Don’t buy these old japanese houses, they’re literally made of mud and sticks and have absolutely fuck all for insulation.
Living in nature is all fun and games until you’re expected to sleep in 50 degree weather while your split unit struggles to keep your paper box of a bedroom cool.
Most of the time the closest hospital is like 2-3 hours away on a bus that only comes twice a day, so you better hope you never get in an accident cause the ambulance won’t come for hours and your only other hope is the only other person in neighborhood: your 90 year old neighbor who you’re not sure is even still alive.
Source: lived in one for multiple years.
Edit: also when I say old I mean as soon as 1995 Before they majorly overhauled the earthquake and insulation codes nationally
The catch is that rural Japan is a a shithole rife with xenophobia, privacy violations, bullying, and problematic neighbors. And that’s for ethnically Japanese people, so it’s be way worse if you were actually a foreigner.
There’s a reason why people in Japan try so hard to move away from rural areas into cities.
Universal truth I think
Can’t tell if the way small minded bigots stay away from the best parts of every country is a fun coincidence or causal.
As others in this thread have said, buying a property in Japan doesn’t extend your Visa or grant you residence in the country. This would be a waste of time if you didn’t already have that lined up. However, there are countries that do. Some have what’s called the Golden Visa program, or Investor/Real Estate Visa program (there are other names, but if you’re doing a search, this should turn up decent results). Here’s a list of some countries that do this, and the minimum amount you need to spend.
Portugal - Golden Visa Investment - €500,000 ($540k USD) or €350,000 ($380k USD) for lower population areas, or properties that need to be renovated Residency benefits - Residency permit for 5 years, with the opportunity to apply for permanent residency after that
Spain - Golden Visa Investment - €500,000 ($540k USD) Residency benefits - Residency permit for 1 year, renewable as long as you own the property, and you can apply for permanent residency after 5 years
Greece - Golden Visa Investment - €250,000 ($270k USD) Residency benefits - Residency permit for 5 years, renewable as long as you own the property, and you can apply for permanent residency after 7 years
Thailand - Thailand Elite Visa Investment - THB 1,000,000 (about $30k USD) for a 5 year Visa Residency benefits - Renewable every 5 years with no residency requirement
Ecuador - Investor Visa Investment - $42,500 in real estate Residency benefits - Grants you permanent residency
Malaysia - Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) Investment - RM 1 million (about $240k USD) in real estate Residency benefits - Grants you a 10 year renewable Visa
Philippines - Special Resident Retiree Visa Investment - $50k in real estate Residency benefits - Grants you permanent residency
When I was looking into bailing on the US, I made a Libre Office spreadsheet with like 70 countries and all this info plus a bunch of other personal requirements for what I was looking for, so some of it may be outdated. Hell, some of it may be straight up incorrect, so feel free to double check it.
I’d have to be near retirement age while still nimble enough to renovate it and hope my pension and savings would be enough to cover the costs.
Even then, it would be difficult to navigate renovations in that environment where you don’t speak the language, have no idea how their houses are supposed to be built, waste disposal and the myriad of other issues that will surely arise.
Getting a job is going to be a bitch - thus the retirement age requirement.
Getting citizenship is going to be an even bigger a bitch.
I’d be an outcast cause of my skin color and inability to communicate.I actually looked into that property once; there was no way it was going to happen for a number of reasons. I ended up buying a house in much better condition in another area.
I really need to do a video about the topic or something. There are many, many landmines with stuff like this. For a very TL;DR and assuming every single other thing is perfect: owning a home does not give you the right to spend any extra time in Japan nor grant a visa; you are on the hook for taxes, fees, septic maintenance (though the above property may have been a pit toilet; I don’t remember), and other bills which will have to be paid from a Japanese bank account. There are also certain neighborhood association obligations, property maintenance, fire control, etc.
I watched a video from an American guy who did this. But he already had residence, and made it very clear that if you don’t have residence, doing something like this would be a waste of time and money. He bought a massive junker of a house and it took him like 2 years and a bunch of help to make it livable. Still a good video, and still a cool idea, assuming you have certain ducks already lined up. Definitely not something to do on a whim.
I looked at doing something like this in quite a few countries, and skipped on Japan pretty quickly. Happy with my decision though.
Essentially, there’s usually good reason it was abandoned.
Additionally, houses in Japan aren’t really built to last. Properties like these are usually bulldozed and rebuit when purchased.
Essentially, there’s usually good reason it was abandoned.
I knew it…
Ghosts
Basically.
Grandma died and nobody wants to live in a 50 year old house in the middle of nowhere.
Essentially, there’s usually good reason it was abandoned.
For $3400, I’m fine with living with tormented ghosts.
Building standards are improving but, yeah, slowly. Kominka over 100 years can have really good structure if well maintained, but it definitely would not be something who isn’t already knowledgeable about them. The majority fall into ruin.
I’m sure you could find a cheap condemned shit hole in your nearest rural area too. That doesn’t mean that it’s a good deal.
It’s so cheap because the current owner doesn’t want to spend the money on demolishing the structure before selling vacant land. And if it is still available it is because no developer has looked at it and thought that they could make money on the flip.
Tons of places like that in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsyltucky, and all over the Midwest US. My girlfriend was scrolling through them talking about selling her house and buying one of those places on a big plot of land and thank fucking Jeebus I talked her out of it. I was like “babe, have you never seen the cinematic masterpiece ‘The Money Pit’ with Tom Hanks?”
Can confirm.
There’s properties about 2 hours drive from where I am in Western Australia that are unsellable.
There would’ve been 100 people living in a community there in the past but now it’s just a few old people waiting to die.
When someone does die the houses just end up being abandoned because you can’t even get an agent to drive out there and put up a for sale sign.
The interesting part about a bunch of the homes in more rural Japan is that they’re not actually condemned or shit holes. They’re old and would definitely need some love and attention but their population hasn’t been at replacement levels for a long time and people would rather live in a big city where they have access to all of the things so slowly and steadily the outer Fringe population areas in Japan have ben getting more and more empty leaving perfectly good houses to sit vacant for years. That’s not to say that there aren’t shit holes that aren’t worth the time it takes to go see them but a large portion of them are actually quite nice.
That place is abandoned likely because the farmer who lived there died or went into a senior care facility. There are houses like this one all over the world in rural areas and I can guarantee two things: poor infrastructure and septic tanks. The reason it’s cheap is because no developer wants an undeveloped lot.
I could feasibly make $4k pretty quickly, I want my own home, and I’ve always wanted to visit Japan… 🤔
You can actually do this in most countries. Public Auctions of homes are for when people don’t pay land taxes so the local auditors repossess them and sell them dirt cheap to cover the amount due.
You certainly can’t buy a home in Germany that’s anywhere close to as cheap as the one in japan. Maybe there are some very remote plots of land with a ruin of a house on it, but those will still cost more than 4000€.
Public auctions around my area usually start at around 150k or more, so it’s just not worth it for me.
I don’t speak enough Deutsch to navigate their websites for specific examples, but home foreclosures in Germany increased 9% yoy in January 2025, but you’re also correct that property prices are quite high which is the primary contributor to rise in foreclosures.
It’s definitely highly desirable property given the chaos in the USA, the East, etc.
The home prices have climbed to these very high levels for many years, i’s nothing new. A large part of it is probably due to lax rules on investment in real estate.
The home forclosures are probably due to higher interest rates.
Will I meet the Totoro?
There are way more complexities than meet the eye here.
Not the least of which: just buying property doesn’t give you a way to extend a visa beyond the normal tourist period (usually 90 days per 6-month period). Japan ultimately is still an isolationist country, and it shows the most in its immigration policies.
Correct. There is no “I own property” special visa status. The 90 day/6 mos can even be denied for any or no reason by immigration if they think you’re shady meaning zero access to the property.
I mean its remote, if you don’t interact with any gov’t agencies then how they gunna know you living there longer than the visa?
They know. They know when you entered and what kind of visa you carry.
I guess you could hide out in the woods, but… then why be in Japan?
Edit: and if they idea is to hide out in the house that you bought, well… may as well put a sign up that says “check here.”
I guess you could hide out in the woods, but… then why be in Japan?
Are there large, carnivorous predators in Japanese forests?
If you’ve ever been around the monkeys in Japan, you know they are not to be toyed with.
…like bears?
But they’re japanese, so the most they can do is knock insistently on the door; something like kicking the door down would be rude. And if you marry, you solve the visa problem and help repopulate. Two birds one stone. Jokes aside, the place is really rundown and also not much “classic/picturesque”, looks more like an old factory or warehouse.
No MAGA?
Oh, I get that. I guess I’m suggesting there are better options if it’s hiding out without an appropriate visa in the woods. It’s probably easier in, say, Borneo.
The Japanese government functions and has enforcement of immigration policy.
And their version of enforcement is quite… forceful.
terminal birth rates means that won’t be an issue for too long
I wish I had that kind of money.
Oh to be a thousandaire
なぜだめなのw
- It’s in bumfuck nowhere
- I don’t speak Japanese
- Building it up to a modern living standard will be expensive
- I’d have to move to Japan
Unsorted list of reasons why not from the top of my head
I think those first 2 cancel each other out.
Still need to be ble to do the paperwork and go get groceries though. So I doubt it cancels out.
Nothing that a translation app on your phone can’t fix.
I rarely talk to the cashier when I go shopping, so I highly doubt they’d turn up their nose at my money just because I’m incapable of making smalltalk.
It’s not that bad
Looking on maps it’s in a rural area but not that rural. The house is situated on the outskirts of a town, basically
Local middle schools website says they had 185 students in 2020, that’s pretty good for rural Japan
About a 30m walk from the town/school. Train station there, bunch of cafes, konbini.
It’s not going to be living in Tokyo obviously but there are rural areas in Japan that are far worse, where the school is 7 kids that all share a classroom even though they’re mixed grade 2-9 because the district has 1 teacher
Bigger reason for me: that house is decrepit and Japan experiences more natural disasters than pretty much any other country. Like I’m not living in a crap shack when the next earthquake, typhoon, or tsunami inevitably hits
The language isn’t that hard though. プラス、それからもっと漫画を読めるよ。
The language isn’t that hard though
Gonna go ahead and press X to doubt on that. Japanese is consistently ranked among the hardest languages to learn for English speakers, alongside Mandarin and Arabic.
If I can learn it anyone can. I am straight up stupid. Full disclosure though: while I can write it pretty well (with a phone or pc, no fucking way I can do it by hand) my speech is mixed. When I talk to Japanese people they say “wow! Your Japanese is so good!” Which means it’s not very good hahah
Mandarin is way harder because it’s alllll kanji and the speaking in tones stuff is so much more nuanced
I’m pretty sure it’s ranked hard because you have to learn an alternative alphabet. But this is not really that tough. You can learn hiragana fairly quickly. Katakana is not nearly as necessary as you might think. Then learning kanji does admittedly take forever but often you’ll see things are either written in hiragana, only use the most basic of kanji, or if they use fancy kanji they have the hiragana next to it anyway (like a phonetic spelling)
The grammar is a little challenging:
Subject verb object - I sushi eat instead of I eat sushi
The subject gets dropped and implied; the language is heavily contextual. I eat it - 食べます (tabemasu) - i (implied) eat it (implied). This is why llm and machine language translation stinks at Japanese, because it can’t really know context from a single line (though it’s improving, chatgpt got that right though deepl said “I’ll eat”, which isn’t wrong, strictly and did give both I’ll eat it and I’ll have some as alternatives)
Then there’s particles like は wa and が ga which mark the subject and topic, respectively. English doesn’t really have an equivalent.
But this isn’t harder as much as it’s nuance imo. The writing system and alphabet is harder, objectively. There’s 46 hiragana and over 100 if you include the additional forms (which is misleading a bit) then basically the same number of katakana, then about 2,000 kanji in use. That’s a lot to learn but it’s basically an extension of learning vocab
Now should you learn Japanese? That’s a tough one. Stagnant economy, falling birth rate year after year, etc. but your goals are your own and don’t have to be practical
So…how many years deep are you haha
It’s embarrassing to say how many years relative to how poor my skills are haha. Like if I had genuinely kept my practice up this whole time I would be a near native speaker
Started in high school, like 2001. Lived in a small town so was self teaching via instruction online and help from the somethingawful adtrw dc++ hub and what eventually became 4chan
Took a some classes in college but didn’t minor or anything. Did get a chance to go to Japan at the end of college (around 2007ish) though. My Japanese was pathetically bad, despite having spent 6 years at this point. I had a somewhat decent vocabulary but I had a mix of: didn’t practice grammar enough so I couldn’t speak with any kind of confidence, didn’t practice speaking enough so when I did actually speak I was often unintelligible, and I was a huge weeb so I kept saying cringe shit
That was a pretty disheartening experience (still loved Japan though) so then I basically didn’t practice for a few years. At this point I was starting my career and then went to grad school so it fell by the wayside
Then I started to pick it back up in like 2016 but mainly to read manga. I was done grad school by then so I finally had some time again and started to brush up again, but passively
Then covid happened and I reconnected with some people from Japan I knew. They wanted to work on English, I wanted to work on Japanese, so we’ve been doing that. Now I’m realizing that was 5 years ago and my speech still sucks
God I’m so depressed now
LOL, I’m so sorry, didn’t mean to be a debbie downer.
I’m much earlier on, maybe around a year and a half so far, just via self-study and language exchanges, so I feel your pain somewhat.
Like you said, it isn’t exactly…“hard”, per se, it just takes a lot of time and dedication.
It’s persistence too. The language exchange is great to hear, that’s huge.
I’m much better now from daily chats with my Japanese friends. That’s really what was missing from the many, many, many years I spent before imo. I would study flash cards and eventually Anki decks once that was a thing, I would have practice conversations here and there with other weebs or in class during the brief period I had that. But for the most part I just read manga, which isn’t really all that challenging (usually), and I would listen to anime while reading subtitles. It was so passive
But now it’s the study daily instead of when I feel like it. It’s chatting every night with my friends and having them be like oh no, it’s actually もう一つの, not もう一つ. Or it’s “so-reh” or whatever I’m saying wrong. The constant feedback is essential
Kanji have extremely inconsistent pronunciation. It is one of the worst things about learning the language. It’s not just 2000, it’s 2000, most with multiple readings, many with exceptional readings.
Yeah, even some simple ones you learn early on like 日 will have 5+ readings. Daily Kanji practice is what really made it hard for me to keep learning and why i gave up after only a few months.
I feel like I learn a new reading for 生 every couple years
especially the simple ones will have more readings
Fair point
Now should you learn Japanese?
Me? Yes, probably. I’ve been promising my wife I’d do it for like… almost 3 years? 🤦
Today is the day, here is your sign
Anki and tae Kim
Don’t fuck with Duolingo, waste of money
Personally I like doulingo for hiragana/katakana.
But after that, anki is my god, my king, my one and only. (Few thousand words in.)
Oh interesting that’s one of my least favorite parts of duolingo
There’s a free app called scripts I’ve been using to learn stroke order. It’s just okay but they smash them at you with much more repetition
Spoken japanese is realistically like a 2. It’s the written form (3 separate forms) that’s difficult, bringing it to a level 4. Speaking is quite easy compared to other languages.
Spoken japanese is realistically like a 2
Doubt. Here are some reasons:
- honorifics - they completely change the verb conjugation
- counting numbers - screw that noise, esp. since they conjugate numbers as well; at least Korean doesn’t do that nonsense
- completely reversed grammar (SOV instead of SVO really screws w/ westerners)
Pronunciation is dead simple though.
Thanks for the reply. I’m unsure why the honorifics get brought up in discussion of difficulty. Many non English languages have at minimum 2 of forms as well as 2 genders (some have more). I understand japanese has a lot of honorific titles and a few forms, but it’s not that difficult, for 90-95% of your interactions you can just use two really (and some of the titles exist in english as well, Mr, Mrs., Ms., Miss, Master, Dr., Lord, add an Esq. at the end for some, etc.). For me personally, I would put this in the same category as not understanding how to properly use romance language diminutives (and in many language courses these aren’t really taught until later, as far as I’m aware).
The numbers are fine? I’ve never heard this critique. I might be misunderstanding the point on this one. Other languages have some form of number conjugation as well so my apologies for not getting this
Grammar as compared to what language? Are we comparing Japanese to English only? I said it’s a level 2 not a level 1, but romance language grammar can be somewhat confusing for English speakers as well.
I was young when I learned conversational Japanese and found it surprisingly straightforward as an English native speaker. Additionally, there are no tones (unlike for example Chinese), and all the spoken sounds exist in English, so it’s not too hard for an English speaker to correctly pronounce words with practice (so I completely agree with you here).
Now I’m studying German, which is supposed to be much easier by comparison, and there are 3 word genders and literally dozens of direct and indirect pronouns. It’s extremely difficult to comprehend and recall mid conversation (or even at all). Then, depending on a lot of factors, the grammar also changes. That, plus numbers are reversed (9 and 20 as opposed to 29, and don’t get me started on French numbers). Also, there are multiple sounds that don’t even exist in english.
Still, I will reiterate, I’m suggesting Japanese is more of a level 2 language, but I assure you the majority of difficulty comes from the written form.
That 30 minute walk is going to suck in Hanamaki’s winters. I assume they get it worse than the more central area that I know which has no shortage of snow.
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About a 30m walk from the town/school.
I interpreted this as 30 meters and wondered why anyone would care about a walk that reasonable.
not living in a crap shack when the next earthquake, typhoon, or tsunami inevitably hits
I imagine this would work out pretty great if you can just lift off the roof if it collapses on you in an earthquake. The other two, not so much.
I remember seeing an article on these houses. The biggest issue is this house was built before the 1980’s, so it was built before modern earthquake (?) proofing standards. This makes the house unlivable and technically condemned, and the Japanese government won’t let anyone (including owner) from being able to live there until it’s been modernized to the standards.
While this sounds easy, you need to get the supplies and crew out there (no easy road access), which is expensive, and possibly not a real option (again, remote area and trucks might not be able to reach it).
So you end up with a house no one can legally live in, in an area that can’t be reached to repair/build anything. It’s just a lose/lose situation and causes the value of the property to be very low.
The last major earthquake revision was in 1981 so anything with planning approval before that is going to cause a ton of headaches. There have been many minor revisions since then, but they usually don’t apply when considering loans, insurance, etc.
I mean, this crap shack has been standing for more than a hundred years now
With active maintenance
Only one of those is a problem.
Sure, it looks cheap. It’s cheap for a reason. Buying abandoned property in a remote place is often the most expensive way to find out why.
Japanese houses in particular are basically a consumable. They are designed for a very short lifetime compared to pretty much any other developed country.
Lol, I’ll have to trust you on the source.
Lol, yeah, I was trying to find a source for the average home age, and an article in English cited this as the official government statistics, which i thought would be more responsible to cite, even if I couldn’t understand it. I did auto-translate it to double check, though.
I watched a video on this and while it does vary widely by prefecture one of the big reasons is their waste management/recycling rules.
Often, to demolish a house, theres usually a flat fee and its just bulldozed, put into a truck and dumped. To renovate, you have to dispose of every type of waste according to the class of that waste. Which is labour intensive and time consuming.
Japan is in the middle of a population crisis. These houses are empty because there’s not enough people. They’re desperate for people to immigrate.
They’re an isolationist society… they’re not looking for people to immigrate at all, they’re trying to get their own citizens to have kids. They’re also quite xenophobic and racist as well.
Japan is cool as hell, but people put way to much of their knowledge from animes… being a tourist is gonna give you a completely different perspective than actively living there would.
Because Japan can be extremely xenophobic.
going to nightclubs as a foreigner in japan: everyone loves you and wants to talk to you
getting a job (other than teaching english to kids) as a foreigner in japan: good luck
There are all kinds of jobs here. Most common is IT-related, though, which is where I’m at.
I think you meant “going to nightclubs as a white foreigner in Japan”
Ehhh. My experience in some bars was not like that. I had a couple where they where the bouncer clearly didn’t want me inside and I was told a place was closed several times when clearly they were not. It was just closed to me.
I was stuck in Turkey for 2 months, for work, a year and a half ago. I remember being told that my group could enter this club in Instanbul, and we were excited to enter, until a black guy of ours joined our group as we were walking up. Suddenly there wasn’t room in the club anymore. That shit pissed me off.
Racism instead of xenophobia, but similar lived experiences of (witnessing) discrimination I suppose.
Nightclubs are not the same as bars.
Mate, bouncers do that all over the world.
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It’s a very remote place
