NJMatsuya Photography

This is Part 3 of my experiences house/apartment-hunting in Japan.  For Part 1 please click HERE, and for Part 2 please click HERE.

I concluded Part 2 of my house-hunting experiences by explaining why I had been exclusively using one agent, and that I had resumed my search around the end of January 2009.  I haven’t been an easy customer for my agent.  For one, I (or rather my company, but I’m still the client) kept them waiting for 3 months whilst I sought approval.  Another thing that made things difficult for the agency (and this is something that would apply to any other agent as well) is that I had no clear idea of where I wanted to live.  Rather, I just vaguely said “oh, anywhere within 40 minutes of my office is fine”.  One would think that such a generalization would make it easy for an agency to find many property listings, but that is not actually the case.

There are scores of stations all around Tokyo, some cheaper than others, some more popular/hip than others, some considered “old” city, some known for their proximity to “green” areas like parks – the list goes on.  In general, what I’ve been told from a friend is as follows:

Southwest – good image and expensive area
Northwest – local residential image and less expensive than Southwest area
Southeast – local residential image and viewed cheaper than Northwest area
Northeast – slightly negative image and usually cheaper than other areas

(all “compass points” are referenced from the map of the Tokyo Metro.  ie Ueno is North, Mita is South, and so forth)

Guess which area I’m considering! (hint: I’m not exactly Rockefeller..(^_^;

Imagined prosperity of the areas aside, I’ve learned that superstition has also played a role in determining which areas are more popular, particularly in regards to the Northeast.  According to Chinese belief (Onmyodo), demons or “bad/negative” air came out of the Northeast (why, I’m not exactly sure).  Thus traditionally the Japanese tended to avoid living in those areas.  It’s one of the major reasons why the Asakusa, Senjo-ji, and Kanei-ji temples (among many many others) are located in the Northeastern part of Tokyo – to protect/defend against bad luck/evil spirits.  Such beliefs are much less prevalent in this day and age, but superstition lingers even now and continues to affect the “image” of particular areas.  (not that I particularly mind – particularly if it means that I’ll get a decent place for less!)

Since I did not care about “image”,  it made things even more difficult for my agent to find a place for me.  We visited a number of places (agencies here , especially the larger ones, will very often drive you to potential properties, making it possible to visit multiple places in a single day) but I couldn’t find something I liked.  It was either too small, or the layout was not good, or the bathroom/kitchen was too cruddy, or there was no supermarket/store in the vicinity, too far from station, too far away from the office, too expensive… on and on and on.  I’m surprised the agent stuck with me for as long as they did!

Around the first week of March I found a place in Kita-Senju that I considered a possibility.  It was still about 10 minutes away from the station, but it was directly over a combini, and Kita-Senju itself has 2 large department stores.  It is also a large station with a number of connecting lines – as well as being 30 minutes away from my office!  I decided to go for it and submitted the application to my company to see if they would supplement any of the initial one-time costs (key money, deposit, etc).  Guess what?  Turns out that would NOT assist with costs.  Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised – it was a bad time to be asking for financial assistance from a financial company (early 2009, when businesses were still reeling from the economic turmoil)  However I was rather miffed; the whole reason I had stayed with this one agency was because it was a “company-approved” agent and I had been told that there was a possibility of assistance.  Had I known that this would not be the case, I would have long ago started going to other agencies as well to see what other options were available to me.

Once I found that there wouldn’t be any financial support from the company for the property, negotiations fell apart.  For one thing, the “thank you money” was 2 months rent (about $2,000USD!) on top of deposit, rent, utilities, and basic facilties (the place didn’t even have an airconditioner!).  As I wasn’t willing to plunk out that much cash and there was nothing tying me to a single agent any longer, I decided to check out other agencies.

Hm.. I hadn’t expected my writing about house-hunting would turn out to be quite so lengthy… I think I’ll have one more housing-related post after this – will try to make that the last!