Buying a House in Japan: Foreclosed Properties 裁判競売

You may know that it's possible to buy foreclosed properties. That is, property seized from the owner due to non-payment of the mortgage etc.

You can do this in Japan, too (called saibankeibai 裁判競売). Two websites which lists such opportunities are foreclosedjapan.com (English) and bit.sikkou.jp (Japanese).

If you're looking to buy a house in Japan then this is a great alternative to the regular method.

You can see a vast catalogue of houses, condos, commercial properties etc. I even found several very close to my little place in the obscurity of the Nagano mountains.

The prices are incredibly low. A small shop with living quarters upstairs on the main street of my town went for 1.6m yen (currently about 12k GBP/19k USD). It's now a really nice, and popular, yakitori place. I've also seen huge, sometimes lovely houses go for only three or four times that.

Condos seem to come with the potential of excess debt which you will be responsible for paying. Apparently that is not so common for houses.

NB: Those in the big cities are often snapped up by agencies/companies set up specifically for this kind of thing, but outside of the heavily populated areas are some real bargain to be found. Check foreclosed Japan's completed listings for more examples.

You do not need to be a Japanese citizen, or even resident, to bid on and purchase foreclosed property.

The process and charges were explained to me by the PR man at Foreclosed Japan:

The process:

Once you have located a potentially suitable property we
can provide you with further details on that property once you have signed
and returned our non-circumvent/non-disclosure agreement.

Review the property details and ask any questions you may have.

If you wish to place a bid, we will then provide you with further info in
order for you to determine an appropriate bid amount.

The court requires a deposit to be made, generally 20% of the minimum bid
amount, in order to submit a bid for the property.

If your bid is unsuccessful, the court will then return the funds in full
(within about one week of tender opening) and our fees are zero.
Please note that you will be responsible for all bank transfer fees
and any fluctuations in currency exchange rates.

If your bid is successful, you will have about one month to pay the
balance due.


Total acquisition cost:

The AIE auction service fee is 6% of the actual bid amount plus debt, with a minimum charge of 630,000 yen (600,000 yen plus 5% consumption tax).
Additional closing costs are estimated at 6% to 8% of total, but can vary widely depending on the property and the discount achieved.

The above usually covers all closing costs - acquisition/registration taxes
and costs, our fees, and administrative charges.

Insurance, property management, and renovations will be extra, if required.

In regard to debt, you would be made aware of the full amount before
placing any bid. This usually only comes into play with condos, though
does come up from time to time with other property classes.

Also, note that we require a couple of days before bid deadline for the
bid paperwork and submission.

The catch

It seems too good to be true, doesn't it? Well sometimes you may run into problems. Real Estate Japan claims that the buying process can be long and drawn out. Occasionally you will be responsible for excess charges such as returning the deposits paid by current renters of the property (who you may also need to evict - this is what takes the time; sometimes up to six months). It is also not possible to inspect the inside of a foreclosed property if tenant are still in situ, so you have to rely on potentially outdated images of the interior (if available).

In summary, you must be thorough with your search, checking every detail of the property and what responsibilities will fall on you as the owner. If you do all that and the deal still looks good, then go for it! Many people do, and find great homes or make good money in development.


If you have any experience with this, please let us know in the comments.

Insulating a Japanese House for the Winter

For the most part, the Japanese still haven't discovered either central heating or double-glazed windows (another example of low-tech Japan). Not only that, but old Japanese houses are actually designed to be cold. Kerosene heaters and kotatsu are the obvious ways to heat up your home, but if your house is anything like ours, you'll need to do some extra work to keep that heat in.

Read on for hints on tape, bubble-wrap and various other solutions designed to stop you resorting to buying one of those monk-outfit/blanket/muu-muu things with arms.

The horrible relentless cold has just started to peek ferociously around our shouji screens this year, after a brilliantly long and hot summer. Our house is very old and has very thin walls. It also seems to suck cold air in through all the cupboards. Time for some preventative measures.

•  Bubble-wrap



My toilet windows, minus curtain.

• Possibly the most effective solution.
  Shouji screens do act as a primitive form of insulation to the heat-sapping windows prevalent in most Japanese places, but it's much more effective to give the windows themselves another layer. The Japanese way of doing this is with bubble-wrap. There's nothing special about it (unless you buy the fancy designs); it's just bubble-wrap (in fact, buying a roll of industrial-issue stuff would be much cheaper than getting the purpose-packaged stuff in housing stores). Stick it on the whole window/door and that alone will make a huge difference to the room temperature. Instead of radiating cold like an open fridge, your frosty windows will now be tamed and ready for action. Take that Japanese tendency to make 1/4 of the walls of a house out of single-pane glass!
  
  
• Heat-applied insulation sheets
• Usually found next to the bubble-wrap in home-stores, and advertised to be the most effective insulation idea ever, is some kind of plastic sheet which can be melted to your doors (as an alternative to bubble-wrap). The picture on the tube shows a hair-dryer, though I think an iron would be more fun. See the picture below for full details of your options.

These are the various things presented at my local hardware store. From left to right we have: 

• Condensation Stopper Sheet, attach with water
• Clear Window Glass Thermal Insulation Sheet, attach with water
• Window Glass Heat Generation Sheet, attach with water
• Window Glass Condensation Stopper Sheet, attach with water
• Window Glass Clear Thermal Insulation Film, attach with heat

The star ratings indicate how efficient they are at:

• Transparency  
• Effectiveness of Heat Insulation
• Condensation Deterrence 

• Tape

• A good idea is to add another layer to the anti-hero all-powerful metal window-frames that give off cold like it's going out of fashion. Bubble-wrap won't work here, so the Japanese sell a special kind of tape (although I'm sure a regular packing tape would probably work too) with which you can cover all the metal surfaces. This does make a difference, although it's not the prettiest thing in the world.
  
  
•  More tape

• After that, you'll want to ensure you have a good seal around all of your windows. Our house is wonky thanks to generations of earthquakes, and this is especially important for us. Don't think that just because your apartment or house is new that you'll escape this one, however. Even our old (modern) apartment had places where outside was clearly visible through gaps between the doors. Again, the solution is tape. You can buy a slightly padded roll for a couple of hundred yen which will stick across/between the joins in your doors/windows.
  
  
• Block up those vents
• I don't know if it's universal anymore, but in the dark-ages when our house was built it came complete with vents to the outside world (presumably to help circulate air in the summer). Being holes to outside, these are cold. The hundred-yen store is your friend for this one - the bigger stores, like Daiso etc, often have a DIY section. There you can either find pieces of wood or plastic which you can use in place of the vent (with some modification). Just take the grill out of the wall, stuff some newspaper in there and then screw the new article in place (some sealant or rubber is an optional bonus). It helps.

  
  
  

  Before

  
  

  

  After

  
  
• Draft excluders

• They look stupid, but these things are designed to stop the draft from around the bottom of your windows and doors. It seems like there should be a better way than this - I'd go with the tape first, and this as a last resort.
  
  
• Condensation absorbers

• Quite a good idea to stop your tatami/door frame from getting damp and rotten. Place them at the bottom of the glass to catch the drips. Removable.
  
  

Still less revolutionary options of making your Japanese house warmer involve curtains (if you can brace yourself against Japan's exorbitant prices), and finding some kind of hippy wall-hanging to dangle in-front of your cupboards. Also: yakiniku/nabe in the living room anyone?

JapanProbe has a video of a batty old woman who has fearlessly covered the inside of her house in rags and old futons to keep out the cold. Well, she's in Hokkaido, so desperate times call for such measures... I guess.

Well, that's all we've got. If you have any bright ideas or success stories, please let us know in the comments.

Japanese Electonics: Plugs, Voltage and Wattage Guide

When bringing electrical goods back and forth across international borders, it is important to keep different countries' electricity standards in mind.

Not only can the socket shape be different, but different countries use different voltages and wattage, which means some appliances could fail to work in one country's outlets and cause a fire when plugged into another's.

Regarding shape of sockets, Japanese plug sockets accept plugs from the following countries (and vise versa):

American Samoa, Anguilla, Antigua, Aruba, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Bermuda, Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, Cayman Islands, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guam, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Japan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Maldives, Mexico, Micronesia, Montserrat, Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Niger, Okinawa, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, St. Vincent, Saudi Arabia, Tahiti, Taiwan, Thailand, United States, Venezuela, Vietnam, Virgin Islands (U.S.& British), Yemen.

Beat the three-pronged system
with a 100 yen adapter!
...just be sure it's safe.

Apparently some places in Japan use the non-UK three-pronged socket. But, if you travel elsewhere in Japan and can't find that kind of socket, but you desperately need to plug in your three-pronged, say, camera charger, it is possible to remove the third prong or cleverly use a thin adapter to just plug in the top two prongs. I've done this to my laptop and it was (and is) fine. The exceptions to this work-around are appliances that require a ground--that's what the third prong is--for safety. This is generally limited to stuff like microwaves, refrigerators, and dishwashers, or in other words, stuff that most people do not ship around internationally.

However, you must make sure that you use the correct transformer for vastly different voltage/wattages. Also note that if you use an item at a higher than rated voltage, you can no longer claim the product's liability for any fault or incident.

Usually, for electronics from/to the US, there shouldn't be a problem not using a transformer, but be especailly careful with things involving heat: Hairdryers, straighteners, and stuff like that. Running a Japanese one of these back in the States will result in a lot more heat being generated; this will either blow a fuse or be a fire risk. Consult the manual or item itself for a rundown of the acceptable voltage and wattage.

American products used in Japan will be slightly (but reportedly not significantly) cooler. (From Steve: I use a travel-sized hairdryer that I bought in the States. The fan is a little less peppy than in its original country, but I have used in Japan without any problems for more than 3 years.)

For the UK, remember that bringing heat-related items to Japan is almost pointless - they do crazy unpredictable things. They are not really more expensive to buy here, and you'll just have to bite the bullet on this one.

Usually, laptop chargers, phone chargers, camera chargers, etc., are designed to work at many different wattages. Check the rear of your product or manual for the range. The same often applies to TVs, etc.

Here's a comparison of Japan vs. the major ex-pat exporting states (taken from this extensive list), also including plug types (ABC etc):

Japan	100 V	50/60 Hz*	A & B	*Eastern Japan 50 Hz (Tokyo, Kawasaki, Sapporo, Yokohoma, and Sendai); Western Japan 60 Hz (Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, Hiroshima)
USA	120V	60 Hz	A & B
UK	230 V	50 Hz	G
Australia	240 V	50 Hz	I
New Zealand	230 V	50 Hz	I
Brazil	110/220 V*	60 Hz	A & B, C	*127 V found in states of Bahia, Paraná (including Curitiba), Rio de Janeiro, SÃo Paulo and Minas Gerais (though 220 V may be found in some hotels).  Other areas are 220 V only, with the exception of Fortaleza (240 V).  Outlets (click for more) are often a combination of type A and C and can accept either type plug.
Philippines	220 V	60 Hz	A, B, C

Although Japan and the US look very similar when compared to some of the others, I'll say again to be careful with items involving heat. A Japanese product designed to work at 100V will be 44% hotter at 120V. However, I have heard that more basic items such as rice cookers and denki pots will usually be fine.

Mending/Changing the Paper in Shouji Screens

Japanese paper doors may be attractive (at least from the inside), but it's very easy to stick an object through them, as anyone living here will know. Guests staying have a particular knack with this.

Anyway here's a guide to changing/mending the screens (障子を張り替える) if you're nervous or curious.

First of all, shouji paper (washi) comes in several sizes and literally hundreds of types. You can get very high quality stuff, sometimes with beautiful designs (just like the screens themselves), or you can just buy the regular stuff in a supermarket for abour 300yen (it's reportedly possible to get paper-esque plastic, too). It comes in either squares for one panel/section, small rolls or rolls wide enough for the entire lattice (kumiko).

Little shapes

If you only have a small hole to fix, you can buy little shapes to stick over the damage. They can look a bit crappy but a lot of people use them.

1. You can buy special paper loosening liquid in home stores. Alternatively you can usually strip from the frame easily enough with water or steam. Moisten the glue lines and it should come off easily. If you just want to replace one panel then scour around the area and (if you're lucky) you should be able to peel it up and off without disurbing other panes.
   NB: if someone has used the wrong type of glue or if it's been a particularly long time since the paper was changed, it can be very difficult to get off. Use a blunted scraper of some kind if you're left with soggy bits, but be careful not to destroy the lattice.
   
   
2. When the frame is dry again, use shouji glue on the area that needs replacing. Buy the glue in a squeezy bottle in virtually any supermarket. These come with a handy nozzle which will apply the glue universally along the correct distance from the edge of the frame. Keep the glue line very thin (1-2mm).
   If you're doing an entire door, it's fine to apply glue to the whole thing in one go.
   
   
3. For a whole door, place the roll of paper at the bottom (tack or tape it to keep a straight line) and simply roll it gently down to the top. Some more expensive papers will have a smooth and a rougher side. The smooth side should face outwards. If your paper has a pattern, double-check to make sure your orientation is correct.
   For one panel, row, use a small piece and roll or gently apply the paper.
   Don't trim the edges until the glue has dried.
   
   
4. Don't be tempted to use a cloth to smooth out the panels, as this can cause sagging if done too roughly. If you have any bad areas it may be because you used too much glue. In anycase, wait until the glue is dry and then reassess the situation.
   Some people like to spray a fine mist of water onto the doors to tauten the paper.
   
   
5. Trim off the excess. It's pretty frustrating to have half the paper catch and rip off when sliding across another door, so get this bit right.

That's it. The whole process shouldn't take very long. For a whole door, as long as you don't have too much trouble removing the paper, you should be done in ten minutes, and able to trim about an hour later.

Some people get very anal about their doors, and sometimes even want to make their own traditional rice-paste glue. If you want to know how, then here's a guide.

Tips/stories in the comments please!