Moving house in Japan: Lessons learned this time around

One of the City-Cost team moved house in Japan recently and here they recount some of those parts of the apartment-hunting and house-moving process which caught them unawares and presented opportunities for learning in the hope that they might be useful for other people thinking about moving house in Japan. 

The situation was this - couple (foreign (me) and Japanese (the partner in marriage)), looking to move to a slightly nicer place (if possible) further away from Tokyo and thus with easier access to countryside / outdoor activities but still, just about, within commuting distance of the capital if needs be. Budget set with the slight upgrade in mind. Started really looking hard at places from about January. Ultimately moved in late April. Current place, our third as a couple in Japan. We are renting an apartment, or a “mansion” as it is called here. 

Here are a few things that I learned about moving house in Japan this time around. It might appear as a random assortment of learnings but the following points are what have stood out for me during the move.   

There are problems moving IKEA furniture

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the move.

It’s common practice when hiring a moving service in Japan to pick, say, three companies of interest and arrange for a rep from each to come over to your place, assess the amount of stuff you want moving and present you with a quote for their services. 

Each of the three reps from the companies we received quotes from visibly winced at each item of large furniture from IKEA in our apartment and showed hesitation at the prospect of moving it for us. 

According to the reps, IKEA furniture doesn’t move well. This is to say that they don’t like to take IKEA furniture apart and reassemble it at the other end because it doesn’t reassemble well, often leading to results that wobble and creak, and subsequently complaints from customers.  

In short, we were told that they would move our IKEA furniture, but we would have to take it apart and reassemble it at the other end ourselves. Which we did.

Furniture from Japanese brands like Nitori presented no such issues. 

A Japanese colleague was also in the process of moving house at around the same time. One day in the office we swapped situation reports on our respective moves and both shared the same experience of moving furniture from IKEA.

First time dealing with guarantor companies

It seems to be becoming increasingly common for landlords in Japan to require potential tenants to pay for the services of guarantor companies instead of having them present a personal guarantor, such as a family member, in order to insure the payment of rent.  

Moving house in Japan this time around presented me with my first time to deal with a guarantor company (as chosen by the landlord). They commanded an upfront administration fee of half a month’s rent along with a monthly fee amounting to around one percent of the monthly rent.

The use of guarantor companies sounds like good news for foreign tenants who may have difficulty in presenting landlords with a personal guarantor based in Japan. That said, we were also required to present to the guarantor company an “emergency contact” who, we were told, may be contacted in advance of us being approved as tenants. We went with the Japanese partner’s brother, who ultimately wasn’t contacted.

I, however, was. It was my first time to be “interviewed” by a guarantor company. It was all in Japanese over the phone but I could hear that the gentleman on the other end of the line was making a purposeful effort to speak slowly and clearly. 

It was simple enough, if you can handle a conversation in Japanese.  

I was asked about why we were moving at this time, what kind of work I do, how long I have been doing it, and how much money I earn, among one or two other questions. The same sort of thing was also asked about my partner. And that was about it. A few days later the real estate people got in touch to say that we had been approved. 

Japan’s real estate websites are awful…ly frustrating

To be honest, I’m not particularly well versed in the websites of real estate agents outside of Japan by way of comparison. Here in Japan, they appear to stick to the trend of being crammed with as much information as possible, into as conservative a space as possible, so that the viewer has everything they need in front of them. 

Fine. Very difficult to navigate with a foreign set of eyes, but … fine. 

Where I found frustration with the real estate websites we referenced (those of the big agencies) and the information they contained was in the following areas: 

Images of properties - it’s as if they don’t want you to find a property to your liking and one way toward this is to upload the most drab and dingy portraits of what could be your dream place. Very rarely, if ever, were we left inspired by the images provided on real estate websites. Googling the property for alternative images helped a little, but mostly we relied on past experience, in-person viewings, and a bit of hopeful imagination. Maybe it was due to the budget range within which we were operating. 

Out-of-date property lists - which always seemed to be the case. The Japanese partner seemed to be less frustrated by this than I. Basically, it appeared to me that if a property had been listed for a week or so, then it was probably no longer available. Even though it remained listed on the website. As being available. Get in touch with an actual human being for confirmation of availability seemed to be the message. 

Invariably, booking an appointment and going to sit down with a real estate agent meant being presented with properties that were nowhere to be seen on the website, according to our search criteria at least.

On the same topic, I have heard from other property seekers in Japan that real estate agencies here may purposely leave attractive properties that have already been taken on lists of properties that are available as a way to bait people into sticking around and making inquiries with them. 

Despite all the web-based frustrations of looking for an apartment in Japan, it was ultimately through a web-based listing that we found our new place, and it’s a place we are very happy with. 

I think the message is to be patient, use web listings as a reference and make further inquiries from there. 

People will move in sight unseen… before you’ve had chance to book a viewing

We were making our move at around the busiest time of year for moving house in Japan, around the end of-start of the fiscal year.  

As we got into late March it wasn’t uncommon to inquire about a place that had just become available one day, only to get a reply the next day that it had been taken, a quite disheartening experience.

I remember when we started out on our apartment-hunting journey this time around, the first real estate agency we visited said that they wouldn’t facilitate a rental agreement unless the prospective tenant visited the property beforehand. It sounded like a boast but for me it could have been a line from “Apartment renting for dummies” - “Visit the apartment before signing any contract.” 

Perhaps I was wrong though. We were told by other real estate agents that some tenants have signed agreements without having visited the property prior to moving in. The rate that places seemed to be getting snapped up during the latter stages of our apartment hunt left us with that impression.

One thing to take into account in this regard is that it is not unusual in the workplace in Japan for an employer, towards the end of the fiscal year, to transfer staff to another part of the country with little more than a month’s notice. Scant time then to go around viewing properties in what could be an area some distance away. 

It leaves other potential tenants with a tricky balancing act - start your search too early and few people will have announced their intention to vacate. Too late and you’ll be picking through the scraps. Just on time and, well, you may have to be quick and decisive … and prepared to compromise. 

One less “must” equates to way more property options

I am almost embarrassed to write this and reflect on how in need of creature comforts I’ve become with age. 

In our experience most online property searches presented apartment hunters with a check list of property accouterments and characteristics (air con, parking, pets OK) that could be selected as “must” or “if possible.”  

We began our search with a number of these musts - car parking, air con, system kitchen, and “oidaki” system (追い焚き機能), among them. “Oidaki system,” you might inquire - a system by which, with the push of a button, you can reheat your bathwater. Yes, this is something that, for a moment at least, became a “must” in our lives. 

Selecting oidaki as “must” reduced the number of property listings by at least a half, if not more. Similarly “system kitchen,” or what we might refer to as “fitted kitchen,” which over here, and at our budget range, seemed to mean a fitted surface-top hob with two-three rings and grill, as opposed to the space and fittings into which you would plug your own glorified camping stove as is often the case in Japan.

I learned that if I could sacrifice just one of my apartment “musts,” then the property options increased more dramatically than I had anticipated.  

To the larger point, and one that I was already aware of but feel it’s worth reiterating, compromise is key in order to move forward with moving house in Japan.  

There are, of course, other things I’ve learned from the latest house move but they are perhaps of a more personal nature, such as I don’t think I can live higher than six or seven floors up. For now, I’ll leave these points for others to take a look at in the hope that they may help to prepare someone for their next house move in Japan. 

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