Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the buying a house in Japan podcast. My name's Take. And I'm Joey. And we're two friends who just quit our corporate jobs and bought a cheap house in rural Japan. The goal of this podcast is to document the highs and lows of the process while informing you of every step you need to take in order for you to do it yourself too. We're by no means experts and we're doing this for the first time, but we hope this gives you a realistic expectation if you embark on this journey yourself. And we hope you enjoy the show. Yo, yo, yo, we are back.
Speaker: How you doing, Joey? Good. Is this, uh, this is the Christmas edition, maybe Christmas edition. Are you getting any snow in Nova Scotia? How's it looking outside? No, there was some before I got back. It looked like a lot, maybe like a full foot or something. Uh, yeah. Like when I was in New York still, but no, it's been rain. We've been getting a lot of rain on the East coast. I shipped you some Accio Mart merch and the guy at the post office, Hey, do I need to wrap this in plastic bag? Cause there's no, it was like,
Speaker: Ah, yeah. I have no idea. So he might come in a plastic bag. California's no idea what it's like to live in the snowy place. I'm calling it from Hawaii, man. It's like solid at 24, 25 Celsius, 74, 75 Fahrenheit. Feeling good. Nice, man. You should definitely come out here soon. Switch it up from the Nova Scotia coldness. Yeah, it would be nice. A little break from the winter.
Speaker: Anyways, this episode, kind of keeping it open, let's do a Dear Diary series. I think it's been a while since we kind of just talked our mind of what we're doing. A little less structured here. I think a lot's been going on these past couple of weeks for us. Can't believe we're at the end of 2023 too. Congrats, man. We bought a house in Japan. Yeah. And I think that we only really started talking about this in April, 2023 too. A lot, a lot, a lot. We got a lot accomplished. We physically own a house. The house will be done
Speaker: February. Yeah. Paid outright. No mortgage. No mortgage taxes are low. Hopefully it doesn't catch on fire, but, uh, we are, we are homeowners in Japan. It's good to say that. Hope it doesn't catch on fire. There was a fire in the neighborhood and like the most popular form of heating is burning kerosene inside your house. Hey, the kerosene here is a monster. That's such a good fossil fuels. You kept saying that it's like fossil fuels.
Speaker: Yeah. Although it's like the, the exhaust like literally just fills the room with exhaust. You barely notice it. I feel like if you're coming from a different room and you walk in, you kind of, and you take a sniff, like it feels a little bit exot fumey. Maybe, but once you're in there, you kind of get used to it. I have no idea. Are you like, are you supposed to crack a window? I really don't know. I'm pretty sure you got to crack a window, but I found out that door in my room was cracked and that's why my room was so cold all the time. Cause the windows were off.
Speaker: Anyways, construction updates, Joey. We got some, we got some videos from Fumi the Fixer, our on -ground person. Place is looking good. We got some insulation up in the hood there. Are there any, yeah. And the insulation was something that we like, I don't know why, like I thought it was going to be such a big deal. And so we were always kind of like, we asked him to do, to insulate, do we not? And then I feel like one of the last days before we left.
Speaker: We were just like, let's ask him. And we asked him like, how hard would it be to insulate this downstairs? And he was like really easy. And we're like, Oh, do it. Let's do it.
Speaker: But it's funny, Joey, tell that story. You had mentioned the other day about Sato -san as context. We've been our contractor. His name is Sato -san. Joey has been making coffee for him every morning, kind of like a Pavlov incentive for him to chat with us. Joey told me a funny story. I drink coffee every morning. So I'm downstairs making it every day and Sato -san comes around 9 AM kind of thing.
Speaker: around the time that I was waking up. So I'd be downstairs making coffee and I'd offer him some too. And we'd have a little chat, like 15, 20 minute chat kind of thing, just about whatever.
Speaker: And so I was making it every day and I was making it with pour over method. We had a pour over thing and we were going to Hyuga and Fukuoka and Oita City, all these different places to get sourcing good beans, all that kind of stuff. So I was like making a little bit of a fancy kind of coffee type thing for them. And I'm there and we're like having a coffee and I'm always like talking about the beans, like, oh, these ones aren't so good, blah, blah, blah. So.
Speaker: I'm making him this like black coffee every day, but like kind of fancy thing. And then I noticed once I went to, I was going to the Combinie to the 7 -Eleven and I asked him if I, if I could get him anything. And he was like, oh yeah, get me one of the, like the cafe au lays, like one of those canned coffees. Yeah. Like milk and sugar in it.
Speaker: And then I feel like the last, that was maybe like two days before I left Japan. And then the day I left Japan that morning, I asked him, I was like, so when you make coffee, like when you drink coffee, like how do you take it? And he goes, lots of milk and sugar. I had been making him this like black coffee kind of thing the whole time. And he's, he's more of like a milk and sugar kind of guy, but he was drinking it. He was, he was not complaining and he was like, okay, yeah, I think, I think I understand the good beans.
Speaker: Totally. If you're, if you, I mean, I'm addicted to caffeine to seven degree and you take it at any, any form you can. And I'd say even if it's black without sugar and cream, right. Yeah. Like we didn't even have milk and sugar in the house. I was like, oh, sorry. Like I can't even make you milk and sugar. We didn't even have any. Geez.
Speaker: All right, either way, I think Satoshi, we've finally got him on a line conversation and we're checking in with him, asking him what are our plans. Seems like our bottom floor will be done end of January. And then he's moving on to top floor of February, right? Yeah. And then he's going back down to the bottom floor to finish the shower room. We're kind of doing more of a custom bathroom thing there. So I guess he's leaving that to the end.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, there's so many things I would, I think we could add on, but I think at this point we just, we just let them roll with it. Right.
Speaker: Yeah. And I'm kind of down to see what his, like the satosan omakase, like just kind of leave it, leave some decisions up to him. I feel like he like, every time we would say something like, Oh, we should expose these beams. Or when I was picking up the wallpaper on the floor and he always was kind of like, Oh, like good choice, nice taste kind of thing. And like kind of agreed with the different customizations we were doing. So I think, I mean, I'm hopeful that his decision making is going to be good. Cause he wanted to change the tie. Like it sounded like from.
Speaker: update from Fumi, he wanted to like, kind of do something different in the kitchen that not something different, but just, he had an idea for something we hadn't talked about yet. And so we're kind of like, Oh, just let him do his thing. Yep. Yep. Yep. Cool. Right on. I'm excited to, we're checking in every other week or roughly maybe two, every two, three weeks to see construction updates, but it's good to see those, this goddamn toilets are gone or we're done with the squatted bodies. We, and we made the right choice. I think moving fast on him too. He's got another.
Speaker: job lined up and now they, they have to wait until March or whatever for, for our job to be done. So it's nice that we, we move fast on them. Quick decision -making might sometimes bites us in the butt how we got jello .com, the domain name, but other times it's, it's better, right? Yeah. Speaking of jello .com, that's a domain name, uh, we bought for Aki and Mark, but we got a little scared. That's too close to Zillow.
Speaker: I mean, that was the whole point. And then we got kind of warned that, um, you can't do that kind of thing. Yep. Thousand dollar lesson, but I think we'll be able to repurpose it for something at some point. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Open mind. Yep. How is Akia Mark coming? If you don't already know, Akia AKI YA dash mark .com. Akia means abandoned house in Japanese or in Japan. Joey's been devying it up. What's, what's the latest?
Speaker: Yeah, so things, so basically trying to wrap up a V1. So I've got a list of tickets, I'm using Trello and I've got a list of tickets for V1 and I'm just going full steam ahead, trying to move those tickets over to the done column. And then once that's done, I feel like, yeah, we can, we can V1.
Speaker: Whatever pay start marketing or whatever we're going to do. But I would say that we're moving from beta to what comes after beta, the V1, I guess viable product. Yeah, viable product. So that's going to happen very soon. So few of the things that taking care of.
Speaker: Making sure happen for before V1 launch is, I think the first one that's going on right now is the web scraper is kind of like working double time at the moment. We are running into a lot of issues with no photo. So for anyone that uses the website, a lot of listings had this kind of a no photo image instead of the images of the house. It was all these kinds of like gray images that said no photo. And I think that the reasoning behind that is the web scraper runs every day when it scrapes. I feel like sometimes the.
Speaker: Agent that is actually creating the listing on these other Japanese websites at home and nifty They've created a listing and they've added a bunch of textual data, but they haven't added the pictures yet And maybe they're like they're building this listing Form over the course of a week or something like that So the web scraper scrapes it at an incomplete time or perhaps they come back and they change some photos around or get new photos or something like that so
Speaker: I feel like I was scraping incomplete listings. So the web scraper is rerunning right now over all older listings. And I've set it up to check back in with a listing after seven days. So the first time it scrapes, it's just going to populate the database with whatever data it finds. And then it's going to check back in on that listing after seven days again. So hopefully that's going to take care of the no photo issue.
Speaker: Yeah. If you haven't been to AccuMart for a while, check it out. Joey's been hustling. It's, Joey hats off to you. It's snappier. It's definitely come a long way from when you first load and you see all this, all the stuff. So it's, I think we got a product here and excited to hard launch it soon.
Speaker: Yeah, we're going to come out with some pricing. I mean, we're in discussion trying to figure out what the price is. So we're going to drop a paywall as part of V1 coming in the near future. We're thinking $15 a month and we'll see where that goes. Again, this is our first time doing this. So we're just trying something out and see what sticks. Totally. On that note, we mentioned in the last episode and probably one before, we've been doing consults. They've been going great. We've met some really awesome people, but also just
Speaker: calling out, if you do want to consult and decide not to show up, please let us know. We've been dealing with quite a few no -shows, which we've been prioritizing it in our day. I actually just like just drove back home to take a consult, but we found out it was canceled, so it kind of sucks. So we're trying to figure out how to talk to people using Akimart, but also reliably because we are putting a lot of time and thought into it. So I want to make sure that people are showing up if we do
Speaker: save that time. Yeah. If you're going to flake flake earlier than later. Yeah. Please flake earlier. We said all these confirmation things. I, I, Joe, I don't know if there's any more texts or emails that will really help us. It's really just getting people's skin in the game. So maybe we do like a dollar fee or we'll figure something out. Yeah. That'll be our last resort to, okay, just, just get people to put a little skin in the game, like a dollar for a consultation or something like that.
Speaker: Yep. Last update on AccuMart. We got merch, Joey. Get ready. We got a laptop sticker, got a hoodie version. I think these are the pilots on the side. My partner and I have been, we got a t -shirt press, so we've been playing with some stuff. So who knows? We might have some AccuMart merch on the site quite soon.
Speaker: I'm excited. I don't know how, how that's all going to work with shipping and stuff, but we'll figure it out. And maybe there'll be a little merge button or something like that. It'll be fine. I'm, I'm sorting out the ship, just no shipping to Canada. It's amazing how long it, how much it was like, yeah, it's 40 bucks to ship to Canada. I was like, what? Okay. So us only, us only, unless we will bring a limited quantity to Japan, maybe. And man, the stickers are looking good. Nice design work. I have it on my laptop right now.
Speaker: Nice. I want to put one on the laptop too. Yeah. I like the design too. I mean, part of it was my design. I feel like Gaga had a little input there too, but she did not love it at first, but I think it warmed up to her and she liked it later on. I'm excited.
Speaker: Yep. Just note the Amazon sweater quality is pretty low. So just take it. Probably has 10 washes in it would be my bet. I'm of the fan every time I've worked for a company and you get the, I don't know, whatever this, this Christmas time, they, they usually give out a bunch of swag or something like that. I don't love those gildan t -shirt quality type things. So I, I'd be good stuff. I'd be more excited about a higher price merch for better quality. Cause it's something I would actually wear. Yeah.
Speaker: Hey, now it's not other company, other company shirts. It's our company shirt. I think so. I'm happy to, happy to send out this merch to people if they actually rock it and it gets people to take out, take a look at AccuMart. All right. All right. In other news, what have we been working on? Oh, GKs, Entity Structures. So we, for context, we went into this and we bought our house in Bepu under our names.
Speaker: We've kind of learned since, and we've thought about this a little bit too, if we make our house an Airbnb, like how do we get income if we don't have a bank account? It was kind of all really murky. We recently watched this video by this guy named Shumatsu. He's doing really good content. We're going to talk to him soon, but one of his big recommendations was creating this thing called a GK, which stands for I think, what, Goto Kaisha? Is that right, Joey?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I don't know what that means in Japanese, but yeah, I think you got the name right. Yep. So it's a Goto Kaisha. To my understanding, it's the equivalent of an LLC in the US. If you've done dealt with any real estate in the US or you own something and you probably are familiar with the LLC game. So we are in the process now of trying to figure out how to make this GK in Japan. Seemingly, it looks like we could probably pay people to do it.
Speaker: Definitely is not something I think we want to tackle ourselves given the complexity of Japanese government and registrations and stuff, right? Wouldn't want to try it, right? Willing to pay for someone, right? Oh, yes. Right. Yeah, exactly. Yep. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean the document. Yes, definitely.
Speaker: So we're talking to two folks right now. One of them I think is in Tokyo. Seems like they generally quoted us like start to finish. I think two to 3K US dollars, which seems pretty reasonable for me. If we got a bank account in hand, that's a, that's a pretty big unlock in my mind. Yeah. And I mean, that was like one of like the bank account always seemed like the.
Speaker: Like the, the limiting fat or whatever the word. Yeah. Something that we needed, but who, we had no idea how to go about getting this, right? At the moment we're using, we're boring Ziv at Nippon trading international's bank account. So we would send funds to Ziv's.
Speaker: Company's bank account and then we could pay the owner of the house that way or any utility fees and that kind of stuff so we're always like how do we do this without having to Lean on the bond trading international and this seems like the way to do it Yeah, she's got a great video on basically a higher level overview of how to set this up
Speaker: I'll link that video in the show notes. And also if you are interested in getting in touch with those GK setup companies, feel free to drop us a line too. Happy to share those. But yeah, we're in the exploratory phase. One thing that Tokyo -based company mentioned, Joey, that I had let them know that, hey, we're thinking about doing meme -paku or Airbnb or hotel registration.
Speaker: They recommended we maybe work with someone closer to Beppu. So I hit them back with a question of, do we need to have the same person make a GK? And this is all the Scrivener lawyer stuff in Japan is like so confusing. There's so many names and I don't know. I don't, I don't fully understand who, what entity we're really working with, honestly. Yeah, I agree. The whole Scrivener thing is quite confusing.
Speaker: And in addition to that, I think the next, so after we make this bank, after we make this GK, we make a bank account under it. We had heard before that you need like a local director, but it seems like that's not true anymore. So you might not need someone locally, but we are still looking at hiring someone on the ground to kind of be our.
Speaker: So maybe we might not task Fumi or one of our friends to be kind of our local rep. But once we get that GK, once we get a bank account, then we're looking at hotel registration, meme pocket registration, but something that's a little scary, Joey's accountant taxes. I think I know we're far from getting revenue from our place in Bepu, but it's something on the horizon. Unfortunately that we got to start thinking about. No doubt a Scrivener will be involved in that process too.
Speaker: Yeah. So, uh, a lot of confusion. We don't honestly fully get ourselves, but I think this is just kind of like how it is the first time you do anything like real estate transaction. I think once you look back, you're like, okay, that was simple. And hopefully it's as simple as people say, but from our view right now, it's honestly really intimidating. Yeah, a little bit. It's nice doing this with a friend though. It kind of like doing this by yourself. It would be a lot more scary than doing it because then at least being kind of like, yeah, bounce. Did you understand that? Did you understand that kind of thing? Yeah.
Speaker: But again, the process of what we're doing is we're going to try to make a GK Goro Kaisha. From there, we're going to have that Goro Kaisha open a bank account. One note on bank accounts in Japan, they're very hard to make. I don't know. I think there was like some Yakuza scandal or something, which is why bank accounts are so hard to make. But even Japanese nationals say it's quite hard to make bank accounts. Again, once we get that bank account, then we make our Minpaker hotel registration.
Speaker: Yeah, they got funny, some funny rules like the bank account stuff and all this, like I was trying to move, like I was trying to pay our contractor through a bank transfer from my bank. So I was using OFX and tried to do that to fool me as well, a person that's helping us out with a lot of these processes. And they both got hit with this money laundering thing and they had to go to the bank and it was like the bank was a lot of documentation from them and it was just like,
Speaker: Very strange. And at the same time you can buy a house in pure cash. Just, I don't know. It's weird for like how digitally forward people think Japan is for something's completely the opposite, right? Yeah. So for our car registration, there's another, another little bit complicated thing. We're trying to buy a car from our friend, Reiko and Kevin.
Speaker: It's not just like signing over title. There's all this paperwork. The government needs to know the dimensions of our parking spot, where we're parking, because we're not local residents. And we'll do a full maybe podcast episode on this once we get it all settled. Scrivener involved again. Scrivener, yeah. We got to go down to... I physically got to be in Japan and I think I need to go to the
Speaker: the office or something is what the last, I think the next, next step is. Right. Yeah. I thought that we, yeah, I was surprised that we have to be there in person. I thought the next step was like getting some documents from California in your case, but I don't know. I guess, yeah, these processes are confusing. You kind of have to take them like one step at a time. And sometimes you need to be in the country and sometimes you need to get documents from your home country.
Speaker: Speaking of kind of whack rules, remember that time we went to the yakitori restaurant and we drove and then we had one beer and then the people at the restaurant were like, you're not driving home, right? We're like, what? We just had one beer. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We're like, yeah, no, we got the cars parked right outside.
Speaker: Yeah. You get a DUI if you drink one beer and drive. So just know that if anyone listening, you're in Japan and you have a car, you're planning on driving. You cannot have a single drop of beer. It sounds like. Yeah. So there is, it's not like zero tolerance. I forget. We looked it up once, but it was like one third of the blood alcohol level as the United States or something like that is the limit.
Speaker: It's funny, the yakitori chef's like, no, no, no, you're leaving, you're leaving your, your car here. And we're like, yeah, we leave in our car here. And we just walked out and drove our car. Yeah. He's stuck around. We're like, good. Yeah. We did it safely. Our house is literally like three minute drive away. So it wasn't, it wasn't very far.
Speaker: Yeah. Prioritize safe. We had one beer. Yeah. Cool. I guess one other topic that we've been thinking a lot about, and we're getting in touch with a couple of folks in Japan about it, but is about that Minpaku or Airbnb. How can we Airbnb in Japan? Seems like everyone we talked to, and this seems to be the formula people want. They want to invest in Japan. They want to rent out a spot on Airbnb while they're not there, so it generates income.
Speaker: We had gone back and forth on this a couple of times, but I think Joey, we've kind of set on, let's just go for it and see if we can get our Minpaku or hotel registration. Joey, what's a Minpaku?
Speaker: Yeah, so Mimpaku is like short term rental stay. So under 30 days for all intents and purposes, it's Airbnb. If you want to Airbnb your house in Japan, you need to get this Mimpaku license and Mimpaku while legal in Japan, there are a lot of rules and those rules that there's even more onerous rules in some neighborhoods of Tokyo and Kyoto as well. I think Kyoto, like you can only Airbnb your house.
Speaker: Under these mean pocket rules for like February March like there's only two months out of the year Yeah for the rest of Japan for most of the rest of Japan is 180 days, too So you can only Airbnb for half of the year So what the mean pocket was our initial gut feeling of ongoing towards that seems like that was the main
Speaker: Main option, but we quickly learned that there's actually another option called just like getting licensing, getting a hotel registration. We're not experts in this, but we are going to pursue it. It seems like most people we talk to actually just now recommend jumping straight to registering your Airbnb as a hotel. I think there's a lot of.
Speaker: Yeah, I would say overwhelmingly, like everyone we spoke to that has done Airbnb before kind of feels like overwhelmingly everyone's saying, just skip to the hotel license. Like both processes are pretty onerous to get signed up for. So just, just go for the one that's going to allow you to rent your house out for 365 days of the year.
Speaker: Yeah, we found out there's an Airbnb. Like again, we initially thought I was like, our neighborhood was too quiet. One, our neighbors are no longer there. So I think that has changed. Circumstances have changed. Unfortunately for the, I don't know. Actually, I'll take sat the sun and ask, ask if a neighbor has returned or not. But just like one day she was a very old person. And then just like one day she was no longer there.
Speaker: Yeah. So that coupled with, we found out there's another Airbnb like right down the street from us. I think just looking at photos, looking at locations there, it is definitely possible. So even Joey, if we just go through the process and we sell the place or we don't Airbnb it, I think just learning experience wise, this will be good prep for us and experience for future places. Yeah. Yeah. I think so too.
Speaker: Okay. I guess future plans. I think we've been brainstorming a lot. I feel like I text you more than I texted my girlfriend at this point. She's quite jealous. Joey. She's like, who's texting you? It's Joey. I'm like, Oh yeah, it's Joey. Yeah. Usually just dumb stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, but I think like future plans on, we've talked a little bit about relocating maybe or moving from Beppu to look, focus on Tokyo. I think I've been inspired by Anton's book, Freehouse in Japan. He specifically does stuff in Tokyo. I think the wave is coming, Joey. I think there's a lot of people that are.
Speaker: Interested in the space, right? I read his book too. When's it Friday? I'm getting it Friday. Okay. But yeah, we're on the lookout now for maybe doing an Airbnb in Tokyo. I think that's just proven to be the one spot that appreciates rental value wise. There's unlimited tourism is seemingly, and I think that's kind of the big leagues, right? Yeah. And I would say like, we shouldn't rule out condos either. I think condos are a great option. Yeah.
Speaker: I want a concrete house, man. I think the concrete house game is so sick. Would be cool if we can find one in the price range. Yeah. But I mean, yeah, without naming names, we did have some, some people that we know kind of reach out like, Hey, if you're like, I'm down to invest with you in a place in Tokyo. So kind of maybe potentially going in with another friend could be interesting as well.
Speaker: Yeah, that's been something we haven't thought too much about, although it definitely keeps it cleaner. It's just you and me, but if we take outside capital and we buy something bigger, heck, we get a boutique hotel someday. I think that could be pretty, pretty freaking sweet. Yeah, that's true. It is going to be cleaner. Just you and me, but you know, something food for thought kind of thing. Yeah. Let's see if we can just keep leveling up. I, the more I think about you, soji or beppu spot, I'm kind of like,
Speaker: that the Onsen game is so good, but long -term, I think Tokyo is maybe a better, better place to have a vacation for us. Yeah, Beppu. I mean, Beppu was nice, but kind of agree. We did a quick how -to video that's actually on the Akiya Mart.
Speaker: Where we, we found a property in Hakone that that place looks pretty good. Closer to Tokyo has the hot spring game. Maybe that's an alternative, Joey. Yeah, something like that. I mean, that's it. I feel like that's a very Airbnb able location as well, especially because this place had hot spring water. That's what people want to do when they go to hack. That's why you go to Hakone to have views of Mount Fuji and hot spring water, which is kind of why the two reasons why you go to Hakone.
Speaker: Okay. Food for thought. I think we're, we're power users on AccuMart. If you are AccuMart user, like some properties, like I think it's so fun. I think we really built a product that is genuinely I enjoy using. So great job, Joey. Thank you. Yeah. Like future plans for AccuMart, like for V2, not a V1, but after V1 is done.
Speaker: One of the first things I want to do for V2 is change the mobile layout to be closer to Instagram feed. Like I realized that's how I want to scroll. That's how I want to like brainlessly scroll through properties as if you're scrolling through Instagram. So coming soon. Yep. Keep sharing, Akio Mart. I've been sharing it with my contractors here in Hawaii and like trying to taunt them or lure them over. Hey, you want to do some work on a sweet house in Japan? I don't know how that would work, but nevertheless, I'm still going to keep pitching it to them.
Speaker: Other than that, Joey, anything else? I think we're feeling pretty good. We've had some, give a couple of podcast shout outs, one to Joey's dad. I quickly learned that he is listening to our podcast. How do you feel about that, Joey? Yeah, avid, avid listener. He liked that. I feel like most of the mentions about him have been all trash related. He liked that. He's the source of your inspiration for Japan. Had you guys not moved to Japan? That's true. Yeah. Would have never happened. We would have never been friends.
Speaker: There we go. So really got to thank your dad here. What's your dad's first name? Ron. Thanks, Ron. Thanks, Ron. This episode is dedicated to Ron's documents. Thanks for listening. Christmas episode. Christmas episode. All right, buddy. Hey, Merry Christmas. Happy New Year's from Hawaii. Hope you get a visit soon. All right. Mahalo. Mahalo.
