Transcript
Speaker: So we got photos of it, and we were pouring over these photos, just being like, this is so good. You have absolutely crushed this. This is so good. So when the property closed, we were like, oh, we should probably go to Japan and get to the house. Let's definitely do that.
Speaker: Christmas in Japan, we'd sorted all that out. Easy. So i jump on the Shinkansen. Our daughter absolutely loves it. Gets Kurosawa, get a car. It's like, this is awesome.
Speaker: And then we start driving through Kurosawa. We're like, oh, this is the best place ever. And then I start driving. So I got to drive up a mountain about 25 minutes to get to the house. As I'm driving, starts getting snowier and snowier.
Speaker: Now, I have never seen snow, and I have certainly never seen snow. First snow, okay. First snow. So as it's going, as I'm driving up the hill, I'm going over snow and stuff. I'm starting to whiten up on the steering wheel a little bit. And it's like, all right, this is new and possibly dangerous. I have my entire family the car. I'm kidding.
Speaker: it Yeah, dam but this point's pretty pregnant too. So I've got pregnant wife and I've got my five year old daughter in the back. The old heart rate's driving up a little bit. at the same time, you know, you're in the back of your mind. You're sort of like. Did I make a mistake? Yeah.
Speaker: Welcome back to the buying a house in Japan podcast, the number one Akiya podcast. Today I'm recording solo as Joey's still in Japan, closing up the Tama house, but we have a special guest today.
Speaker: it's been over a year, i think since we first got in touch with John, ah initially I know he was looking for a vacation home in Japan, maybe looking to Airbnb it. A year later, though, he has done it.
Speaker: John Kissick has gone through our full Akiyama Direct process and closed on an awesome property in Kita-Karizawa, one of the most, I'd say, sought-after mountain towns in the country. ah Today, we're going to dig into how he went from that first consultation to owning the home, and what worked, what surprised him, and what he learned on the way.
Speaker: John, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks, Taka. Good to be here, man. Yeah. ah So just to kind of get started off, tell me a little bit about yourself, your family, and what got you interested in Japan. Yeah, okay. so I'm John Kissick.
Speaker: I've got two kids and a wife. and We're living in Perth, Western Australia. Where we've been interested in Japan for a while. ah My partner and I, we traveled there ah back in like 2019. We went for a bit of ah but of a hike around Shikoku.
Speaker: And we sort stayed. Did you do that Shikoku, like that full hike around? Yeah, we didn't do the full hike. So think the full hike was supposed to take about several months, right? So we stopped off at a few temples and just had a good old hike around. No sort of no set plans. This is how we used to live when we were pre-kids. Pre-kids.
Speaker: We'd just turn up to a place and then we'd sort of explore and see what we could do. So we had a week down in Chicago. We just sort rolled around the countryside. We absolutely fell in love with it. So way sort of came about these properties in Japan through Gem. She found, i think it's cheap houses in Japan. there's the the gateway. Yeah.
Speaker: That's what we call them. Yeah. Instagram page with this. And Gem's kind going, Hey, John, I've some of these houses in Japan. They're sort going for sort of 20 grand, 30 grand. Because I'm a numbers guy, I've gone, bad, definitely not.
Speaker: And then it' sort of had a look and gone, oh, hang on That's correct. This is amazing. So we we just dug into it a bit further, right? And um we eventually stumbled across your guys' website where we've got English listings and we can go and explore the whole of Japan and and see what what it is we like.
Speaker: Because sort of a couple of steps between us going from Cheap Houses of Japan to you guys, It was getting on Google Translate and trying to find the Japanese websites and they're trying to contact Japanese real estate agents and this guy has work. It's absolutely this.
Speaker: Yeah, we kind of went to you guys and then the process kicked off. It's been, think you started, we started this off August, 2024, I think maybe like a year and a half ago or so, right?
Speaker: Yeah, that sounds about right. So it must have been must have been around when we, I think, contacted you guys with the first property we were looking at. i don't know if you remember that so first property we were looking at, but it was basically the side of a mountain with a shack on it.
Speaker: It was like two grand Aussie or something like that. What? In our first consultation, I think you were pretty set on like a vacation home. Did you know you wanted to Airbnb it or what was like the vision when you first came into this?
Speaker: Yeah, that's that's pretty much it. So we we were thinking that we want a vacation home where we are in Australia, so Western Australia. There's some lovely places that you can go and buy vacation home and vacation.
Speaker: River region is really stunning. probably out of our price range for some time. So we started looking elsewhere. Japan made a lot of sense. So for us, we were sort of thinking, look, if we can get a house that's not too expensive and then we can Airbnb this thing out, get a bit of positive cash flow coming in, pay for a trip each year, that's sort of what we're after, right?
Speaker: Going through the process with you guys, there were many, many options. And it was as a matter of sort of whittling it down to the one that we really wanted, which we're very happy we found the one we wanted. as a numbers guy were you doing this for the numbers were you doing this more for the adventure you know like i i know you're kind of in the quant space so you're probably like calculating everything like of what what was that going through your mind yeah as a quant calculations are always going on in the background so doing the calculations as we talk but um it was a bit of both right you know i feel like i can solve a few problems here so the one for me you know i sort of
Speaker: I grew up, my ah my parents used to travel the world and go and see all sorts of pet places in the world. So I grew up with them and their adventure stories. For we just wanted to just sort of give something like that to our kids as well. Kids are five in five months.
Speaker: What can we do to make sure they've got something like that growing up? So we wanted to to not tick that box, but be able to give them something like that. And we feel like having a place in Japan where we can Yeah, we can go once a year or every second year or something like that.
Speaker: They can come back and they're sort of there on the adventure stories with us. We can go and explore wherever and they're there with us. that very Cool dad, cool cool mom and dad. I think that's the way to go. Have a vacation home in another country, get a lot of cultural diversity, get some more adventure. I think we'll double click on that later and come back to how... how ah your son and daughter, I guess your daughter like Japan, but how did you guys pick? So Kitakarui-zawa is like north of Karui-zawa. Did you guys know this was the spot or like how, again, you experienced Shikoku, how did you guys pick this Nagano area?
Speaker: Yeah, we had no idea. So nice yeah we were literally, I think we probably spent about two months Just trawling areas. We're mad.
Speaker: We like and try to work out what it is that we wanted. So we in Perth, we live on the beach. So we've got beach here every day if we want it. We initially started looking at beach regions in Japan because we do love the beach. It's awesome.
Speaker: But then we sort of started thinking, what else would we like? what would we actually like as ah as a vacation home and other things that we like doing? We like going hiking. um We love the snow.
Speaker: as in my family loves the snow. I have not seen snow in Japan before. So I was like, I'm sure I'll love snow. I'm sure it'll be really great. i Really? Okay. So speaking to Jem, and even some of my extended family were sort of talking, look, yeah, if we had this place, what would be a good area?
Speaker: And so we got to sort of somewhere in the mountains be really fun everybody can enjoy something in the mountains um and then we sort of really dug down into those areas so kurozawa was one area we looked at nagano was the other area we sort of stayed around there again because we've got two young kids we need some of the shinkansen line so can't go much longer than like two hours in a train with kids otherwise things gonna happen so um we're sort of an hour away
Speaker: in Karuizawa. You guys picked a great, like i actually just brought my family up for Karuizawa the summer and it was just like so much cooler then. And like the restaurants are banging there, like the Italian restaurants. And i was just like, what the heck? Like this is world-class food you guys got up there.
Speaker: Oh, it's amazing. We had such a good time when we were up there. And then since we've come back, the company I work for, we do a lot of business with Japanese companies as well. So I do end up speaking to some Japanese people around the way.
Speaker: Whenever I say Karuizawa, they're like, oh, that's the best place there. It was so good. So I'm sort of like just keeps reinforcing our decision here. whether I think we did okay here. I think this a good show. Totally.
Speaker: and Rumor has it, my dad kept saying, he's like, Larry Ellison's got a house up there. Elon Musk might have a house up there. He's just like, my dad kept saying that. I was like, he kept telling me like, you should buy a property or so. I think you guys picked really well, John.
Speaker: Yeah, we're really happy with it. And I've heard similar stuff as well. People keep saying there's like, oh, yeah. There's some some crazy rich people out there. Oh, yeah. Houses driving through. Like, wow, that is Beautiful. That is a lovely house. Yeah, we're in Hawaii, but we're out of it.
Speaker: ah So let's let's talk a little bit about the search process. I know we looked at a lot of how homes. you know There's some pros and cons, but yeah, talk to me about how how you got started. Obviously, you kind of picked the region. You got some advice.
Speaker: You went on Akiomart. I know eventually the listing we bought was off, not on Akiomart, but like... Talk to me about how you look for a property. Yeah. What you look for. Yeah. What we did was we we used Akiyamart and then Google Maps, right? And we sort of were thinking about...
Speaker: what is going to be around that we can do with the kids over the years and we kind of got to the areas that we like so there's snow around there's forest hikes around there's a couple of kid activities around and then we sort of would work out exactly what our budget was and would whittle it down to it to sort of a few in the area so kita kuruizawa we thought was pretty much perfect and within our budget. And we, I think three or four properties that we were looking at in the area that was sort of there or thereabouts budget.
Speaker: So were using Akiamat for that, um which was really great. We could do the pros and cons of each property. And then we had a Rio on our side as well, who also gave his opinion, which was invaluable because I think there are a couple of times where we definitely were pointing in the wrong direction. And Rio like right the ship throughout life. Gently nudges you back to the right direction.
Speaker: And you got to, you sort of like, you're very thankful that Rio is kind of like, hey, if you were just into this, here's some other things that you could think about in that. And you might to deal with some added trouble if you were to go down this path or this other path, you would have no added trouble.
Speaker: So i think, i think one of the things for that was we had a, there was a, It was a $10,000 property that Gem and I were like, that's fine. This looks pretty good. We want to get too far into this, right? So we sit and we're like, $10,000 property.
Speaker: Looks like it's a bit of a fixer-upper, but it's fine. We can do that over the years. So that was the property one. and then the property two, which we have right now, ah that's 50K USD, 80K AUD.
Speaker: And that is pretty much perfect. Like it's a log cabin in the forest, in a villa area. So there's a bunch houses around us, but it doesn't really seem like there's too many people around.
Speaker: ah And everything's like pretty good. We've spent a little bit of money on just a couple of upgrades on it, but pretty good. Yeah, we give a lot of advice to people who are that initially go for the cheaper ones that like, just pay a little bit more money. It's going to get you a lot less headache. And we'll talk about your first impressions of the house later. But yeah I think for that 50K range and not Tokyo is is a pretty good starting point to find something that won't require too much work.
Speaker: Yeah, there seems to be a heap of them around at that pricing range as well around us too. So we sort of felt like that's about what you're going to have something where there's not too much work. um But this property, like you were saying before, we didn't find it on Akema. It wasn't on there. And the process we went to find that was...
Speaker: Rio would go to the Japanese real estate website and sort of give me a run of properties. And I was like, oh, maybe I'll try to find the the Japanese real estate website where some of those properties are. So $10,000 property you that was on the Kia Mart, we went to the Japanese real estate website and then were sort of having a look through some of their other listings. And then this other one was there and we're like, oh, we love this one. This is awesome. So we just asked Rio to do inspections of the two of those ones. And we sort of, we were picking between the two. And we under-narrated. Totally.
Speaker: I'll just like, should we spend 10 grand? Should we spend it? What should we be doing? For listeners, on Akiyama, we actually pull mostly from the larger aggregators. There's probably close to like 10,000 to 20,000 individual local real estate sites. So as John kind of mentioned, this is a good strategy. Once you find a property, you can kind of dig a little bit. So we're kind of the gateway, I'd say, to finding some of these initial properties. And a lot of times the best deals are going to be more off market or more hidden. So I i suspect the property you you guys ended up getting was not crazy advertised or else we would have automatically picked it up on Akiyama.
Speaker: I think exactly. It might not have been crazy advertising, but somebody might have picked it up. But then I guess when we were inquiring about it, there was very much the real estate agent kind of going, you know, you're going to have to move really fast. We think there's other buyers. We never know if that's a sales tag. Like it's, is that like, this thing has been on market for so long, so it's a little nowhere. Like, is there really someone else? Yeah.
Speaker: i I'm curious how much of that is is a fake sales pressure. it It worked on us. but We were like, oh, shit. We better to do something here. 100% worked on us because we were like, oh, well, we're off on this because this looks like it's pretty rural area and we might be able to get a bit a bargain here.
Speaker: soon as I said that, hang on, we love this place. We need to buy it. I got you emotionally there. 100%. Yeah. yeah John, let's talk a little bit about the transaction process. Again, you you came in as one of our first customers. We've leveled up a lot of things since then, but you was your main Akiyamart agent.
Speaker: Talk to us a little about that whole transaction, putting the offer in. like it Was it anything that stuck out to you as unusual or difficult? Yeah. Yeah, I guess going through the whole transaction process. So i guess from start to finish, you guys introduced me to Rio, Rio's legend.
Speaker: He's sort of, like i was saying, he very, he knows the market. And so he can tell me his points of view on things, which is just invaluable for me. don't know anything about it. So as we sort of get to the point where now, you know, I've got to make an offer on this house.
Speaker: Rio is sitting there going, okay, look, if you make the offer, we then have another few more steps we've got to go through and we can do it quite easily. Send money over. I'll make sure they get the money. Sign for the documents.
Speaker: Before that, there's a few things I've sign. I think I had to get um power of attorney. Power attorney. Yeah, a lot of other things. And that was um that was a couple of week process here in Australia where I've got to get documents. Oh, that's right. I remember that was a...
Speaker: That was strange, right? You had to get it notarized. was like a special notary you had to go to or something. Yeah. So you get notarized and then there was something else where they had to send the government and get it sealed with something else. And I was like, I don't know, let's do it. Sure. If that makes it more.
Speaker: Yeah. I remember actually, so some agents that are real rural in Japan require like a certificate of signature to make sure your signature is your signature. So it's not, you you don't need just a notary that, hey, i I live here in Australia, but you need to be like, this is my signature and you need another level. So not all agents require that, but I remember that actually for your your transaction, there's a little extra work.
Speaker: Yeah, and it wasn't too bad because I went to Cibonota and just got like three things done at the same time. was no problem. Then I sucked it through via regular mail and Rio got them and the process started. So the process starting was very much always kind of hands off.
Speaker: Rio would just check in every so often, just go, it's going along and speak to the the seller's agent. and Everything's fine. couple of pieces of negotiations they were going through, which was like, hey, we really wanted the house to be completely empty.
Speaker: i They cleared everything except one thing that we found. They left a Noonie magazine in one of the cupboards. they bit Yes. that's but Jackpot. Okay, there we go.
Speaker: And then, yeah. very You threw it away. i' Yeah, basically got thrown away. no. You should have framed it up as the hard effect. I've got young kids. Otherwise, 100% would have picked and yeah But yeah, so we had to sort of ask them to get rid of all of the furniture and everything out of the house, which they did. so that was really good.
Speaker: And then we got them to do a big clean of the house as well afterwards, which again, were happy to do it because I'm pretty sure we paid overs in their eyes. So they were happy to sort of like do a little bit of extra for us, but they left us with a whole thing of firewood, was very handy for when we turned up. Okay.
Speaker: Okay, we'll get to that in sec here. Yeah. everything went smoothly. We used Wise for the transaction and that was piece of cake because I've been paying small transactions to Rio along the way for inspections and just pay some money that he needed. So we just did more.
Speaker: And I think I did it over two or three transactions. It was no problem. Yep. Yep. that was all good and then yeah just i think one of the pieces along the way was uh rio had to call me on a video call with a can't remember the official the type of official and that's important matter or shiho shoshi yeah that's the one yeah And they had to check that I was me and it took all of 30 seconds and then that was done.
Speaker: And then the the next thing that I got, I think, was a real email. I was like, house is yours. Well done. Congratulations. So we had a big celebration. Bada bing, bada boom. So it sounds like it was pretty smooth. So again, thank you for going through the process with us. You were actually one of our guinea pigs earlier. We didn't say that, but we were like making sure like, okay, everything's good.
Speaker: One note to the listeners here that the wise, turn we we tell everyone to use wise and it actually doing those smaller transactions leading up to the larger transaction just familiarizes our customers with, Hey, this is the UI. This is how it works. And ah yeah Once you have to do the final transaction, though, it does typically require two to three lump sums because there's ah usually a limit based off whatever country you're in.
Speaker: Yeah, that seems to be what it was. It was a piece cake though. Like, cause Rio gave me plenty of warning on what date things need to be in. So it was like, we we had two weeks to spend.
Speaker: Easy peasy. Cool. All right, John, now let's get to the actual property itself. Yeah. Tell me a little about, about the actual cabin again. And then what were your first impressions when you and Jem stepped in with your five-year-old kid?
Speaker: ah This is so good. So, you know, we had lived, we had never seen the house, okay? So everything was done online. um So we got photos of it and we were pouring over these photos just being like, this is so good.
Speaker: We have absolutely crushed this. This is so good. So... We always done walkthroughs and stuff like that. We're so excited. And I think we closed the property in, must have been this time last year, so November-ish. November, yeah. Yeah. And so we'd already booked in Christmas in in Singapore. So we were going to go to Singapore for Christmas.
Speaker: When the property closed, we were like, oh, we should probably go to Japan and get to the house. Let's definitely do that. Hard and cold. There we go. Yeah, exactly. So... Christmas in Japan, we'd sorted all that out and we're like, oh, we'll just, know, we'll get to Tokyo, we'll have a night in Tokyo, then we'll catch the Shinkansen to Kurosawa, hire a car driver.
Speaker: Easy. So stay overnight in Tokyo. This is, don't know, late December, December or something like that. Jump on the Shinkansen. Our daughter absolutely loves it. But, yep, big go. Yeah. so know Get a car.
Speaker: It's like, this is awesome. There's nothing bad. And then we start driving through Kuzawa. We're like, this is the best place ever. And then I start driving up mountains. I got to drive up a mountain about 25 minutes to get to the house. I got um Google going and it's here. It's taking us directly there.
Speaker: As I'm driving up the mountain, it starts getting snowier and snowier. It's not snowing, but there's snow around. I have never seen snow and I have certainly never seen snow. First snow, okay. First snow.
Speaker: So as it's going, as we're driving up the hill, I'm going over snow and stuff. starting to white knuckle steering wheel a little bit. And it's like, all right, this is new and possibly dangerous. I have my entire family in the car. So I'm just going to get to it. At this point, pretty pregnant too. So I've got a pregnant wife and I've got my five-year-old daughter in the back.
Speaker: And we're sort of driving along and trying to go at the speed that everybody else is going at the same time. The old heart rate's driving up a little bit. Turning off, we started to go back through more rural areas. It's absolutely beautiful. We love it. We're like, this is so nice. There's like little cafes around the place, restaurants around the way. You can see the locals going in and stuff.
Speaker: We're like, yes, this is so good. But at the same time, you know, you're in the back of your mind, you're sort of like... Did I make a mistake? Yeah, don't stop yourself. aye Hope that house is there. We've just done a transaction over the internet.
Speaker: Rio seems really reputable, but let's hope there's a house there when we get there. Yep, yep. So we get to the villa area where the house is, right? um And it is up a very steep hill.
Speaker: Now the steep hill has got like snow and ice all over it. Google's telling me you've got to go up there. I don't know about this, Google. And there's a sign on the other side of the road in Japanese.
Speaker: can I cannot read Japanese. And I'm like, I don't know what that sign says, but I reckon it says punch it. So I've sort of gone back a bit. My whole family's in the car here. I've got, okay, let's go up this hill.
Speaker: And I've gone up. Gotten about halfway and we start slipping back. And behind there, there's river. And I'm like, well, that's not going to go. And we're slipping back.
Speaker: I'm just kind of going, I'm never driven snow or ice before. So I'm like, I'll put the accelerator on or maybe the brakes. Anyway, it's a gentle stuff. All is good. And I'm so sad to like, what should we do? We've got to get there.
Speaker: The house is up there. She's like, don't know, take a bigger run up. Let's travel. I was like, all right, be supportive of me, being an idiot. Let's do this. So take a bigger run up in our little box Japanese car and we get past the little bit we're on and we finally get up this icy snowy hill and we come around the corner.
Speaker: And like, there's our house. I was just this moment. All of us were just like, far out. This is so good. We're in the middle of the forest. There's a little bit of snow around.
Speaker: house is than the photos. Like you jump out. Great to hear. Oh my God, this is so good. And then Rio's left like a little key box there. There's a couple of gearboxes and stuff around the place.
Speaker: Walk into the house and problem number one, the house is as cold inside it is. Welcome to Japan, buddy. Exactly right. We now know that this is just a regular thing. So walked into the house.
Speaker: I think it was negative eight degrees. I'm from Perth. I'm going to sell that in my life. We get like six degrees and stuff. and we're like oh my god I'm going to die. It's so cold. So we got some negative eight degrees and wearing like a jumper.
Speaker: and jeans, not prepared for this whatsoever. Jem, who's pregnant, is like, you'd better heat this house up, otherwise we're going to get sick.
Speaker: There's some heaters around the house. I go and turn these, like, kerosene heaters on. there's an odd scale coming out of one of them. I should probably turn that on. I'm going to kill us. Then what's going on with that? But I had to use like a Translite, the photo Translite thing because it's all in the jacket.
Speaker: Oh, God, what settings am I putting this on? in And so Translite helped me out there. So I've got heaters on in the bedrooms and they go upstairs in this beautiful fireplace. And i've got to start a fire so you know usually i'm good but thank god the owner the previous owner had left me some fire starters so let's go yeah so fire's on it's roaring everybody's sitting by the fire at this stage probably been about 15 20 minutes everyone's feet are numb because it's so cold but now we're by the fire everything's good and we're like awesome
Speaker: Yeah, and we're here, Christmas in a couple of days, this is the best. So was just once the fire was on, no issues whatsoever. And then checking the cupboards, family magazine.
Speaker: So I was like, wait, eric there there we go. There we go. Such a good story, John. I think so many of our customers, like and us included, have that same moment of like, oh shit, did we get scammed? And then you go to the house and see they're like, there's usually a first negative, like, okay, the house looks good, but you go inside, you're like, okay, something's wrong. you know and And then it's that up and down. So I'm really happy you've had that adventure with your family. It sounds like that's a,
Speaker: core memory for you guys for some time in the future now. Oh yeah, we laugh about it all the time. It's um is the best. And you know, plenty more of these coming, right? That's why we bought the house. Essentially, this is what we want. That was a fine experience.
Speaker: There's gonna be more of those. We had plenty of those on the trip as well. and We're only there for like a week, too. So yeah, we can't wait. We're over there next. So what's the, so do you not have insulation in that house or what, what's the, what's the reasoning? It's so cold. I would assume up in that area, they would put some more insulation, but yeah. how old is the house also?
Speaker: That's good question. So I think the house is built in the 80s, I'm pretty sure. um So when we got that building inspection done, I think that's probably something I left out. The building inspector kept saying, this house is amazing. I remember that. And we were super stoked about it as well. so that he was kept saying. We we never we never hear that.
Speaker: I remember that. I was like, I've never heard that from a building inspector. Usually like, oh, it's off 1% here or something like, but yeah, sorry, go ahead. Yeah, no, exactly right. So the building inspector was stoked, Rio was stoked, and we were just like, oh, this is awesome.
Speaker: So they were saying it's really good quality wood, um everything's sturdy, really nice, but, you know, there's a few little cracks and crevices whatnot. So there is no insulation. It's completely made of wood, and then under the floor, it's literally just like...
Speaker: Ply wood. Empty. And then empty. So, yeah, we've recently had insulation put Right on. We've had some in as well. So the insulation, I think, was about, must have been about six or seven grand Aussie.
Speaker: Not bad. Yeah, pretty good, right? But it has to do a bit research. Now, I don't know if this is going to be the best solution ever, but from my research, it seemed like if you got the spray insulation,
Speaker: when it turns to some of your house sweats and it can get moldy so we're like okay don't do the spray insulation we've got the fiber insulation which apparently still allows to breathe we've got some under floor membrane i can't remember what that was called as well so it's like we're trying to sweat in the summer Something like vapor barrier or something. We just talked to some guy and yeah, and he he's, yeah. So you guys did it right. Only $6,000 for your floor. What about the walls and windows? Do you guys get those insulated yet?
Speaker: We didn't get that insulated yet. So when we were up there, once we had the fire going, everything was warm. We were like, this is this pretty good. And now that we've got new heaters in the bedrooms, so the bedrooms are downstairs and the living room fire's upstairs.
Speaker: So we're thinking with the and with the insulation and new heaters, downstairs should be fine. And then as long as you've got the fire going upstairs, we're sort of thinking about should we open up? We'll soon see.
Speaker: ah So I think when we got a quote for double-glazed windows, which we were looking into, it was sort of around $25,000 for double-glazed windows. You go, wow, don't know if that's worth it then. Is that half the price of the property? I don't So nice so we've we've left that and we will see. So wait yeah I'm unsure on that.
Speaker: How did your daughter like the whole experience? I mean, you you bought it for the adventure. Did she have fun or like did it was it just like a ah fun trip for her? um can be hit and miss right with kids. Never know. It'll be great one day.
Speaker: And then the next day, they hate it the most in their life. So she loved almost everything about it. The train ride there, she loved that. Karuizawa, the actual town, there's so much to see and do. She loved just cruising around the town.
Speaker: We went and did pottery and stuff. We went to the pottery place. There's plenty of food around, so went just walking and exploring. The cafe up the road from us has got like a kid's playground with a flying fox. That was a favorite place in the world.
Speaker: And then there's like an onsen town up the road as well, Kusatsu, which is beautiful. We've got Kusatsu. Yeah. Yeah, great spot. And she loved that as well, just exploring around where there was like steam coming up out of everything. So she was only positive.
Speaker: And then the only thing that was she wasn't a huge fan of, she, like me, has never seen snow before. So ski slopes, we were like, let's go tobogganing. This will be heaps of fun.
Speaker: She sort of got to the top of the toboggan hill and then she was like, you know what, I'm out. And we were like, come on, it'll be heaps of fun. You can do it. And she was like,
Speaker: No way. And chair ah cool so she had a good-sized tantrum and everybody was kind of like, oh, shivers. And so we had to get out of there fairly quickly. like, yeah, Catherine, we're doing some penguins now. We should jump out of here. Oh,
Speaker: Yeah. But since then, been sort of talking around for the last year and we're now very good that when we get back to that Toboggan Hill, she'll give that a go. When... when are you guys coming back to uh your i guess nio calls it kita caruza forest retreat is what he calls it when are you guys coming back we're coming back late feb next year with uh with my company that work for uh we get parental leave so i've got three-ish months of parental leave we're gonna go the entire time we're just gonna amazing yeah it's the property and
Speaker: We're sort of going to work out a car and we'll just cruise around, see the area, go and see other parts of Japan and just, yeah, have some family adventures. Damn, that's going be so fun.
Speaker: Okay, let's talk about Airbnb now. So you are, again, one of our early customers and you have successfully put together this Airbnb. The listing looks killer. The photos look good. Like talk to us a little bit about how did you get that set up with Dio?
Speaker: Yeah, so this is like 100% credit goes to Rio or this one. ah I was sort of you know, Rio early doors was sort of like, okay, there's two licenses that you can get.
Speaker: You can get the Rio Khan license or you can get the Paku license. um We're sort of like, let's do the Paku. 180 days should be more than enough for this thing. I think we've gone with our license. I remember if actually gone with the Rio Khan or the Paku license.
Speaker: But there's a process to get one of those licenses. Now, we didn't need to do anything for this. Rio organized everything to get the actual license to start doing the Airbnb. So there's a number of hoops you've got to jump through. I think you' got to get the fire department out, you've to get health department out. You've got to make sure that you've got, got to be able to get like people to register for the property whenever they come and stay.
Speaker: there's a number of things that need to be done. We did none of that. Like Rio did everything and it probably took maybe two, three months, I want to say. And that was just a matter of waiting on the people that need to get to the property to do their checks.
Speaker: That's the only thing. It seemed like it wasn't too onerous for Rio, but I can't ever be sure. so he's got it down now he's got a lot of reps and so if you're listening to this you want to run an airbnb edo is probably your guy that will set you up with but who did the furnishing like the design and stuff looks all pretty pretty awesome like someone really spent was that you guys or ah joe that's okay good yes that was not me sorry uh yeah so jim and i would jump on ikea so we knew that there was an ikea so they
Speaker: maybe an ounce driveway or something like that. We just checking, can you get stuff delivered into the the area? So, yep, you can. So we jumped on the IKEA website. We were going through stuff.
Speaker: Again, I've got a maths brand. do not have a design brand. So Gem was very much the designer on this part of things. Exactly right. if it was me, everything would be beige. Happy with that.
Speaker: and did All this, that looks awesome. And honestly, I think we ended up spending about 10 grand Aussie at Ikea and we got everything that we needed. So we got beds, mattresses, couch, like outdoor furniture as well.
Speaker: Like set up whole kitchen. So all kitchen stuff, the fridge, couch. Yeah, we we got everything that we needed. 10 grand Aussie. And again, rio organized all of this for us.
Speaker: So we kind of went to him with our list of stuff that we wanted. And then he organized it to get delivered to the house on certain days. And Rio organized somebody to be there to make sure the delivery guys could get in and put the furniture around. So when we turned up,
Speaker: The only stuff that was there were like the kitchen stuff, all the furniture was in the places that it needs to be. The beds were made up, all the furniture was made up. So it was, again, really easy because of Rio.
Speaker: Damn, killing the game. They built the furniture for you. right they they took the trip they They took the trash out for the cardboard boxes and stuff for you. Oh my goodness. Such a good. It was like a hundred bucks.
Speaker: So we're like, yeah, we'll pay the you have to do it stuff. Definitely. Okay. I'm messaging in the other, just make furniture for us. I feel like every time we go to Japan, it's just like cardboard boxes everywhere and stuff.
Speaker: Yeah. Um, Okay. How's the Airbnb been going? Have you guys had guests yet or any bookings or what's the status it? So it's going pretty well. The only thing we've found is after people stay, they don't leave reviews.
Speaker: We've only got two reviews in the property. We've had possibly like 15, 20 groups stay. That's awesome. Yeah, we're getting it about like... 10 to 15 days a month which is for me i was like was doing way better than thought i was do i thought we're gonna be have like two people here two people there photos make it look killer like i think photos alone oh rio absolutely nailed that as well so i was telling you we did photos we were up there and i don't know how to take photos trying to get wrong getting wrong fingers in the side of it and stuff like that but like you rio got the
Speaker: professional photographer going around and just made it look so much better. So, yeah, I think that really adds to the Airbnb listing as well, having those professional photos. But, yeah, look, it's it's going pretty well.
Speaker: We'll block it out for that sort of three months that we're over there. Yeah, but we've got some friends staying there as well. So, you know, a few of our mates know that we've got this house in Japan too. We don't get advertising to everybody, but, you know, some of our good mates know about it.
Speaker: And, um yeah, they're going to go up, stay up there in Feb. When we're up there in sort of March, we might have some other friends come stay with us. My brother might fly down from America and come see us when we're there for you know, March, April, May period. So, yeah, everybody's excited. That's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah. You guys landed it. And if for any listeners, we will link the Airbnb listing in the show notes where you can also book John's Kitakaru's forest retreat. But um John, it sounds like this this was a, you're you're an awesome case study here. Everything seems to have gone smoothly. I just, I'm very happy you did not slide back down that hill into the river.
Speaker: That would, this would have been a very different conversation if that had happened. Yeah. Sad Christmas, right? Yeah. Yeah. Any advice here? So again, most of our listeners are looking to start the search. They're maybe in the process. Like any advice you'd give your past self before you starting this adventure or trying to land a vacation home in Katariza or Japan?
Speaker: Yeah, i think um I think for us, we really stressed over that. Should we go with the 10 grand house? Should we go with the 50 grand house? Now that I've gone through the process of yeah having some upgrades to our house,
Speaker: Thinking of having to do how much work we would have to do to the 10K house is just like, oh, it wouldn't be enjoyable. I don't think I would just kind of always be trying to do stuff and solve all the problems, doing it remotely. So for me, I'm really glad we spent the extra money and we went down the route of the, hey, this is ready to go in this house. It's all good. We can just come and enjoy when want to enjoy it.
Speaker: So I think it's if you if you're able to just spend a little bit extra so that you're not having to deal with a lot of issues and issues that might arise as you're over the lifetime of the property as well. So we that would be my advice.
Speaker: 10,000%. think what gets people in is a $10,000 house houses. But then realistically, that when we help people buy it, that budget goes up to 50, 60, 70, 80 K US. s and And they're usually happy because they realize like, okay, this is going to be a lot less have a headache in the future.
Speaker: I think you'd probably having to spend that money anyway, to be honest with you. You're putting full equation, you're probably doing your water system, all that sort stuff. So are you saving that much in the long run?
Speaker: Totally. Well, John, thank you so much for being on the podcast and sharing your story. That was gotta be the best ah first impressions of your Akia story I've heard to date. So we're really excited. We really appreciate you taking a chance on us and going through the process, especially when we are new. So we will ah post this up hopefully on our homepage as our our main case study. So John, again, thank you so much for being on the podcast and we look forward to actually visiting your place hopefully soon.
Speaker: Yeah, guys, always welcome. And yeah, I've got to say thanks as well. like you know Without you guys, we absolutely wouldn't have this opportunity to be able but to have the adventures with our kids. so really, should be thanking you guys.
Speaker: It's awesome. Thanks so much. Awesome, John. We'll catch you later. Okay, man. Thanks that.
Speaker: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Buying a House in Japan. 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.
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: 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.
