Tokyo Apartment Hunt Blues
Written by billywest on September 30, 2008
I originally titled this post, “Tokyo Apartment Ass-Fuck of Death,” but considering SEO and keyword optimization, I decided I didn’t need blog traffic from that element, nevermind the plethora of porn pingbacks. Nevertheless, the feeling remains the same; Searching for an apartment in Tokyo has not been a pleasant experience so far.
I’ve never had a broken-off broom handle rammed up my ass to the hilt, but I have to imagine it’s only slightly more unpleasant than searching for and getting into a satisfactory apartment in downtown Tokyo. Anybody who has secured his or her own housing in east Japan knows what I’m talking about. There are several anal-rapings steps you have to go through before hanging your hat up.
Before you can move into a place you usually have to deal with a fudosanya (不動産屋), which in my case is an apartment-finding service. They usually charge you a fee equal to one month of rent for the apartment you end up moving into. For foreigners, there’s the annoying process of waiting for the real estate agent to scrounge up enough apartment listings that say “foreigners OK” before actually being able to go and look at some places. Each time I visit a real estate office, this takes at least an afternoon and I end up looking at apartments in the evening, not in the best light.
Once you’ve selected a place, you need to either use a guarantor （保証人) or a guarantor company (保証会社). If you go with the guarantor company, you’ll have to pay at least half a month’s rent. The first apartment I applied for brought unpleasant dealings with not only a half-assed real estate agent, but also an unreasonable guarantor company. More on this later.
After you’ve been approved by the building owner and a guarantor service, you have to sign a contract and pay all the up-front fees. What kinds of fees, you ask? Well, in addition to the apartment finder’s fee and the guarantor company fee, you’ll have to usually pay a deposit (shikikin - 敷金) equal to one or two months’ rent, key money (reikin - 礼金) equal to one or two months’ rent and non-refundable, two years of disaster insurance for around ￥20,000, and the first month’s rent.
Here’s a complete listing:
- Apartment finder/Real estate agency fee: ￥100,000
- Guarantor company fee: ￥50,000
- Deposit (one month): ￥100,000
- Key money (one month): ￥100,000
- Disaster insurance: ￥20,000
- First month’s rent: ￥100,000
- Total = ￥470,000
That’s nearly $4,500 American to move into a small apartment in downtown Tokyo. But, I’m willing to pay for a decent (even if too small) place in a great location.
Anyway, back to the unpleasantness. After having searched for and found a nice place, I applied and waited for building-owner approval. Once granted, I applied to a guarantor company for use of their services. Well, just to apply, I needed to provide a credit card number. Shit! I didn’t have a credit card in Japan, and after having been refused credit here on several occasions, I wasn’t excited about this new development. Well, somehow, I let this bonehead of a real estate agent convince me to go down and try to apply for a card at a local Mitsui Sumitomo bank branch. Even after telling him they wouldn’t be open on a Sunday afternoon, I let him talk me into it. Yeah, I’m a dumbass, alright. Anyway, like I figured, the place was closed on Sundays and I had wasted my time. But, the agent comes up with another hare-brained idea to go to OIOI (Marui, a department store) and apply for a card there. Well, I did go and WTF?!… I got a credit card; my first in Japan. But, being only a temporarily issued card (the real one to come in the mail a month or so later), it wasn’t allowed to be used for application to the guarantor company and I lost the apartment. Fuck me!
Needless to say, I ditched that real estate service when they tried to get me to pay, in advance of an actual contract-signing for an apartment, the real estate agency finder’s fee.
Next…
Well, actually I’m not going to go into all the details of my dealings with several real estate agencies. I’m just going to say that, after a month of looking, I think I’ve found a place in a great location and I won’t have to pay deposits or key money. But, don’t be surprised if one of my next few posts is an absolute rant about losing out again.
Wish me luck or don’t… I’m not giving up until I get what I want.
Posted in: Journal
Do Yakiniku Like the Cheap-Ass S.O.B. You Are!
Written by billywest on September 25, 2008
Face it…
You’re
and
you’re an
And, you’re alright with that.
Otsukare, Amigo! The big day is finally here. Payday. You’ve been waiting for it for over a week and a half now, since the evening you realized you needed to borrow an ichi-man-yen bill from your drinking buddy to carry you through to this glorious afternoon. Over the past ten days you’ve lived on nothing but instant ramen and rice. Even furikake was a luxury for you during this dark period. But, you made it through.
So, what do you do first, now that the day of dreams is at hand? Pay your friend back, right? Hell, no? You’ve got a fistful of yen in one hand and your keitai with suspended service in the other. You’ve got good times on your mind and moral responsibility will not get in the way of that for you, my friend. Your first task is to get down to Softbank and pay your past-due bill and your second is to send out a mass e-mail letting all your booze buds know that tonight, it’s beer and beef or die. That’s right, you devil; It’s yakiniku time.
So, where do you go to stuff your gut with meat and sling back a gallon of brew? Well, you’ve been thinking lately that it’s time to make a budget and stick to it, so Gyu-Kaku has become a luxury for you, my friend. So, then, what? One of those cheap all-you-can-eat places in Kabuki-cho where the grills are too small and the heat is so low that you end up with a bellyful of uncooked meat and a bad case of the green apple two-step the next day? No way; those days are over for you, good sir. So, the solution is simple: An An.
You’re going to An An (安安) for all the right reasons: ￥290 nama biiru (not happoshu, either - we’re talking Asahi Super Dry, the Coors of Japanese beers), ￥290 kalbi, ￥290 roast, ￥390 harami, and the list goes on. And, since you’re sick of 90-minute or 2-hour time limits, An An is right up your alley; no time limits there, my meat-loving buddy; just beef and beer o’ plenty.
Yes, friend, you’re living abroad and making the most of your experience. And, in the process, you’re becoming a true world citizen. You’re a true renaissance man and some day you’ll write a book about your adventures in the land of the rising sun. So, here’s to you, good sir. You’ve proven to everyone that you can survive in the urban jungle that is Tokyo, and for that, we salute you.
An An Restaurant Location Page
Posted in: Eating and Drinking
A Big Miss
Written by billywest on September 21, 2008
Yesterday I was supposed to take a group sightseeing around Tokyo. It was a huge plan, two months in the making. Imagine my disappointment Thursday when I saw that the lastest typhoon (#13, I think) was supposed to be hitting Tokyo that morning. Now, I know that weather forecasters aren’t perfect and quite often are way off the mark. But, they’re usually pretty on about typhoons. However, if you live in Tokyo, you know that the weather was near perfect yesterday (Saturday the 20th).
What’s the problem then? The problem is that because they were talking up how hard this thing was going to hit Tokyo in terms of rainfall and possible flooding, I cancelled the tour. The worst part is that even Friday when the course of the typhoon had changed considerably, TV news stations were still taking the stance that things could be bad. On top of that, internet weather reports were way behind the TV ones in terms of updating the predicted course of the storm. I’d like to say that this is the biggest weather fuck-up I’ve seen here, but I’m sure that my bitterness in cancelling my plan and seeing that it would’ve been a great day for the tour is exaggerating the disappointment. I’d feel a lot better if someone lost his/her job over this.
In case you think I was being sarcastic with that last comment, I wasn’t 
Posted in: Journal
