Another aspect of being in Japan on a working holiday visa is finding appropriate accommodation. If you go to Japan on other visa schemes, particularly for example as an English teacher, your employer will often sort out your accommodation. This has its benefits, mainly that it will often be furnished, close to your workplace and you don’t have to deal with much of the hassle of finding somewhere. The downsides are that you generally are going to pay slightly inflated rates including things such as ‘key money’ and other charges and the place may not be exactly to your liking.
Upon arriving in Japan in 2010 on my WHV, I went to my old host family’s place and stayed with them for a month or two. After that I met some people through mutual friends and would literally ask everyone I met if they knew of any good houses etc I could apply for. Eventually someone said I could stay with them close to Nagoya University. This was an important step as my host family didn’t live particularly close to Nagoya and so I needed a ‘homebase’ closer to Nagoya while househunting.
I went into a nearby real estate office after looking at some of their offerings online and was invited to look through their listings. After picking out a couple that looked promising, the real estate agent drove me to several of the places so I could get a look at in person. This is definitely one of the benefits of going to a real estate agent! He seemed like a genuine guy and pointed out that some of the photos were very misleading as they were taken with a fisheye lens and so some of the apartments were tiny but didn’t look like that in the pictures.
After finding a few that I liked, we went back to his office and he started calling the landlords to see if they’d take me. The conversations on the phone went something like this:
“Ah yes hello Mr X, it’s blah from blah realty, we have a foreigner here who is looking to rent your apartment. Yes I see, thank you”.
After about 10 of these calls in a row, I volunteered that perhaps he shouldn’t refer to me as a ‘foreigner’ but as an ‘Australian’ as Australians have a pretty good reputation in Japan compared to the bad/terrible reputation that ‘foreigners’ have in Japan. He didn’t take my advice but eventually someone didn’t refuse me straight out, and the real estate agent handed the phone to me at which point the landlord asked one question:
“Do you know how to sort the rubbish?”
“Yes I lived in Japan for one year with a host family and I can speak-“
“Ok put the other guy back on”
And with that, I was in. Sorting rubbish in Japan is a bit of an involved process and very important as they don’t really have the space for landfill. Funnily enough a week or so after I moved in I got an unaddressed letter with 3 or 4 pages of full colour explanations of rubbish sorting.
The apartment was unfurnished and cost 四万円/月. That’s pretty cheap and it was in a convenient location called 金山, a bit south of central Nagoya. I hit up some friends who had cars and we drove around to some second hand shops to grab some furniture. I also found that some of these shops, particularly if they deal with whitegoods, will deliver to your place and help install for a small fee. They also ended up coming and buying back a lot of stuff from me when I left Japan. That took a lot of headache out of furnishing.
I ended up living by myself, which was fine. If I could do it again, I would probably look at getting into a sharehouse with a Japanese person. There are many websites that can help you find places like this and would be a good idea if you’re not comfortable with speaking/reading Japanese or haven’t lived in Japan before, as a native speaker experienced with the country is a valuable resource.
Before I left, I called the landlord and told them I was leaving, they did a final inspection and that was about it. I also had to cancel a few utilities like internet and the like. A lot of these things are by contract in Japan and I asked about cancellation fees. They asked my reason for cancelling and I told them the truth that my visa was expiring and I was returning home, so they decided to waive all cancellation fees!
