Transcript
Speaker: How do you feel about foreigners buying these Akiyas and coming to some of these Inaka areas? I think there's a challenge that we have as Japan that declining population, especially like countryside. And obviously, like us only Japanese cannot sustain this economy outside of like main countries.
Speaker: area so I personally really welcome to have foreigners to buy a property in Takaeama or Hakuba but I think in Tokyo for example there's a lot of like Chinese investor and then what happened is like they buy a property but they never use it
Speaker: Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Buying a House in Japan podcast joined by special guest Tomoe today. We are in Beppu, Japan down in Oita prefecture. Tomoe has been helping us film some content about our first house here in Beppu and she has been wonderful on camera. We've learned that it's quite tiring to do content on camera. Thanks for helping out. Tomoa, welcome to the show.
Speaker: Thanks for having me. If it's your first time here, actually, you don't know us, me and Joey, we're the founders of Akiya Mart. We bought six Akiyas to date and we can help you purchase. Tomo has been an instrumental piece, as Joey mentioned, as she actually lent us her van for our first Akiya mission. My Tomo van. Tomo, we've been friends for maybe like 15 years, 10 years. Yeah, it's a long time. It's been a long time. And, you know, thanks for coming down. But can you give the audience a quick intro of yourself? Who the heck are you? So I've met Take through our friend group.
Speaker: And so I'm honored to have my Tomo van to be used by them. So I converted to my Nissan old van into somewhere that I can sleep, you know, like a sim camper.
Speaker: So they just brought my Tomo van to down here and then used my car to do the project in Oita. Right on. Tomo, where are you from originally? I'm from, I was born in Takayama, Hidatakayama, and then I spent all my life in Tokyo.
Speaker: Where is Hidatakayama? Hidatakayama is in a center central place in Gifu. It's like a historic town, right? UNESCO World Heritage Site, right? Yes, yes. Yeah, a lot of like foreigners now are visiting, and yeah, it's nice to have. What what makes it special?
Speaker: um So originally Takayama has been like, um how do you call it? It's really far away from everywhere. So it took like 12 hours to get there from Tokyo. So when the westernization came to Japan, which is like i about 200 years ago, all the places like we're facing to ocean easily to be westernized.
Speaker: But Takayama took like so long time. So like where while people are just sitting on the chair and table, people still live on the you know really Japanese lifestyle. So then that place will be was like discovered rediscovered 50 years ago because like we kind of like um you know keep all this original way of living. So yeah. Cool.
Speaker: Before we go too far into this, we got some all-free beers here. We've been doing pretty good of not drinking too much alcohol here. Should we capture the sound? Yeah, hit hit the ASMR. Go for it. Oh!
Speaker: Kanpai, guys. Kanpai, kanpai. Just got it.
Speaker: Joey mentioned this before. We brought Tomo down to kind of add a little flavor to our Beppu video. We thought it'd be a little boring if it was just me and and Joey, honestly. So we've been meaning to have Tomo come down actually. So, it's you know, again, it's awesome to have you here. Our backdrop here, it might be a little sunny. We might catch sunset. We're right at the Haruki River, right by our house.
Speaker: Tomo, you've spent the past three days with us at this point, exploring Beppu. Give us your honest take. Like how's Beppu so far? ah So i already told you guys, but this is my second time coming down to Beppu.
Speaker: And the first time that I came here was when I was remote working on my Tomoban. And I was just like ah sleeping on my car for, I don't know, two months or three months.
Speaker: and And when I came to Beppu, probably that was the low soon that we stopped by or 7-Eleven down there. had a mental breakdown. I was crying. was just like, want to go back to Tokyo. by But it's just like, I don't know, 20 hours. you by yourself?
Speaker: No, but yes. Okay. Okay. So you've, sounds like you flipped 180 because all I've been hearing for the past few days are how impressed you are. Honest impressions of Beppu this time around. It was great.
Speaker: I would say like way beyond expectation. I thought that like Bep is famous for like sightseeing and when sometimes go visit like Japanese sightseeing places. Like I feel like everyone everywhere is like copy and pasted and just kind of like ah it's cool. But, you know, I've been here before. But this place is really unique, I think, like because of the onsen and there's so many nature. i love it.
Speaker: For listeners who don't know where Beppu is, Beppu is located in like the southernmost big island of Japan, Kyushu. um Takes about like an hour, two hour flight from Tokyo, right? And so it's not like super accessible. And I think you'll we'll post a lot of videos about it, but that's where we are recording right now. We are selling a home and we had Tomo again come down to kind of show her around, but also record a video.
Speaker: What was your favorite spot we went to in the past couple of days? um So many places, but if I have to choose one, then the place that we went today, Yamanosato. Yuyamanosato. Oh my God, that place is amazing. yeah i'm mean I'm not even lying a bit that that place is my favorite onsen in the world. Number one, baby. Number one, I told you.
Speaker: Yep. Well, I think what makes it really special is it's not like built up. Like you can go, yeah you go to Hakone, you go to these places and there's like really nice onsen, but they've built the infrastructure around it. There's the Ryokan Hotel. There's like the big restaurant. There's all that stuff. This one's kind of wild. It's like, I would say it's, if you take like a true natural wild hot spring that you got to hike to and there's absolutely no infrastructure, this is like,
Speaker: 20% towards infrastructure. Like it's still quite close to just the wild natural hot springs in the middle of the forest. There's like a waterfall.
Speaker: There's a river. There's a bamboo forest. Like each step of the way getting there, I feel like just adds magic to the adventure. And then probably like you guys take me to those special places, but...
Speaker: I feel like other onsen places are really catered towards visitors. So sometimes when you even spend some time there, there's no space to be feel local that like or connected with a local lifestyle.
Speaker: But here's like so many things to do. But at the same time, there's a people that you can connect with. There's a places that you can go regularly. And then like, you know, like this nice river that you can hang out.
Speaker: We've also hit the same Thai restaurant like three times in in a row. Doan Mai Tai, shout out. Every time we're like default, like where do we eat? Doan Mai Tai, you down Tomoa? mean, we're showing she is down Tomoa like how we would live if we were living in Beppu, right?
Speaker: Like the Thai restaurant that we've hit twice in a row now, maybe we'll hit again today. I think we had three times. Three times. you will We'll go again tonight. We will. it's What were your thoughts? Okay, so there's a parking garage in Beppu, Yume Town Mall. and It's got this great view of the coastline. There's like a mountain. There's like the marina with fishermen.
Speaker: Great ocean view, sunset view. Like, are you? Okay, I think that that spot's cool. Again, it's like a local spot. It's not going be guidebook or anything like that. On a cool out of 10, what's the cool factor of that spot? Okay. I think to be honest, the place was amazing. But you guys like know like Joey, you are too hyped up so that I couldn't really focus on the view. got just like looking at you and how excited you are.
Speaker: It's a cool parking garage. It's got a great view. We're dropping the video probably in the next couple weeks, months. So you'll be able to see it all there. But Tomo, I'm going to shift the topic a little bit. I think you're one of the rare Japanese locals that we have on this podcast. And we want to have more of our friends. And want to get your honest opinion on kind of some of this buying a house in Japan, Akiya space, some of Japan's kind of problems as we see it as foreigners. Don't hold back. Give us opinion.
Speaker: I remember when Joey and I were first buying our first Akiya, most of our friends in our friend group were kind of like, eh, they weren't that excited. they're like, what are you doing? You know, and maybe some were thinking like, there's... These are Japanese friends in our friend group. Japanese friends in our friend group. But like, as a Japanese person, what is your impression of the Akiya, these homes? Are they interesting? Are they interesting? This topic is really interesting for Japanese people because i think Western world brought to Japan the new perspective on buying a house, or investing on properties.
Speaker: Because in Japan, I think we are so protective about our business. asset management, meaning that we would hold the cash rather than like investing to any stocks or properties. So we would buy a house if those houses are really safe or more to live.
Speaker: But when it comes to any investment like purposes, like we're really skeptical or really, really like take time to make decisions. But I think so Akiya is like something that we have this perspective that um pretty, I would say, pretty old, you know, like hard to take care of. And then we have this Asian population problem. So people would rather buy a house or property in Tokyo rather than just buying a house in outside of like cities.
Speaker: So, but I think because of the lot of like Airbnb culture or second home culture, you know, like reviving of like living in a all countryside, those new values are brought by more the Western world.
Speaker: So I think now I think like through the Akiya Mart or other services are like hype up, like, you know, like project, we kind of revisiting those ideas. impression of Japan Japanese people like to buy new like they but they like to buy new homes they like to buy new cars one is that true or not and two why do you think that is and three specifically related to homes do you think it's just because you can't get a mortgage for an Akiya for example but you can't get a mortgage if you're building a brand new house Right. I think there's um some aspect to it. I think obviously like there's probably like when we Japanese presss like people want to buy a house, we obviously use like some um ju ta kuong yeah and then there's a regulation of like how many years. Mortgage. Mortgage when the house is built. But this is one thing. But also when it comes to the preference over like buying a new thing rather than like second one, is I think one of the concepts that we have is kegare. Kegare, I don't know that word. i got it that's like I think that's like more Shintoism or maybe like a Japanese concept to it. But I think like something dirty, but even like when you wash it and it's clean, but it's still...
Speaker: Keeps the yeah with the aura of the dirt. Okay, yeah yeah. Like, almost like if you buy a used car and someone, like, smelly had it before you, you're always thinking, like, does this car smell? Maybe i like it's, don't know, a little bit similar. Okay, interesting. So, jutec loan, mortgages, you did say that a certain age of the building is usually a requirement to get it. So, economic factors.
Speaker: um But also, I did... believe that Japanese people like to buy new and it's good to hear the keigade opinion here. I've never heard of that but before. say oh Tomo's also unique in that she's worked for a lot of tech companies. You worked at Google, I remember.
Speaker: And I think you were Square. So you you have like a little bit more of an international view. is Specifically, like... the inaka areas are really hard to get young people to move to because of the lack of remote work right covid lot of remote but like how many like is a remote still a possibility in with jobs or like very very rare even in japan yeah in japan yeah i think even like tech world where more ah open to the remote working for a while, but think everywhere, that Amazon or other companies is coming back to like you know office culture. So I think it's pretty hard as well. And also I think not like other countries, i'm not really sure about the US, but I think in Japan, unless you work like you live and work for the company located in a main city, which is Osaka or Tokyo,
Speaker: Nagoya and the rest of the like third or second big cities. Yeah. Like the, I think salary drops immediately unless you work for like, so you know, like a headquarter based in Tokyo. So I think those are also like a problem of like, you know, low wage and... What was it like during COVID? Was was remote work? Like, everyone was working remote. Like, I was in New York at the time. Like, literally everybody started working remote.
Speaker: It was the same thing in Tokyo? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was working at Google at the time, but, like, yeah, it's fully remote. So, yeah, that's why I just bought a band and started running around Japan and, yeah. Critics of the Akiya industry, there's like a line of reasoning that I hear them follow, and I wanted to get your opinion on this.
Speaker: So the line of reasoning goes that, okay, there's lots of Akiyas, cheap homes in Japan. Japanese people aren't stupid. If it was a good, true, good deal, like a Japanese person would have bought it.
Speaker: So obviously buying an Akiya is either a scam or like there's nothing good that can ever come out of these properties. um I personally have my own opinion on that, where I think what makes a good deal a good deal depends on the person and what they're specifically looking for. yeah And I wanted to ask your opinion, because I think that if I had to um argue what a Japanese person is looking for when they're looking for a good deal, I think a job, like a place where they can actually find a job, is probably an important factor, which is different from someone looking for a vacation home property.
Speaker: That's definitely one reason. Like it's really hard to like move like younger generation to move to the countryside. And I think there's another two things that I could think of. One is that I think we didn't have the idea of like, for example, doing Airbnb.
Speaker: So it's more like a purely investment to property. Those are the things that we didn't have. Like, for example, when NISA comes, like NISA is like 401k, like for the US. So the government have like special treatment for the investment. But like Japanese people, again, really love to keep like hold as a cash.
Speaker: So we don't really want to change or cash to any other investment product. product So when it comes to like investment property for um investment purpose, I think we're just like don't really have the idea of it.
Speaker: But I think now there's a lot of way to um make it sense. So I think people started to change as like, for example, myself, I bought a place in Hakuba and my other friends are also interested in like investing property outside of Tokyo.
Speaker: So Hakuba, people that don't know, is like a ski town in Japan, ski resort town. So when you were looking for your Hakuba property versus, say, you looking for a property to live in Tokyo or your friends looking for a property live in Tokyo, I'm sure there were different criteria for both of those different searches, right? What made the Hakuba property a good deal in your mind would have been different criteria from what would make the Tokyo property a good deal in your mind, right? Tokyo property right now is pretty tricky, right? Like, I think a lot of... um Chinese investor, maybe not for now, but like um like five years, so since for like for the past five years, there's just so many investors coming from outside of Japan. So the property price going up.
Speaker: And so like a lot of like ah Japanese people are no longer buying the new or like old houses like this part of me as well. And then so more um lot of people like looking towards other property outside of Japan.
Speaker: I know Tokyo. And and i think Hakuba House is more. I was like that the the price range of Hakuba House is one third of like my original budget. So I was more like ah have, I don't know, like fun idea of like, oh, I want to use this house and, you know. Tomo is one of our most adventurous friends though, too. I think like you have, as like a Japanese person, you've kind of pushed the boundaries more so than most of our international friends. And I commend you for that because it's it's hard. I think a lot of our friends are like out of college or trained to do exactly this.
Speaker: You're trained to work in the corporate job. You're supposed to stay in Tokyo, work hard until you rise up the ranks. And it's, it's not like, not brainwashing or it's just kind of like the societal pressures.
Speaker: I feel like most of our friends are now in their mid-30s, kind of being like, what the heck am I working hard so so hard for? And it's it's it's it's tricky. And we sell a lot of friends going a lot of different directions at this point.
Speaker: let Let me put you on the spot one more time to the kind of drill home. You're gonna represent all Japan here with this question. All Nihon. So the house that we bought here, Jisoji Lux, this is our first property in Japan.
Speaker: So we bought that house for six million yen, which is about $40,000.
Speaker: Why would a Japanese person not have bought that property? Like, why was it on the market for the, I don't even remember the length of time it was, but like, again, getting back to like, was it a good deal for us? Would it have been a good deal for a Japanese person? Like, what sort of things do you think would have prevented a Japanese person from buying that property? Again, you're representing Japan here. All Japan. I think so many aspects, right? I think one of the things location-wise, obviously, Beppu and Oita. I think many people cannot really have the time and and resources to come down here and even like think about it.
Speaker: But also, Beppu is a great place to also invest with every MB or rent in it. But also, it's really rare to have the mindset as well ah for the reason I told you.
Speaker: And I think um also so it's adventurous, like buying a house that's not like not under the later of your like living, you know, every day. um so I think those are like mindset that we don't have.
Speaker: Could you convince one of your friends to move to to buy a house and move to Beppu, one of your Tokyo friends? You think you could convince them to buy a house, move to Beppu, find a job here? No, it's hard. Like, I think it's restarting. Like, I feel the same. Like, when I go to Tokyo, all my friends and all our friends are in Tokyo at this point. Like, why would I buy on the other side of the country to, like, remake friends? And, you know, it's a hard pull, I think, moving, leaving that gravitational pull of Tokyo.
Speaker: um But, yeah, I mean, I think there's a big opportunity. A lot of our friends have been in Tokyo their entire lives almost. And I feel like they need to get out and and see the rest of Japan or try something different. Yeah.
Speaker: And I guess like the angle I was trying to bring the discussion is that I think the vacation home buyers, foreign vacation home buyers, it doesn't really truly matter like where they're not looking for a job, you know, to be in that place. They're really just looking for something that embodies Japan for them. And so I think it's completely different from a Japanese person. Maybe we're thinking about the property from an investment standpoint, Airbnb standpoint. Can I find a job there standpoint? So I think the criteria are different. Sorry, I just like remember the one thing that I wanted to say. So another reason why people don't want to buy a like old Akiya in Japan as a Japanese person is like when we think about a second home, there's ah obviously boom of like buying a second home back in like 90 or something, but in early 2000. But I think we have a more like a vacation home, like a Besochi. So, yeah, you know, like those are the places where people can um pay annual fees so that like the people who's managing the area just do the all the garbage thing or like cutting a tree. So you can just go there like once in, a I don't know, like six months and you feel home. So those are the things that people think about first. So Akiya was like not the option.
Speaker: Is that like a timeshare? Is that like split with another family? like vacation resort zone spot where they'll cut the trees for you. Oh, I understand. Owning a vacation home, or ah for us, owning a home is a lot of work. And I actually agree with that, but...
Speaker: I'm curious, Tomo, like it feels like in the U.S., all my friends starting their 20s were starting to think about buying homes. And in Japan, that was a much later period. It was like, sure you just bought a house recently. When did that idea kind of click in your head? Was it, you know, you're in your mid 30s. What is it? couple of years or was it just kind of?
Speaker: i wanted to buy a house for the past five years. Five years. OK. I've been looking for it, but it takes so so much time and energy to find a house.
Speaker: It's a good house especially. Because you have to visit there, you have to feel it, and then you probably most of the time you have to renovate it. You cannot just move in. So you have a hype, but you just, I don't know, one hour on computer, just like, ah so exhausted. Was that triggered by like your friends buying a home or you were kind of like, it's time for me to buy a house or like what kind of went through your mind then? ah Because I always wanted to like leave the corporate world. Actually, if you don't mind me asking, like your your loan, your interest rate was quite low because you have a long history, right? Yeah.
Speaker: Tell the audience, what interest rate did you get your loan at here? I got 0.6%. 0.6%? I'm paying 6.9% for my mobile home in California.
Speaker: God damn it. Okay. Yeah. But you can't, for a foreigner listening, it's very inaccessible to get those. You have to show long period of employment. 0.6. 0.6? 35 years to you, right? 35 years, yes. Oh, my God. And that's your primary residence, right? You've moved like your Jumi-ho to that house? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
Speaker: Tell us cheaper when you get better rates, right? When it's your primary residence. Yeah. I think for the housing loan, like loan, I maybe just like making things up with, I think 3% or something, if I remember correctly. The transaction process for foreigners is quite complicated. our Actually, our first house in Beppu here was very complicated. took a lot of time. we weren't sure what was happening. Did you kind of feel the same going through it as a Japanese person? Yeah, that was like that was my first home buying experience.
Speaker: And I also really bad with like administration stuff, even like written in Japanese. But there's so many like forms. Like hanko, Japanese stamps. And you have to do it a proper way. Otherwise, old paper coming back, you have to like you know copy and everything. It's like so many things. So I think it took me a good two, three months to finish the process. So as of as a Japanese local, it's still confusing. Yeah, it is confusing. Yeah. I think that's kind of where we try to come in with our Akiyama Direct program. Quick plug, we can help you buy a house anywhere at any price in Japan where we try to help you go through this without you having to do this hunko and putting it the wrong way.
Speaker: What was the most frustrating part of the process? Was it, did it take a long time? Did you just like not understand what was happening or this really was the admin filling out the paperwork? ah I think every step was really stressful. No.
Speaker: Like finding like a listing on the website was hard. And obviously all the listing was managed by different agencies. You have talk to them first and then ask a lot of questions. Obviously a lot of like countryside house like Akiya.
Speaker: has a different condition. some some Some doesn't really have like running water. Some doesn't have like proper toilet. You have to ask that. And also you have to estimate ah renovation cost.
Speaker: That's also really frustrating. And once you find the one, you have to negotiate a price and you make offer. That was also like really stressful. There's a Japanese manner to it.
Speaker: And yeah, after the closing the deal, all the paperwork, everything was stressful. What you're probably more DIY inclined than all our other friends. Like I know you're doing Tomo van, making a camper van. Like what's the plan with the Hakuba house? Are you doing the renovation yourself? Are you outsourcing it?
Speaker: I would love to renovate the house, but again, it's kind of like stressful to think about a lot of the decision making. Decision making is stressful unless you really love the project. So I think yeah I'm just like now keeping the house as is and I'm just, yeah, live there.
Speaker: Okay. Hidden costs. Did you come across any costs that you had to pay when buying the house and you're like, wait, where did that come from? yeah well a lot of like fee that i was i have to pay like three percent right like to the brokerage commission and also i have to pay some fee for yeah yeah probably for the title transfer yeah yeah yeah those are the thing which i didn't really know but also i also this is that was my first house so i didn't know about like kasai hoken what is the english word like
Speaker: fire insurance quick insurance. Yeah, fire insurance. And it was like one, you know? Yeah, tax. Yeah. How do you feel now being a homeowner? I haven't like spent that much time in my new house yet because I spent many time in the huck ah the the Takayama.
Speaker: But it's nice because the reason why i chose Hakuba is I love Hakuba. I've been going back there every month every every year and I have many friends. But recently my job has been really busy so I have less opportunity going back there. But having like owning a house like give me opportunity to kind of connect it.
Speaker: And then it's nice. So I'm like, feel more, you know, closer to Hakkava. And yeah, I have a, I feel like I have a community there. How old's the house? What year? I think 30 years, 25 years. Okay. By the way, congratulations on leaving corporate.
Speaker: I think that is a big milestone. I think we've all kind of been on the same wavelength. We've been grinding for the past, I don't know, 10, 15 years out of college working in the corporate tech life. And congratulations, Tomo. Thank you. Tell Janice, what are you up to now?
Speaker: Now? Yeah. Besides two hours. the meant she She meditates for two hours a day. I caught a glimpse at Starbucks. She was meditating outside our house, too. oh Yeah, well, i I quit my job three months like three weeks ago.
Speaker: And then, ah so I always, as I said, I always like wanted to leave the corporate world and finally came to the point point where I just... That's the time. and crazy thing happened. So I went to the 10 days of silent retreat to kind of end the time.
Speaker: And then coming back and I was supposed to work for four days, then leave. But then when I came back from 10 days retreat, open an email, I received the email saying that my private company caught 50% of the people.
Speaker: And then they cut the entire my marketing team. So I could have affected. and then my end day would have been the same day that I leave. Missed the severance, huh? but That's terrible. But wait, wait, wait. You put in your two weeks notice and then went on silent a silent retreat for 10 days? Like you didn't handle help? What a badass. and kind help kind of badass like i'm unreachable like literally unreachable i am on you like good luck taking all this i noticed them like four weeks ago so i could i technically were for two weeks i think there's also like an interesting time where you know we've worked so hard in these tech jobs but we can't be cut like in a quarter second right like all of us have been laid off yeah or like close to lay it off or resign and like
Speaker: Or someone on your team that gets let go or quits and, like, the team keeps functioning. Yeah. It's just not, it's not like, again, we were trained to graduate college, work really hard, but, like, we're so dispensable, I think, to these companies, unfortunately, even though we work really hard. So it's like,
Speaker: um'm I'm happy Joey and i we've made a business now. We can't be fired. I guess we can fire ourselves. Tomo, Congrats. Tomo made a business. Thank you so much. Tomo, tell us about your Hidetakayama business that you're spinning up. Well, I'm still, like, working progress, but I've been working on some activities in Takayama. There are so many foreigners that come and visit Takayama. But like any other, like, saicine places, it turned into really, like,
Speaker: really capitalism like consumption like kind of vibes there so if you go to kyoto same thing tokyo same thing like all the places copy and paste and i don't like that i don't want takayama to be one of them so i decided to provide like really local uh nice like heart to heart activities with my dad as a big beginning bob so sad but Yeah, so we started a cooking class at our 200 years Machia house on the main street.
Speaker: and And people really love it. You know, my dad is my my dad's English is not perfect, but... Your dad's English is so good. oh you done Your dad is teaching the class? i um very edgent it's so Yeah, yeah. It's really nice. I think it's a really authentic experience.
Speaker: Toma, we're going to wrap this up in a little bit, but have a couple questions, actually. Just like your views, i there's a lot of anti-foreigner sentiment in Japan right now. Again, I know you come, we're a little bit more international of a group, a friend group in Tokyo, but like, how do you feel about foreigners buying these Akiyas and coming to some of these Inaka areas?
Speaker: I think there's a challenge that we have as Japan, that declining population, especially like countryside. And obviously, like us only Japanese cannot sustain this um economy outside of like main area.
Speaker: So we should welcome foreigners. But at the same time, I think there's ah also danger to it. um for example i think i personally really welcome to have uh foreigners to buy a property in takayama or hakuba but i think in tokyo for example there's a lot of like chinese investor and then what happened is like they buy a property but they never use it so when the house is not in use it's easy to just you know yeah go bad or something or you they need to maintain
Speaker: So I think um those are the challenges. So I think when you consider buying a house in Japan, it's really cheap, a cheap investment, but you cannot really be responsible like irresponsible.
Speaker: There's ah things that you need to do as a house owner. So you have to kind of make sure that you can take care for a long term. It's a lot harder and Joey and I have talked about there's like really no shortcuts to owning a property and getting it fully functional. It's a lot of hard work and don't know, I think people glorify, hey I bought this house, this is what it looks like now. And we do that ourselves, but it is it's quite difficult, especially if you don't know a lot about Japan or have friends, like luckily we had you to help us, we you helped us call some of the early listings.
Speaker: You helped us lend your van to us. Like you've been a real help along the journey. And i can't imagine doing this without friends like you to help us. What do you think, Jerry? Totally agree. And I think like our service, we make it easier to get the key in your hand and get the utilities and stuff set up. But there's so many things in Japan that make it difficult to get set up here as a foreigner that ah that anyone purchasing property here is going to run into. Can't open a bank account, for example, if you're not a resident here. Can't get a cell phone number. Like, I feel like to really pull this off, you can't just buy a cheap Akiya property just because it's cheap. There's going to be so many hurdles that you're going to run into.
Speaker: Um, if you're not like dedicated to the project and dedicated to being in Japan, like I feel like there's again, just to say like, there were so many hurdles, but I feel like what got us through, it was like two, twofold. One, we have friends here and I feel like we really leaned on our friends for a lot of help doing this.
Speaker: And then two, this was a place that we wanted to spend time in. We kind of knew going in that there would be some frustrations. But like, if again, I feel like I've said this so many times, but like, if you love spending time in Japan, going to the hardware store, even if the frustrating things are frustrating sometimes, but that's just like part of doing business or buying a house or living in Japan. If you still enjoy your time, even then, then I think this project is for you. But...
Speaker: If not, like if you don't know Japan that well and like just think it's a cheap property, I think you're setting yourself up for failure. You have to want to be here. You have to want to spend time here for it to truly make sense. Otherwise, it's going frustrating activity.
Speaker: Tomo, final question for you here. If there was one thing you could change about Japan with ah with a wave of the hand, what would it be? That's a huge question. question hu First thing that comes to your mind though. First thing comes to your mind. We have to have a higher wages. Especially with the yen. Weak Japanese yen is okay. But putting that aside, our wages are so low.
Speaker: Even compared, like when I'm working at Google, like the difference between Japan and other countries like just based on where you live yeah what office you report to yeah yeah like the wages up the wages that's a tough one especially like inflation's coming to Japan the weak yens or the low interest like I don't understand economics super well, but it seems like there's there's a couple of storms sp brewing right now.
Speaker: But Japan seems okay right now, but something's on the horizon that I worry about, right? Toma, thank you for coming. We want to have you back on again. we would love to visit you both in Hida Takeyama and also in your new Hakuba spot next winter, hopefully.
Speaker: We appreciate you taking the time and yeah, look forward to having you on the podcast again. you get Thanks for being here. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Buying a House in Japan.
Speaker: If you find the show helpful or at least entertaining, give us a five-star rating. Takes five seconds and really goes a long way. If you or someone you know is looking for a Japanese home, check out Akiyamart.com, our English-friendly site that lets you browse over half a million listings. That's A-K-I-Y-A-M-A-R-T.com to find your dream home in Japan. If you've got questions or feedback, drop us a line, email contact at akiamart.com. You can also find us on Instagram as well as TikTok, where we post properties, tips on the home buying process, and updates on our own purchases and renovations. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next week.
