Renting in Japan

Moving, moving, moving. It’s all I’ve been doing for over a month now. Renting a place in Japan while working for my company a rather long process. Once I reached a certain position and had been in a certain amount of time, I’m allowed to move out of the housing provided for me and into my own place. The usual process for a Japanese person getting a place is that they go to a few housing agents to look at places, since most agencies rent different places and very few listings are held by more than one agency. Once they found a place they like, they negotiate on price and appliances, such as if the tenant wants an oven or larger refrigerator or a washer, and sign a tentative contract to sign at a later day. They need to sign at a later date because the tenant has to pay what equates to five month’s rent in cash when they sign the lease. The tenant pays the first month’s rent, a security deposit, the agent’s fee, and renter’s insurance. Together with taxes, that comes to about five month’s rent in cash. Youch, that can take a few days to gather. My company adds some paperwork that took nearly a week to get back to me and a few meetings with American housing specialists. All in all my moving process took about a month and then another week to finally move all my things into my new place. These are pictures of my new place. The first one is my small hallway between the guest room and my bedroom, the next is the guestroom before I put all my craft things in it, and the third picture is of the loft above the guest bedroom. My kitchen/livingroom area is also a rather large room but already a mess from moving in when I took these pictures. Now I just have to slowly furnish and organize all my things. Umm, yeah… that could take a while. :)