Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back to the buying a house in Japan podcast. My name's Taki. I'm joined by my co -host, Joey. Joey. What's up everyone. Not feeling great. Um, feeling a bit sick for the past few days, oh but you told me you had a cinnamon bun right before this. So you're feeling sure which is fair feeling a little bit better after the cinnamon bun. Did you go to Cinnabun proper or like, where where'd you get the Cinnabon bun from? No, Lavonde N in my home Bay, Nova Scotia. but Great little bakery. Okay. All right. I'm not sure if it's a French bakery that was taken over by German bakers or German bakers taken over by French bakers. Some sort of history like that. Some mix of French and German bakers. Really good. What are your symptoms? I had a really bad sore throat, but that's usually how cold start with me. I'm not sure why I get a lot of sore throats at the ah initial onset of like a cold.
Speaker: And yeah, sore throat was bad until yesterday. Today it's yeah ah much better, but I got a whole bag of Vicks, Vapo, throat lozenges here. I apologize if you guys can hear it in my voice. I got the lozenge in my mouth. Hope you feel better, man. You we've got to get better. We're landing in Japan in 11 days. T minus 11 days, buddy. Big London too, right? Yeah, I go into London first. Okay. See, I see my ah brother and my sister in law's new baby Charlotte. Got to be top top, but drink some honor, drink some soup. but What are you eating? Yo, you can't be eating cinnamon buns.
Speaker: and I the sugar would be like a fake feel better quickly though, so I gave in. well We'll lean into it. I asked Joey this morning if he wanted to record a podcast. He was like, I'm not feeling it, but hit me up after we did one consultation and he was like, I can do it. So taking advantage of you here, Joey, let's punch it out. It's an exciting day today. Today we have officially closed on our house in Tokyo.
Speaker: How are you feeling about that, Jerry? Feeling great. You know, it's really all down to Yoshi. Yoshi was really the MVP here. He went above and beyond, you know, he did a bunch of extra tasks for us that, you know, just made it all possible. He's doing a bunch of extra stuff. Like he's getting ACs hooked up in there. You know, he's putting up a little sign for Amazon packages. think I forgot to ask him to do the sign, but i after he's he was the MVP for this project. Yep. Things addition. So our our place, again, just a reminder for everyone is we bought in Western Tokyo about an hour away. It's turnkey ish, I would say, or at least we've never seen it in person and it looks turnkey. The one downside that I was like, we need to get this changed before we jump in there is getting AC has one AC unit. Japan is notorious for its hot and humid summer. So we tasked Yoshi with putting in
Speaker: Four more ACs, I think is what the scope was. So he's coordinating that for us right now. Yeah. I think we've only got 30 amp service coming into the house. So it might be a lot for four ACs, the electrical box. It's like basically the same amount of power as my dad shed gets here. next so Not a lot. Can we run to AC split unit ACs at once? You think? No. Maybe, but that might be like near the, the, the max. Yeah. Okay. All right. That doesn't look too hot in Tokyo, but other things we had Yoshi do, and I'm not sure this is typical of real estate agents is he's helping us get in internet plugged in. So we're getting one gig speed internets in Tokyo, I think for like.
Speaker: $40 a month. If I remember correctly, we are also, I just had a meeting with him yesterday night. We're getting insurance in there. So we're getting fire earthquake insurance. I think the guy was like talking to me like, if there's explosions, if there's lightning, if there's earthquakes, if there's typhoon, we have you covered. That's what he said to me yesterday. Explosions. Yeah. He said, I was like, what? Like he's like, if there's an explosion, like. Which makes me think, you know, that one spot in Beppu, we did the podcast on it. Was that an insurance scheme on one of our neighbor's houses burned down? He, yeah. Hey, that's a good point. Good. I mean, now he didn't have it. So the guy, yeah, he I remember he told me he doesn't have insurance, but now we know fire insurance is mandatory.
Speaker: yeah And so he must've at least had fire insurance. Yep. We'll do another podcast on insurance. It was pretty complicated. I was trying to get the whole gist yesterday, but we probably should sit down with Yoshi and and we're actually going to have to talk to that guy again on the 28th joy to sign documents and stuff. But insurance seems pretty comprehensive. We're paying, I think close to $2 ,500 over five years. So $500 a year. Does that sound about right, Joey? Pretty good. Yeah. that That sounds like the number I remember. Pretty good. Yoshi talked to us about kind of the earthquake. There's a, maybe a potentially a little gray zone. If there was an earthquake, we have like a kind of a little mini crack in our driveway or in our garage. We could say, Hey, this might've been caused by the earthquake. So, uh, no, there's some insurance. I feel like there's insurance schemes everywhere in the world. So Yoshi's picking up the keys today, I believe.
Speaker: Yep. Yoshi's picking up the keys. He's going to the house. Joey sent over a Amazon package just to test out if the address is working, which yeah I think pro tips surf boys magazine is what I sent this time. so Safa boys. Yeah. So we're trying to figure out. Yeah. I think for us, our goal is we're landing the 25th. I'm there for one week. Joey's going to be there a little longer, but the goal is to get this place like. We're trying to live in it the second night. We booked a hotel for the first night, but our intention is to have everything sponsored from Amazon on the doorstep for us to live within the second night. Right. So that's our game plan. So we've been, you can sell for people listening out there. You can set up Amazon .co .jp. You can put in an American credit card, Canadian credit card.
Speaker: Get that set up. If you buy a house, get the mailing address. We had some issues with our first property where the house actually has two addresses. I'm not sure if this Tokyo property has two addresses too, but one is the like the land parcel address. And then the other one's the mailing address. I think for the Tokyo property, they're both the same, but for whatever reason, the, the Beppu spot was different. Get the address, send a test package, make sure it gets delivered because In addition to having, you know, trying to use this parcel registry address, they, the delivery person wasn't dropping packages off at the house because they looked at the house and they thought no one lives here. No one's lived to here you for 13 months. It's abandoned. So they were like the, something must be wrong here. So they weren't delivering our packages. So do a test package, see if you can get someone on the ground to verify that the package was delivered or I mean, Amazon will give you a delivery notice, but you know, just to be double check and then. You know you can get everything on Amazon, same as in the US, we're getting the bed frames, we're getting mattresses, sheets, everything, just get it all delivered. And then the day you get there, you can pretty much set up or you know hire a cleaning service and then set up your bed frame, set up your bed, get it all going right away. That's our plan. It's going to be hustle, but it's okay. i think this is I think this is where we find fun. I think it's cool to bring a place from
Speaker: zero to inhabitable. Cardboard King, dime board. One pro tip two is, Joey mentioned it before, our house previously looked abandoned. So we're actually having Yoshi, our real estate agent, make a Hyosatsu. Is that what it's called? The sign up front. Oh yeah. Could be that. Yeah. I think it's Hyosatsu. So in Japan, on the front of every house, there's like a little placard that has like the Kurosawa's or the Smith's or, you know, you'd have your name. So we were getting one of those made for two reasons. One for Amazon packages. If someone's looking at it, they're like, okay, this is actually, Joey, what did you put the, did you put your name on the Amazon packages or our company name?
Speaker: Oh, that's a good point. No, I put, well, so as a, I put Joseph Takamori, and that's kind of a joke from our previous property in Beppu, but that actually might work out really well for this Tokyo property because the Hyosatsu, or what we put is our company name, which is Takamori KK. And so just as a running joke from the previous Beppu property, My Amazon account is set to deliver to someone named Joseph Takamori. So they're going to see Takamori KK on the Hyosatsu in front of the house delivered to Joseph Takamori. Hopefully that all works out. Yeah. So pro tip, if you can proactively, you know, assume that you got to make it super non questionable that someone lives there and you're, if you're the Amazon delivery person. So we're putting this sign up hopefully before we do the mass flood of the Amazon stuff.
Speaker: I think on Amazon too, you can specify where you want stuff. So at least this house looks a lot less abandoned. I hope they bring stuff up the stair. Cause some of those packages are like heavy as hell. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. What talking just mentioned now is getting, putting up a little sign for the Amazon delivery person, like drop Amazon packages here, just in case they're looking at this house and they're like, this is abandoned house. No one lives here. you know having a little sign for delivery. And that's what we've asked Yoshi or we're about to ask Yoshi to put there for us. Just like, you know, write on a piece of paper, piece of cardboard, like drop Amazon packages here. Yep. So once you get a property again, I think a pro tip, just get this sign up there for sooner. It can only help. I do also believe Ken, our friend is helping us get that minivan we covered in the last episode. This sign is also going to help the help like validate our parking spot. The last questions or concerns that the
Speaker: police or whoever is looking at our parking spot, the better. And I think having this placard there is going to smooth thing, smooth things out considerably. I hope because it's a company car. yeah So having the little placard out front that says the company name, you know, it's just, they're going to be like, yup, makes sense. Yep. Cool. So we have a house. I'm pumped. We're actually going to be filming a video, like first reaction to us going to the house. So we will hopefully post that. We have our buddy, George, who's a director. We just asked him, Hey, can you film a video us rocking up first? We're going to use it as like a little teaser.
Speaker: Sizzler video of sorts, but it's I'm excited Jerry. It's gonna be cool Yeah, like when you know, it's got to be one of the first episodes on the podcast But the like we recorded it wasn't the day of it might have been a few weeks later But we recorded something like hey, what were our first impressions walking into the Beppu house? And that was interesting again, you know, it was at the end of a three day, nine hour per day drive. We arrived at night and you know, the house was kind of creepy. And so we're just kind of thinking, Oh, it would have been nice to have that filmed in video format, the initial impressions of the house showing up to the house for the first time. So we're getting our friend George to film that this time, just kind of get, get a little bit more content and you know, people will see, you know, in not quite live, but they'll see it for the first time as we see for the first time. Yep.
Speaker: Let's see where George is going to help us look a love level up, I'd say, but those first couple of days are going to be tiring. Jerry, we're going to hit Costco. We found out there's an Ikea 20 minutes from us. How quickly can we get this place comfortably in place? Should we hire someone to like help us build furniture? No, we got it. Right. Task rabbit. I don't know. might Might not be a bad idea. Just have like extra hands to like, we're going to have so much carb. Where are we going to throw away the cardboard? Oh no. The trash. I forgot about Japanese trash man, he's coming back. Let's do it ourselves again this time and we'll reassess if we need a task. We'll figure out if a task rabbit guys. Okay. Required. I don't really think so, but. Yeah. Other things Yoshi's doing for us is again, he's figured out the insurance, something you definitely want. Utilities, including internet is not, internet's not typically standard. He's going to have a cleaner come in. These are all things we are doing the second time around that we wish I think we had done the first time around. So.
Speaker: Take it as a veteran advice. If you're buying a property, think of these things and communicate them earlier. ah We are getting a cleaner. We have discussed that with Yoshi. Nice. I think the cleaner is costing us like six, $700 and it should be pretty clean already. But if we're living in it, it's for sure. Good idea, right? Yeah. We're also, I forgot to ask Yoshi about this. We're also going to do a home inspection. As a reminder, the the sellers on this property would not let us do a home inspection. There's this whole thing like if once they knew liability, they'd be liable to tell people about it. So we forego the home inspection, which could be bad, and but we're living with it and we're going to do a home inspection anyway, just to know knowledge is power is what you said, right? ter
Speaker: Yeah. So yeah, it you know, it is a little bit sight unseen in that sense. Like, you know, we we bought this house off the internet. We only saw a few pictures of it, a few quick videos, no home inspection. Not the greatest advice to everybody else out there, but and you know, sometimes you gotta, you just gotta to make it happen. That's our like number one advice we give people. We're like, if you can go see the property in person, and we've done it two times in a row, where hopefully, we have not gone to see it in person, to both properties, there's a different beast. I'd say it's just more competitive. We had two people we trust go check out the property. We looked at Google maps. I feel like we're actually going to get keys day one, right?
Speaker: Yoshi's getting the keys today. Yeah. How do we coordinate how we get that? Yeah. i think We're actually thinking about now too, is as we come over, you can't get everything you can get in the U S obviously as you can get in Japan. So there are some things, especially things that are different priced. We talked about Breville. I think the Breville espresso machine is like two K there, a thousand dollars. And here in the U S is like six, 700 bucks. Yeah. If anyone's listening on any of the American military bases, in and around Tokyo. We're looking to get a Breville from the commissary. So let us know if you can hook it up. I forgot we're doing that. and We're doing that talk at the Air Force Base. Yeah, Yokota. Yeah, I was thinking about that this morning. We got figure something that might do a quick presentation to some real estate investor group at Yokota bay Air Force Base. Okay. Well, things we're bringing from the US as now is I think we're going to bring like one of those slog door locks. Japan has like, ah I don't know, maybe this is a US thing, but
Speaker: US recently got really into like security cameras and like smart door locks. I think that doesn't really, I couldn't find any comparable stuff in Japan. So we're going to bring that over. What have you got in Sanic? Hey, you're being recorded. You got that in Sanic. I mean, I turned that off. I only turned that on on when I'm not around, but okay do we want, I don't think we need security cameras, but I think the door lock is going to be a huge, especially if we plan to rent this out to friends. Um, I think so too, just having that combination. It's really, I don't love the key. and bepo Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So maybe I'll bring a security camera, but I don't think we really need it. I would have wish we had done this in Babu and set it up so we could monitor our contractor. I know he would have hated that though. probably Like a secret camera. Just like, come on. That's a good picture. You sent tiger showed me a picture the other day of, I think as this was, uh, November or something when.
Speaker: You left? Yeah. Me, you, and Satosan. That's a good picture, actually. yeah I'm going to send it to him. We'll frame it. Send it. We finally got our update from our contractor. it was As a reminder to everyone, we hired like a comp carpenter versus like a big company to do our contracting. And we've paid our dues, I'd say, with a prolonged construction in our house down south in Bepu. We finally got a quote from him. It's not as bad as I thought it was going to be, right? Yeah. What did we come in at? An extra 10 K. I think around an extra 10 K we should, you know, once we're all done with this, we'll put it all together. But we're basically, we bought a house down in Beppu further south. Our first house for about 40 K. I think we're putting about 40 K in renovation for quite a custom job. Interesting. What it would have been just to buy an 80 K spot place spot, Jerry, but you know, hindsight's 2020. hindsight twenty twenty yeah
Speaker: 80 K in Beppu. Yeah. I think you can get him a nicer house. Our ours is definitely going to be very custom though, which is going to be cool. Yeah. We'll be able to do the. The pros and cons later, I guess. Yep. We definitely took that advice with the Tokyo spot in the sense that we didn't go for a junker that, you know, there are cheaper places in Tokyo, rarer, but there are cheaper places than the one we just bought, but we did go for the turn key up the budget a little bit. Mm -hmm. Hopefully it works out. We'll see in 10 days, but we're stuck with it, Joey. Hopefully, I mean, again, 2 ,500 square feet. This place is huge. We got to put a sauna on it, but we also, I think we had, we have less money than I think we initially thought. So let's just get it up to a version zero.
Speaker: We do plan on probably renting this out. So if you're listening and you are going to Tokyo, maybe you want to rent something, rent it out. Well, at some point post photos of it, it's going to, we're going to make it, we're going to make it comfortable, at least for us. And hopefully other people will find it comfortable too. Joy, which room are you most excited for? We have four bedroom, five bedrooms, four bedrooms, I think. I feel like I don't have a great I sense of the layout still. I think we're probably the two upstairs ones, one of those two balcony, where we keep forgetting we got a balcony.
Speaker: Hey, let's go. Last update from us. Yeah. We've been working with our friend Ken in our last podcast episode to get this car. It sounds like we have coordinated at this. If this was a mission, we bought the car under our company. So with that, I've learned a little bit more about company seals and stuff, but we basically had to have the holder of our, our stamp or hanko or what is it called? Joey Incan. Yep, the seal. Our company seals with our accountants. So we coordinated Ken to go meet our accountants to get the yin kang, which is the physical stamp. And then before that, though the company that's holding our stuff had to go to the government office and get what it's called an yin kang shou mei shou, which is like a seal certificate. So with both the seal certificate and the seal, Ken can have our, has like our power of attorney to buy this car for us.
Speaker: Right. Yeah. So my understanding, you know, in Japan, the seal hanko incan is a lot like a signature, except they use like a physical seal. And so our company has a seal, but it really, my understanding is that this seal really could have just been any seal. You know, we could have bought one at the seven 11 and use that as our company seal. And you need to register with, as a business, you register that seal with the government, maybe as a. a person, an individual, you need to register your hanko as well. But the seal certificate basically ties the stamp, the seal to your business and you need to get one. I think this seal certificate only lasts for about three weeks. So pretty much every time you need a seal certificate issued, you need to go to some government bureau office and request a new seal certificate. Apparently it's a very quick process, but that's how it works. You have a seal.
Speaker: And then you need somehow of tying that seal back to your business. And that's what the seal certificate is. Yeah. I don't know. It's all new to us, but it sounds like there is physical stuff, work and paper you need to get. So Ken has successfully picked it up. He's going to buy the car for us. He's going to drive it and drop it out, drop it off, ideally in our garage before we get there. And Joey's working on the side with a company called Trinity insurance to get insurance for us as well. Right. Yeah, they go through ah some Japanese insurance company, but they're basically an, uh, an English speaking front and we use them to get insurance for our car down in Beppu. And it looks like we're going to use them again for this car. Cool. All right. So wo we're freaking prepared, Joey. This is really our second rodeo. We have, I feel really good about us landing and hitting the ground running.
Speaker: We basically got a lot of the pieces. I feel like we're going to get a lot of pieces done in one week that took us six months to a year in Beppu. Like, you know, get in the car, getting to ensure that took about a year, yeah you know, just putting it off and not worrying about it. But yeah, we, the second rodeo, we know the main pieces and I feel like we pushed on getting a lot of that process done while we were here still abroad. So yeah. Cool. And last thing, Joey, what we need to come up with an Amazon list. I guess we have, we still have time, but we should start ordering these. One thing I actually wanted to also call out is we, our buddy, George, he's our director. He bought a camera for us. Just know the camera's only in Japanese. So things you buy in Japan, you might want to, you might want to consider bringing other things from the US. So Joey thinking it through maybe even like a router, like let's think about the tech we're going to buy.
Speaker: In Japan, it might be worth buying it and bringing it over. I can bring it over from California. So I think a router, the Schlage door lock, maybe security cameras are the ones off top of my head. Yeah. All right, buddy. Well, I hope you feel better. This is the last podcast we have with with you in Canada. Bring your mic. I think you'll be in Heathrow or London somewhere for our next one. Yep. All right. Catch you later. hi man see ya
