Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back to the Buying a House in Japan podcast. I'm recording this eyes closed, man. When I was in college in Japan, I didn't know about these menthol cooling eye drops and I was just suffering in silence with itchy eyes from allergies for like two weeks straight until I discovered these and they saved my life. It's like you took a glob of Tiger Bomb and just like slab it in your eyes. I'm like literally tearing up.
Speaker: All right, Joey, Kanpai, we are recording this live from Sankar Hotel in Yakushima after a long three weeks of back-to-back-to-back road trip meetings, lot of cool partnerships coming down the funnel here. We just hit Japan's second best onsen, which kind of means the world's second best onsen.
Speaker: It was freaking epic. i'm going to use it as our episode photo. It's like on this seaside hotel. It's not actually connected to our hotel, so they gave us a coupon for it. Samana Hotel, N-A at the end. Again, southern Japan off on a little island. It just has these huge, huge windows from this onsen that overlooks this awesome coastline and it has this waterfall, real like tropical Hawaii vibes.
Speaker: Our friend Tatsu, we recorded podcast, we might post it soon, said this is the best onsen in Japan and And he was talking about his skin. He was saying something like, oh, my skin was so smooth or something after getting out. And we're like, all right, let's try it.
Speaker: We got into the tub and imagine you rub aloe vera on your skin and then got in a hot tub. Like that was the feeling, but there was apparently nothing in the water. It's like a natural property of the alkalinity of the water. It is what the bath Obasan said afterwards that makes it feel so like slippery, aloe vera feeling. Something we did recently is our Jisoji Onsen near Beppu house. Took a photo.
Speaker: When you go into an onsen, they have like these little banners of showing like all the number breakdown, like all the stats. Can't ever read it because it has too much kanji. So I've been taking a photo of it and I've been throwing it in a chat to BT and be like, translate this for me. I did a comparison of RG Soji Onsen to this onsen that we went to and it's quite interesting.
Speaker: This one, 9.7 alkalinity. pH level, quite high. The second onsen is significantly more alkaline, which means it'll have a silky texture and be better for softening your skin and removing oils.
Speaker: Final verdict. Betbu Onsen or Gisoji Onsen, best for retaining heat, muscle relaxation. The Onsen is really hot and I feel like so warm after it in Betbu. That's our local one in Betbu. We've done a video with the Onsen and it's like a concrete box. Says our Betbu Onsen has stronger mineral effects.
Speaker: Very clear when you see the mineral buildup on the walls and tub. A lot of people were like, it's molding. it's like, nah, it's mineral buildup. Second Onsen, best for skin softening, cleansing, and people with sensitive skin.
Speaker: Gentler, more refreshing experience. It was crazy. It really felt like I had rubbed aloe vera on me and then was sitting in a hot tub. Feeling good right now, but it tracks. Definitely unique as well. And it was just the water is what this bath lady was saying. She was like, it's just the property of the water. So I agree.
Speaker: Second best in Japan. It might actually be first. I think that was probably a controversial decision with the judges. it It must have gone to a coin flip because this was first in my mind. First, best onsen. Again, if you've traveled Japan, you've never been to Yakushima. Add this to your bucket list. I think it's definitely one of the highlights. We are looking for akiya actually here, and it didn't turn out very well. We went to a real estate company, and we're like, hey, we're interested in buying property. They're like, no houses for sale here. We're like, oh, okay. Sorry, nothing for sale, boys.
Speaker: He said land, but we're we're driving around here. There's a lot of akiya And I don't mean to be predatory, but it's like such a beautiful island. And I like this spot a lot and would like to buy an Aki here. But from Tokyo, we have one friend that's actually here. So we've been hanging out with him.
Speaker: We'll make it. We'll get it here. Yeah. I think our best option at this point is kind of like how we got the Miyoko off-market deal. The real estate slash udon restaurant owner was like, oh, but there's lots of land for sale. So I kind of think the best strategy for us would to be buy something, anything. maybe land. And then once we show that we're serious customers, not difficult to deal with, I think there'd be more options open to us and maybe they'll come at us with other options. So similar to ah how we got the Miyoko property after buying Tama House.
Speaker: Can't rush it, take it slow. But anyways, we are here to talk about our 2025 plans. We've literally been bringing around this whiteboard to every hotel and it's like these markers and everyone's like, what you guys doing? We were running to the ferry and I had this whiteboard flapping on my side, but you know, We've done some brainstorming with it. The business has grown quite organically. It's just been the two of us for so long. We are both, myself especially, full-time now with Akuma. Let's go. Let's go. We made it off the W2. Hopefully can survive without going back to being a recruiter in crypto.
Speaker: Congrats, Take. Whew. That would have been tough. I was supposed to be working nights here every night while we were doing this. Like I would have died. Like quite literally. We have, think, seven bullet pointed things on this whiteboard of what we are trying to do in 2025. Some of these things are related to Akiyamart specifically. Some are related to our Akiyamart. Some are just new products we're spinning up at this point. So... If you're listening to this and any of these things like particularly resonate with you, we are starting to think about expanding the team a little bit. If you have any specialties in these areas, shout out to a couple people you know who you are, listeners who have already reached out and we've been talking to you about some of these projects. But
Speaker: Number one, let's go rip it. So this is the first time that we've been in this situation where both of us are now full time on Akiya Mart. And up until now, it's kind of been a hobby side hustle business. And now I do feel that we've made it to that greater stage where we are a business in its infancy, but it's still just the two of us. And over the course of 2025, we're looking to grow sales, grow the team. Subscriptions, products.
Speaker: Spend more on ads. Blue ocean, baby. Just to give a couple of stats, we launched this site officially about a year ago, last January. Since then, we've hit a milestone. We have about 3 million page views on Akiyamart per month. We have about 10,000 people who have signed up as users. We're helping currently about 80 people through the purchasing process, getting better with each transaction.
Speaker: We've done like 400 consults. Hopefully less consoles moving forward, more webinars, and we're hiring maybe a sales team there. My favorite metric so far is every time we give a recap on Sato-san on the podcast, we get about three emails of of people who love the Sato-san story. We've got find another Sato-san drama. Keep the emails coming, on guys. We love to read them.
Speaker: Yeah, so our goal is to double everything at this point. Traffic, users, subscribers, people we help. Through a goal out to our agents, we're trying to help 250 people buy this year. I think that would really put us as a force from a real estate brokerage perspective. But let's go down the list here, Joey.
Speaker: The second goal is our Akiyamart Direct process, bringing that to what we've been calling a version two. Hockey Mart Direct is our home buying process. So we hook you up with a real estate agent who understands what you're looking for. They guide you through the process. We've got Shiho Shoshi, a judicial scrivener that we work with as well, who will help you through all the legal documents.
Speaker: We do virtual viewings, we do in-person viewings. but We help get the keys in hand at the end of the day. We started this about six months ago as a byproduct of a lot of people reaching out to us like, how do I buy? And this is kind of our process of not only helping people buy anywhere at any price in Japan, but also giving the local agents fair compensation. So we do charge an upfront fee, but we give a majority of that back to the agents so that you know If you're working on a $10,000 Akia, it's not really the most appealing to them. So this is a kind of our way of feeding an ecosystem. We have about eight, hopefully close to 10 agents on board that are all bilingual. We have some really freaking good people on our team.
Speaker: We trust them. And I know if you're going through the AMD process right now, it's going to keep getting better. We're learning from each and every repetition here. Everyone has a different preference. But I do know the transaction process like the back of my hand now. I dream of it.
Speaker: So what's our version two? So we're bringing a lot more technology. We're noticing as we go through the process, there's not a lot of technology, whether it be like simple things like secure upload for your passport information. People are sending that over email like, oh, don't know if that's cool, nor is it safe. Other things are just like, we're starting to understand when people are starting to have questions about certain things.
Speaker: Japanese real estate is a completely different process. It's it's very confusing to comprehend in the very beginning. So we're starting to notice, okay, someone's got their offer accepted. These are the things that they're starting to think about.
Speaker: I do a lot of this with my Airbnb listings, trying to time messages right before someone's going to ask. So that's a big thing i'm I'm thinking about from an AMD perspective. Standardizing the process too. like Processes differ. between agents to a considerable amount. And sometimes that's a choice based on location as well. So there's a lot of room to standardize that, make the process more streamlined. And by doing that, we can let clients know what to expect much better. You want to know what you're getting into upfront. So we're putting a lot of effort into standardizing where we can.
Speaker: we're literally like herding cats, it feels like. Everyone's doing their own thing. and we're like, right, guys, you guys are all doing the same thing, but different orders, different ways, like different templates that look kind of shady. We're just trying to bring a lot of legitimacy.
Speaker: We are talking to lawyers. We're trying to figure out how to do things right. Some of this AMD initial fee does go to us, but it's really for us to not only pump that back into the business and find more leads for these agents, but also to power up the existing process. So if you are looking to purchase with us, please let us know. We operate in a cohort system.
Speaker: Our goal, 250 this year. I think that'll be crazy if we help 250 people in Akia this year. AMD version 2, streamlined process, 2025. Next thing that we're working on this year.
Speaker: Akia Stay. So this is our spinoff website. If you haven't seen yet, it's kind of just a bare bones site, www.akia-stay.com. We recognize that once we help people buy, what do they do with their property?
Speaker: We've talked a little bit about and we'll do more episodes on like Mimpaku or Airbnb. It's really hard to have short-term rentals here. And it just we're starting to hit the point where we don't think it's the move. We do think monthly rentals are a much better option. So Akiya Stay is our monthly rental website. If you're looking for a monthly stay place off the beaten track, this might be a big site to get people to want to stay monthly and have people list their places on there.
Speaker: Also, you know, kind of just reaching out to the community. If there's anybody out there with engineering skills or who thinks that this is a business idea that they'd like to be a part of, this is not our highest priority for this year. So if anybody it thinks that this is something exciting for them, reach out to us. and Even like we're building on Squarespace right now.
Speaker: If you're a Squarespace expert, you want to move photos around, and you want to help us. It's a very simple setup. But this is something I do think could be very, very big, but pretty low on our priority list. Yeah. and All right.
Speaker: Number four, Joey, this one's probably the most exciting. We're trying to learn about the selling process this year. And this is our first crack at it. So we purchased a house in Nagasaki. We have a bunch of content on that. We're calling it the Aigawa house or Nagasaki house.
Speaker: Poke around. I'm sure we you can find our content on that there. But two aspects to this. One, we're trying to learn about the selling process. I think that our clients, eventually, they might want to sell their homes, so purchase something else, and we want to learn the best we can. Maybe we can come up with some sort of Akiyamart direct process for sellers.
Speaker: Second thing we're trying to do is explore the idea of really teeing up a property. We've been calling it the Akiyamart seal of approval. And we're trying to see if we can really put six out of five stars purchasing experience here. Teeing the house up with a car, someone on the ground, a property manager to help you out with random tasks, setting up utilities, internet on your behalf as well. How much can we help someone go from zero to hero yeah without going through all the shit we had to go through? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: We are looking to sell it as a bundle. We are not trying, honestly, to make too much money. We've talked about it in the past of selling for crypto. Still, same deal. We are trying to sell it for crypto, but we recognize this might be too many things bundled into one thing. We will accept crypto, but we also will just accept regular yen or US dollars for this transaction.
Speaker: Nagasaki house, we have a lot of content coming there. Be on the lookout for a video, a podcast. I'm really, really excited about this house, honestly. i think we nailed it and excited to help people connect more and sell to foreigners at this point.
Speaker: And i'm sure we'll learn our fair share of things in the selling process here. All right, number five, a little bit on the tech side of things with our website, Akiyamart. We're coming out with a new subscription product. This one is going to be like your search hypercharged, I would say.
Speaker: We're coming out with a lot of new filters and new overlay features. Hazard maps. So tsunami risk zones, landslide risk zones, earthquake risk zones. That's all coming out soon.
Speaker: We're also putting a lot of work into understanding short-term rental game in Japan, me personally, and working actually with the wife of one of our preferred agents that's working with us with the Acumart Direct process. Shout out to me. Shout out to Miku-chan. Thank you very much. We've been pouring over legal documents in Japanese legalese, trying to translate that into government geospatial data sets so that we can build these overlays onto the map.
Speaker: Green zone is going to be, you can do a short-term rental business such as Airbnb for 365 days, a yellow zone, 180 days, and then red zone, zero days. So hopefully really simplify down all the crazy legal jungle that is short-term rental. I want to give a shout out to Jerry. There is no existing overlaid short-term rental map in Japan. This is really a Japan first.
Speaker: He's been digging through a lot of Japanese sites. His kanji reading abilities for Japanese websites is quite high now, right? Zoning, I feel like I know zoning laws really well and I can read the Japanese laws about zoning restrictions quite well. Japan first coming through with note, this won't be perfect, but...
Speaker: Other things that have actually already been built, Jerry's been, again, one man tech army team here is previously sold. i was hounding him a lot. like We're the only ones, I think, collecting historical data now on previously sold properties, how long they're on market. We don't know exactly what price they went for. Japan doesn't have like an MLS kind of system. They have something called RAINS, but it's A lot less organized on sales data. So this is our best bet with the sales data. We do hope to make kind of like a Zillow's estimate.
Speaker: We call a gestimate kind of thing in the future. But previously sold is already built. Other things we've heard, we've got a lot of feedback, alerts. So if something new in a geofenced area comes up, you will get an email.
Speaker: This is coming soon. And the very last one, the leasehold filter. I think this is our most necessary utility filter here. We've gotten a lot of feedback. You go down the route of looking at Akimara and damn, this house is awesome. Then you find out. You see like a $50,000 property in Tokyo and you're like, holy crap. And then you go check it and you can you can only rent it from the owner. Quite annoying. That's actually a ah holdover from like, I think at some point in Japan, it was like a beneficial policy to allow that type of thing.
Speaker: And they were promoting it. But very last year, I had a new feature coming out. So one thing that Taki and I have been discussing for a long time, some people actually like it. Some people read the descriptions, the property descriptions and the area descriptions, and they like it.
Speaker: I personally agree with Taki and I don't really believe it. But so we pass all the information to AI right now and then it spits out the descriptions. We're going to get AI to turn that into bullet points. If you want to see more, I'll have like a see more button. You can read the description. But I think top three takeaways from this property, the AI is going to just put in bullet point form. So hopefully the descriptions are more digestible.
Speaker: Hell yeah. and know we've talked about this probably for the past six months releasing this, but we are repackaging some of the UI. We know the search filters in Akiamart are not perfect. So we are going to launch this probably sooner than later versus it being perfect. I think we have enough utility. So if you're a subscriber right now, stay subscribed. We are going to legacy bring you into this. Just as a heads up, we're making three subs at this point. We have a free and basic and this is going to be our new pro. Cool with that, Joey.
Speaker: I'm cool with that. Okay, cool. Number six, native listings. The idea here with native listings is to reach out to Japanese sellers. So one thing that we'd like to do is increase exclusive content on Akiya Mart. So having more direct listings, I think opens up a new revenue.
Speaker: channel for us as well, which is really cool. The majority of listings on Akiya Mart are scraped listings. One thing that I'm particularly excited about is I think we're going to offer like a free tier.
Speaker: If anyone else has looked at Akiya banks out there, government run websites for Akiya, They're a hodgepodge all over the place. Prime example of Japanese websites at their finest. They're all different. There's no like centralized way of showing the data or anything like that. So I think one of the things that I'm excited most about about native listings is if we had a free tier, if the purchase price of the house is first I was throwing around 3 million yen, maybe we'll change it to 8 million yen. But under a certain threshold, we'll allow Japanese sellers to list those properties for free.
Speaker: This is a response to the Akiya banks of each city. I forgot who I was talking to. i was talking to someone who's in that kind of committee and he's like, the government has recognized that the Akiya banks are not effective.
Speaker: So we are trying to come here with a private solution. We are approaching a couple cities. So Ishikawa, Nagasaki, we tried to make some contact with Yakushima, didn't work. But yeah, we we recognize that a lot of people are asking us to put these Akiya bank info on Akiya Mart.
Speaker: it's hard because there's no standardization. Each city, each prefecture does things so differently that we are trying to work directly now with the cities to be like, hey, you can list for free with us. We will help you find a foreign buyer, but also have a foreign agent represent.
Speaker: I think that's a lot of the fear is that folks want to deal with foreigners, but they don't know how to. So we are trying to make some sponsor listings. So one, if you are in Japan and you have a house you want to sell, let us know.
Speaker: We're taking a non-scalable approach here. We are paying for the photographers to go out and take photos. I think that's what Airbnb did initially, right, Joey? Yeah, I remember in like 2016 when me and my roommate, we Airbnb'd a third room in our apartment in the East Village of Manhattan. They sent a photographer out.
Speaker: I stayed in that room and you guys put like a pseudonym, like Lola is Lauren. And I forgot what your name was, but you had your sheet and it was like, sign Lola and Pedro or something like that. ah Anyways, yeah, we're we're trying to do this. So if if you are a photographer in Japan or passionate about this, let us know. We will have some listings that we need people to take photos of. So excited there. That's our third revenue stream is we're going to have subscriptions. we're going to have our AMD. And then hopefully we call this native listings or A&L for short.
Speaker: Point number seven is, what are we doing going forward property buying wise? We've bought a lot of good listings, maybe some bad ones. Looking back, short-term rentals, mid-term rentals, long-term rentals. We're in process of doing flip. We're in process of doing a new build. But something interesting, at the Yakushima Udon realtor...
Speaker: a shop, he kept saying like, there's a lot of land for sale. I am interested and I think lot of people are interested in like, how do we buy land? Putting a tiny home on the land or a shipping container or so something like that, right? So we are looking at maybe buying a plot of land just to understand that process. How do you get electric, sewage, all that stuff there?
Speaker: There is a burned down lot next to our BetBoo spot with hot spring water directly to it. We've asked maybe four times to like... the head honcho the neighborhood and he hasn't had any leads for us there. But we're going to try to buy some land.
Speaker: Another one we are trying to consider is a condo. We come to Japan on these sprint trips and Tama is pretty far, you know, and it's a journey to get into the central Tokyo. We are looking maybe at a condo in central Tokyo. It's going to be expensive. We don't know how we're going finance it, but that is something on the wish list for 2025. We've been talking about this too. Like one of our properties, Kitakushu, could be a lemon.
Speaker: We've discussed just demolishing that too. Yeah, nobody's renting it out. And maybe putting in a tiny home. So far, we've just bought homes and done some light renovation. But I think that 2025, we're going to try some new stuff with real estate other than just buying.
Speaker: I've proposed to Joey that we should sell all our properties and just start from a scratch. If anybody out there wants to buy our entire portfolio, let us know. Wow. We'll work on a price. Yeah, we'll work on a price. If someone does that, I think we are strapped on capital. But over time, one of our goals is we actually have a US company and a Japanese company. And a Japanese company, we do hope to be able to get some of these low interest rate loans at some point.
Speaker: As we mentioned on a previous podcast, we have been working on trying to figure out how to get it a loan as a foreigner. That has unfortunately fell flat at this point. Yeah, I lost my job. And I think if you've got a mortgage in the US, you know that if your income changes, they are not so stoked on that. Japan is extra not stoked on that. So the person we are working with for that kind of said, eh, it's not an ideal option. So we are looking at alternative financing options for this new build.
Speaker: This isn't going to work for the new build, but just speaking of loans in Japan, We just completed our first tax year. We filed our tax return for our Japanese KK. And we've heard kind of unofficially to get business loans, you need three years of tax return. So we are 33% of the way there.
Speaker: Not bad. Not bad. Okay. Number eight, we've talked about this kind of in number one is legitimizing our business. We've spent what feels like this entire 2024 learning about the Japanese banking system, how to open things. We're like so close to opening our Stripe, our Binance account, our Wise account. but We're looking to replace our representative director. So it it feels like we're right on the cusp of being like a legitimate business.
Speaker: A Bloomberg article just came out. Foreign entrepreneurs in Japan face an intense amount of red tape. And for listeners of the podcast, we've had lots of difficulty, you know, with bank accounts and that kind of stuff. Just know it's not easy and really comes down to having a good representative director.
Speaker: We are snagged from opening a Wise account for a Japanese business, a Stripe account for a Japanese business, a Binance account, anything financial. is very, very difficult in Japan for the foreign entrepreneur.
Speaker: To peel back the layers a little bit here, to be really transparent, we have both a US-based LLC and a Japanese KK, which is equivalent of like a C-Corp. We do a lot of our business with our LLC, which just makes things so much easier. So if you are thinking about doing something like this, feel free to reach out to us for advice.
Speaker: I do think starting in the US, earning in dollars initially is the way to go. If you're depending on coming to Japan and making a business. We have a podcast we recorded with Brett Shoes Partner. It's hard. You really have to go like all in and really be ready for a lot of bureaucracy.
Speaker: And just a lot of getting told no without much rhyme or reason to it. so Joey does not be in like, you do not like people saying no to you. God. It's so uncomfortable. you We're going to like a parfait place and Joey's like, can I just get the ice cream? hontonny And it's just like an awkward silence. The parfait ice cream plus stuff on top. And all I asked was like, hey, can you just not put the stuff on top? And the guy was like, oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker: We can't do that. And I'm like, what do you mean? We went to that bakery also. And you're like, hey, do you have a trash can? Yeah. And they're like, no. And you're like, hontoni? I'm like, no, Joey, don't do it. I don't know.
Speaker: Japanese way of saying no politely is saying that, no, we don't have a trash can in this entire store. All right. Well, that's a lot of what we have planned for 2025. We don't know where things are going to go. But for now, we're sitting at our offsite of the retreat.
Speaker: Joey and I basically in front of this whiteboard drinking some beers. Really excited, honestly. 2025 is going to be huge. We're excited as first-time founders and entrepreneurs like learn the ropes here. If you're on the other side of the table, we'd love to get your advice. We're trying to bootstrap this and make this a full-on business at this point.
Speaker: Welcome to the team, Takei. Welcome to the team, full-time. Actually, we're looking for at this point, we are trying to grow the team. Don't have a ton of capital, but we are looking for hustlers here. So we're looking for someone who knows a lot about Google Ads. I used to work at Google. I wish I had looked more at the Google Ad Management campaign stuff. So if you're whiz at this and marketing, please let us know. We'd love to maybe use your help on a consulting basis.
Speaker: From a design perspective, Joey, what do we need? Yeah. MailChimp. Yeah. So, you know, exciting. Finally getting around to doing emails correctly through our website. And i used to work for Squarespace, but I never loved the way you have to design with Squarespace. Like sometimes you need to hover over invisible things to interact with your design.
Speaker: Anyways, I found the MailChimp email template builder very similar to that. If you're someone that knows a lot about MailChimp design, you're good at it. We would love to speak to you. We're going to try to design several marketing and transactional emails.
Speaker: Other than that, anything if you heard anything we're talking about, let us know. We're looking for a lot of help here. I know a lot of people have reached out and don't have a full list. I know we have some people to reach out to, but we're looking to bring on interns or contractors or consultants at this point.
Speaker: So yeah again, thank you guys for supporting us on this podcast. I would never have thought a year ago that we would have so many listeners. We're the number two entrepreneurial podcast in kuwait fun fact maybe we got to plan a business trip to kuwait okay cool well anyways great trip joey this is our last maybe one in live here but oh just got a summer yeah what's got a
