in New Madzushi and there were kids that lived in Susona, one of my good friends, and he would come to our school and they taught the IB program in both the middle school and the high school there. So I would say there is an English option. My high school, close by. Highly recommended, Kato Gakuen. Oh yeah, right. Yeah, that's a good school.
Speaker: How close is that, Joey? If I, let's say I bought this cabin, had three or four kids, I want to bring, take them to that school. What's the time? I want to say 20, 30 minute drive probably. Yeah. Half an hour to an hour. Depends on traffic, right? Cause there's not really a highway to numazu. Okay. But nothing is too far. It might be in any way.
Speaker: I'm sold on the area. If I had three or four kids, I would consider, I think Tokyo is becoming so crowded at this point. It sounds like you got a lot of room to breathe. It's just your escape, right? Okay. Let's talk about the house. If you're listening to this, we will have the listing in the description. Definitely take a look at that. We'll also have video tours and we're going to record that later. But Asa, can you tell us a little bit about the features of your house or like, how big is it? How many bedrooms, things like that?
Speaker: Okay, it's a two -story house. We have three bedrooms and two toilets and one big bathroom with a bathtub, of course. The property, the size, if you're asking for the numbers, I have, I actually own two blocks of land. One we use just for parking space and the other one, the house is built on. The, the total size is 11 or five square meters. That's about a quarter of an acre. The house itself, the first floor, well,
Speaker: Should I say first floor? No, the top floor where the living room is 37 .63 square meters. I don't know what it means anything to anyone, but and actually, sorry, that's the bottom floor. The top floor is 73 square meters. How many bedrooms upstairs? One bedroom, living, dining, kitchen areas, just all connected. There's no walls in between. It's just one big space. Cool. Open floor. And there's a bedroom, kind of separate from that.
Speaker: And the big bathroom is on the top floor. So the bottom floor has two bedrooms and a toilet. And yeah, that's the general. This is a huge house for anyone that's not visually looking at this house is literally 10 times the size of my house now. So where feet, uh, the land we're looking at about just shy of 12 ,000 square feet, which is, yeah, that's a huge plot. You can do.
Speaker: A lot of room for activities for kids. I think they probably use it well. From the building perspective, we're looking at 6 ,300 ish square feet, which, yeah, I think... Asa, you mentioned you and four kids. Do you guys feel like there's ever not enough space or do you feel like it would be good enough?
Speaker: No and you know what as to that is the wooden deck that surrounds the house right it's not shown as part of the rooms in square meters or anything but it's huge so we take out the big barbecue to the biggest area of the wooden deck and you can relax there have 10 people and still not be grown.
Speaker: Yeah, I wanted to ask you about the deck. So that's definitely, I'm looking at the pictures right now. That's my favorite. That's my favorite picture seeing that deck. What's your, do you have any favorite parts of the house or any unique or special things about the house you'd like to hire? Yeah. So the wooden deck, I would have to say is one of my favorites for sure. You're out there cause I'm in my business. I take my bottle out and just to have it.
Speaker: on that deck it's just the best feeling you're just because every day the nature offers a different scene right and it could be rainy even and it's just so peaceful and nice but my favorite part of the house if I had to pick just one would be the bay window of the dining room it's just you go into the living room and that's the first thing and because it's a bay window it's three there's three sides of the main windows pretty big
Speaker: and it functions as a picture frame like in spring you have the fresh green and in the summer you have the lush green and because it faces east in winter when the sun rises later you get to meet the sun you get to say good morning to the sun every morning and it's just amazing when it snows it's even better but that's my favorite part of the house it's wow I see some chopped wood outside too is there like a wood stove or anything
Speaker: Oh yeah, because like I said, it gets so cold in winter. We've installed a wood stove and it's very good. It doesn't, it's not a gas. I like that a lot. It just lasts all night, even if you like after it's out. Cool.
Speaker: Yeah, you need a prep though. Like you do have to get the words. That's that part's not hard, but it takes about an hour for it to actually warm up the whole room, the whole house. So you have to be patient, but that comes with. Which room is it in? It's not in the living room on the top floor. Okay. Very nice.
Speaker: So that's where we are most of the time anyway, so we just relax, we eat there, we relax there, we gather there. So as long as the room, that huge space is warm, it's good enough for us. Downstairs we have heaters. Awesome. I see a lot of beautiful trees around you. I imagine these trees are a picture landscape, but you know what kind of trees they are?
Speaker: The, it's actually the area is famous for evergreens, but my backyard is all natural, right? There's little like plantations. I think it's about half an hour. There are trees. I don't know what kinds, there's just so many different kinds. I'm not very knowledgeable, but in winter or fall, you just, you see it. Evergreens just stay green, but the other ones just change colors and
Speaker: the leaves fall and after the leaves fall, you can see Mount Fuji very clearly from the kitchen window on the bathroom window. I didn't know you had the view. Oh yeah. I was wondering that we didn't know. If you have a great photo of the Mount Fuji view from your window, send it to us. Yeah. But now it's all like green. So yeah, I'll look for it. Yeah. I'm sure I've taken a few. Okay. Did each kid have their own bedroom basically?
Speaker: The little two, the younger two share it, the one upstairs. But yeah, my older sons have a bedroom each. Got it. How do they feel about moving to Canada? Are they excited? They're excited, actually. I've just brainwashed them with a wonderful image. But because it's similar to like how we live now, they know. And actually my second one went to Canada last summer for a trial and he didn't want to leave. So that's a good song.
Speaker: That's, that's awesome. Too bad you're leaving this behind. I'm curious, did you, why are you selling it? Did you want to maybe keep it or is this kind of, you guys aren't planning to come back? I don't think we'll come back. I don't want to. And maintaining a house from a remote place is hard and it will just cost money to do that. And it's so much better if someone who has a similar taste is making appreciate it and use it.
Speaker: Got it. And you talked about maintenance. Do you need, what kind of maintenance does a house need? Does it need outside gardening help? Like if someone were to just live there for a couple months a year. The only thing I would say would be the wooden deck we painted every year. So it won't go bad. It's in a really good condition. Solid. I've had professionals looked at it and they said, no, it's going to, this is going to last for good years to come. And to do that though, you have to maintain it. Like painting is because it's so moist here for.
Speaker: good chunk of the year so you need to like oil paint it and but we do that every year that's not the only thing because the house has gone under a full renovation three years ago the walls are double -sided there's a we install a new boiler we did the roof so the roof's new there's no leakage anywhere the windows are double -sided double windows the front entrance door was a little bit old so we did the whole thing i can't think of anything that needs a replacement or any kind of like maintenance
Speaker: For the time being for like Mitch 15 years. You mentioned the walls other walls insulated or yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay Double -paying glass. That's it's pretty solid actually. Yeah, your house was built in what 1991. Yeah, so it's over 30 years, but it doesn't look it or we've done a lot of updates it's I wouldn't say it's as good as new but close to it and
Speaker: Yeah, it sounds like you've taken, given a lot of love. And I think that will kind of come across when you take the video tour, someone's looking at it, but cool renovations seems like everything is good. Any concerns, like what area, what kind of risks are in this area? Is there like a fire risk sometimes like mudslides, things like that. I know.
Speaker: Not where the house is, but within the big property of the vacation area, there's been flooding. We won't have to cross it when we're located so that it's not in our concerning area. But there was one pretty close. And some people can cross it so they can go to work and they can get out of the property. There's only one entrance and one that you have to go in and out from. And if you can't access that, you can't get out of the property.
Speaker: But it doesn't really affect our house where we are at, it's further in. But the climate change has definitely been there. Actually, a quick question about the resort zoning. Do you need to pay any monthly fees or anything like that? Yeah, at the current rate, it's about $70 per month US. You pay at once at the end of the year.
Speaker: But that's about it. And so because the management office is on site and there are caretakers all there all the time. So if you have any problems or concerns or whatever, you just call them and they'll be there in two minutes. So it's pretty nice. Sorry, like what kind of concerns can you call them about?
Speaker: Oh, I don't know. Maybe a tree has fallen, um, because you're surrounded by, um, wood. And I don't know. I think it's great because everything that has to do with the house, like within the house, it's your responsibility. But even then you can call them and ask what number you can call or what they could do for you. They can always point into the right direction or they can even help if they could. Um, the staff's pretty good there. Got it. That's it. That's interesting. So one more time, how much is it per year or per month? Is it 70 bucks a month?
Speaker: 70 bucks a month. Okay. Less. Yeah. That's about 10 ,000 Japanese yen a month, a little less than that. That's pretty affordable. And do they take care of the trees around the area or yeah, just within your property. Yeah. But any thing to do with the roads and everything else on within that zone. Okay. So.
Speaker: I'm just wondering about snow. Do you ever need to get like the driveway plowed or anything like that? That's what they do as well winter if it snows. And when I was a kid, it snowed all the time, but now maybe a couple of times a year now. But you still do need a snow tire. You do. Because you're high, elevated. To go anywhere, you have to go down a hill or up a hill.
Speaker: Got it. And from the insurance perspective, we've had a lot of people ask us about costs, any other kind of routine upkeep costs? I know insurance is maybe one. It's optional, right? We are covered for fire, which is like $500, less than $500 for five years. It's not much. If you're not there all the time, and if you're worried, I encourage you to
Speaker: pay for that, but you don't have to and the water, electricity, gas, if you don't use it as zero, if you use it, just pay for that and just get an account with, with whatever company you choose. And, and is the, sorry, jumping around here, is that like sewage on septic tank or is it like city water and gas and all the sewage?
Speaker: You know, yeah, I haven't really thought of that. You have to take care of probably not. If you don't, if you don't, it might be a well to the property might be on a well. I don't know how to get back to you, but I've just, it's just running tap water and use water and whatever. And I don't know how it works in there. It probably sounds like it's, yeah, it's hooked up. I imagine you're the, you're connected enough to the grid.
Speaker: Okay. I'm curious about zoning. I know people are going to ask, Hey, can I rent this place out per month for digital nomads? Ideally someone lives there all year round, but I'm curious. Do you know anything about, can you rent these places? Okay. So that's one thing you can't officially use it for commercial purposes or rent it to a third party for, you can't earn money off of it pretty much. It's for private use only. And I don't know how.
Speaker: the technical legal aspect of it, but I think every property is listed, it has a purpose and listed within a certain regulation. And this one you can't use for commercial purposes. Got it. Yeah. If you do that privately, no one's ever going to know, but no. Got it. Cool. I think we have a lot of information. I'm curious as we try to get people to take a look at this, your spot here, do you have any advice for someone like considering buying in the area or things to just think about?
Speaker: Like I said, if you enjoy your nature and if you already know that if you like climbing, hiking, things like that, and if you really like being in nature, that's, this is your place. But if you're looking for, to have that, but at the same time be in a convenient environment like you are in Tokyo, that's not going to happen.
Speaker: If, but I doubt that anyway. And like I was saying, the closest civilization is like 10, 15 minute drive away. So if you feel somehow worried or insecure about that, it's not maybe suitable for people like that. But on the other side, it's only 10, 15 minutes away. You can get anything you want. This is Japan. It's nothing's too far.
Speaker: 4 wheel drive would be preferable, but I know a lot of people here that live here in this area don't own that. So it's not that much of a problem. You do need a car for sure. The closest thing public service in terms of transportation is there's a bus. There's a bus stop.
Speaker: But it'd be about half an hour walk. You have to go out of the property to get there. So giving the end, there's only maximum 10 knots. I would say less buses a day. So got to have a car. Sounds like that. That's important. No tires, no tires, no tires are must in winter.
Speaker: Yeah. Sounds like this is the right spot for someone who just wants to escape from the busyness of like still being in Japan, right? Yeah. Okay. Um, sorry. Um, and can day trip to Tokyo anytime they want to. Exactly. So a weekend house would be, I would say ideal for someone who has a really busy lifestyle in Tokyo. I just come here for the weekend. It's just so easy, right? Yeah. I'm relaxed.
Speaker: And question, you mentioned your neighbors. How close is the closest neighbor? I'm looking at the map. It seems like you're, you have so much space between you guys, right? There's a lot of space. You can't see anyone's room from any of your windows for sure. We're framed in our house in Beppu actually. So that sounds really nice. And like I was saying, because you're so elevated, even though it's a two story house, it's, I think the top floor would be equivalent to say like a four or five story.
Speaker: building. So the bathrooms, the actual bathroom where you bathe is at the top floor facing the main street, the direction of the main street, but you don't see the street and the street don't see you and across from the bathroom is
Speaker: Just the hilly wood, maybe deer can see, but no people. That's awesome. A lot of people think about Japan and they think the crowded houses and we bought houses, our house is just like, we have two inches between our walls, between our neighbors and stuff. So I think this is a big contrast and very desirable by many.
Speaker: Cool. Hey Asa, we're going to put this up on our podcast. We're going to go ahead and also we have a native listing. Joey's been working hard on a, our first native listing on AccuMart. So we're going to make sure people take a look at this. If someone comes across this podcast, this listing, this video, how do you want them to contact you? We'll also have an option to gather emails, but I'm curious, you know, how.
Speaker: If they have any questions, specific questions that they want to ask me directly on LinkedIn. And also, of course, they can get all the information from you. You have my number, you have everything and yeah. So we should put them in touch with you directly.
Speaker: Okay. One other note also, this house is furnished. Is that correct? Do you want to keep it? Yeah, I prefer it to let it go furnished. The furniture is actually quite nice. Of course it comes with the fire stoves and everything like the bed frames, the couch and the dining set. What about the car? We're looking to buy a car.
Speaker: car. They can buy my car. I have a big Land Cruiser for a wheel drive and I have a new tire. All right, we and Joey are going to contact you. We are in the market for a car. Yeah, we'll have to let it go anyway before I move to Canada. So next year you can just.
Speaker: Good timing, maybe Joey, but okay. Cool. I was like, we're going to post this. Yeah. Anyone has any questions, we will find a way to connect you to Asa. She's been gracious enough again. Thank you for letting us be, do this trial. We hope we can find the right viewers for this place and hopefully find the right buyer, but anything else from you or anything else from you, Asa?
Speaker: Nothing. It's just to please look at the video as well. Cause there's a live, not live, but video walkthrough tour that we put together. And I'm sure if everybody wants to see and know different things. So I think the video will provide you with pretty good visual information. Perfect. Cool. Thank you so much. Thank you.
