Tips I wish I knew before apartment hunting in Japan 🔑

[Music] I've been living in Japan for 5 months now and I know it can be quite hard to find an apartment uh when you're trying

to move to Japan especially as a foreigner so I thought I would give you a bit of tips advice and uh also share the tricky details um when it comes to

apartment hunting in Japan and uh yeah hopefully you'll have more information on after this video when it comes to renting an apartment in Japan I really

recommend uh visiting uh websites such as Sumo so Sumo is uh a very famous apartment hunting website in Japan um it

basically has all the apartments posted by different uh real estate companies and you'll be able to see basically all

of them Sumo is a Japanese website so you're not going to be able to to have the page in English however I really recommend uh you know using Google

Chrome and you know automatically translating the web page in English that works really well uh it's what I did personally I didn't speak that much Japanese when I moved to Japan and when

I was apartment hunting I just translated the web page uh automatically in English and you can do it in whatever language you want and I was able to get all the information I needed in English

rather than Japanese of course some words are going to sound a bit odd but it usually works quite well and yeah it was really easy to use there are real

estate uh websites real estate companies um that are really uh specialized in helping foreign people find apartments in Japan but I don't really recommend

them usually the prices are much higher for you know the same um amount of space or the same amount of uh amenities in apart so I really don't recommend it I

would say that overall speaking Japanese and being able to speak Japanese is quite useful when uh apartment hunting however I feel like you could um be able

to visit a normal Japanese real estate uh website and still uh be able to find an apartment even if you don't speak Japanese because most of the things you're going to have to do to find an

apartment are going to be written uh it's going to be through you know reading the website uh sending emils so you don't actually need to speak Japanese you can mostly use translators

to write and read Japanese of course if you know someone who speaks Japanese I highly recommend uh getting their help um but other than that just use the

tools available like a Google translate or deeple there's different ways to find an apartment on a summa website first you can uh trying to find an apartment

um depending on where you want to live so for example you you can select a city an area a district um or you can also select what train station you're interested in and from which line in

that way you can really Target uh where you want to live depending on for example where you work if you know that you're going to have to use a certain train line then you can only target the

apartments that are close to that train line once you're on a website like suo uh you'll see that a lot of different companies post the same apartments and that's completely normal

um you know it's not weird if you're scrolling through the apartments and you realize that it seems like there's the same apartment several times it's just that for each apartment different real

estate companies are allowed to represent it now let's talk about the apartments themselves something I really want to address right away is um

apartments are not very well insulated in Japan at least compared to where I came from cuz I lived in France before apartments are really not that well insulated

so that can be a problem when it comes to sound uh for example we have workers uh building a house right next to our building and uh you know they start work

quite early in the morning also the trucks that come and pick our uh bins our trash uh are quite loud in the morning so we can hear all of that and

it can also be a problem uh when it comes to heat and uh you know when it gets cold in the winter that's going to be an issue uh we haven't experienced winter yet but we have experienced

summer and let me tell you it's basically the same temperature outside and inside even if you close the windows I would really recommend getting an apartment that has shutters that has

blinds um and also Apartments where you're able to hang curtains that will give you that extra layer of insulation that might you know help uh in the

summer time and in the winter time I was talking about the installation of windows but let's actually talk about the windows most Apartments here in Japan at least the apartments that we

looked at in Osaka and in Sak which is where we live now I don't know how it is in Tokyo but I'm guessing it's the same but most Apartments didn't have that

many windows I was really shocked at the lack of light in most apartments that we saw on the website a lot of the apartments are really long and they

usually only have a window at the end or maybe a small window somewhere else but the lighting isn't that good and also um something you really want to check on

the Suma website is what do the windows look like because I actually um realized that a lot of Apartments have windows that are blurry I think it's to improve

privacy um because uh people outside can't see what's going on inside of the apartment because the windows are blurry but it really isn't that good when the only window you have in your apartment

is blurry and you can't actually see the the inside when you're inside of the apartment so one criteria I really had when we were looking at apartments is trying to find an apartment with normal

windows that you could actually see through and also several of them I really didn't want to be in an apartment where I wasn't going to have any Windows especially because at the beginning I didn't have a job I still don't have a

job but I knew I was going to spend quite some time in the apartment and I didn't want to be in a really dark and isolated uh apartment so so uh it is possible to find an apartment with

several windows we found one with five windows but you might have to really dig really try and check every single apartment on the websites to find

that one apartment that has a few more windows and a lot of lighting usually there's a few things that most Japanese Apartments have um for example most

Apartments have AC um they use AC to call the apartment in the summer and to heat up the apartment in the winter in our case for example we do have an AC

but we don't have any radiators so we're going to have to rely on that AC um to heat up the apartment in the winter most Apartments if not all apartments and

houses have at least one bathtub because bath culture is very very important in uh the Japanese culture usually Japanese people have a bath every single night so you're most likely going to have a

bathtub in your apartment uh something else that you're probably going to have is a smart toilet you're not necessarily going to get one but um at least in our case it wasn't a criteria we didn't

really necessarily want a smart toilet but we still ended up having a smart toilet in every single apartment that we um toured through video chat so it is

quite common on the Sumo website there's a filter mode where you can tick uh each of the amenities that you're interested in for example if you want a smart toilet in your apartment you click on

Smart toilet and it will only show the apartments that have Smart toilets in them when it comes to the kitchens your most likely not going to have a fullsize oven especially if you're looking at

Studios or one-bedroom apartment you're probably not going to have a fulls size oven in Japan is quite common to have a mini oven uh which is uh basically a

drawer um that's under the stove so in the same place where you would have a normal sized oven and it's usually used to to cook small things for example to grill fish and even if you don't have

that little small oven you can also buy a mini Grill oven that's basically the size of microwave like the one we have here you can basically use that to cook

smaller things like a small pizza uh you know if you want to make bread you can make a small loaf of bread things like that they most likely will not be a washing machine in your apartment it

will not be included but what you really have to to check is that there is that base to actually put a washing machine because some apartments don't have the base where you can put the washing

machine so even if you did want to buy a washing machine to put in your apartment you're not going to be able to put it in your apartment if you don't have that special base so again you can go on the

Su website and you can tick that filter you say that you want a uh you want the base for the washing machine and you'll be able to only see the apartments that

have that usually most apartments are not f fished it's actually quite hard to find furnished apartments and that can be quite hard and quite annoying for

people who only plan on staying somewhere for 6 months for example again if you're here with a working holiday Visa you want to stay in Tokyo for 6 months and then move somewhere else in

Japan for 6 months it can be quite annoying to find a furnished apartment what I will say is it's much cheaper to rent an apartment that's unfurnished and

to buy furniture so of course uh if you're not planning on staying here very long um maybe that's not the best option and that's actually um the kind of

service that companies specialize in Fr people may be able to provide there most likely will be more uh choices available for furnished apartments when it comes

to a real estate company specialized in foreign people living in Japan but if you're planning on staying here more than a few months I definitely recommend

getting an unfurnished apartment and buying your furniture buying furniture here isn't that expensive we personally used um Ikea Japan to deliver our

furniture at least the big furniture for example our bed our sofa our big table and chairs we used Ikea Japan for that it was much less expensive than uh say

Ikea France for example the prices were cheaper in Japan than in France for the same uh furniture for the same objects when it comes to things like the fridge

the washing machine um maybe you might be able to find some on the Internet or uh I would recommend going to shops like Jin which is where we bought our washing

machine and our fridge and then when it comes to smaller appliances like for example we got a rice cooker uh our mini oven we got those from hard off which is

a secondhand shop and those were really cheap another option if you want to get an un furnished apartment but you don't really want to spend that much money on buying things you're only going to use

for you know 6 months or a year uh you can also rent furniture for example there's a website called class where you can basically rent uh any furniture you

want you can rent for example beds you know rent mattresses rent sofas chairs a table a fridge uh sometimes they also

have um sets of uh furniture that you can rent all together for example a set with one fridge one washing machine and

uh one microwave so it can be quite um useful for people who are not planning to stay here very long in our case we actually did the math and it would be

more expensive for us to rent those pieces of furniture than to buy them from Ikea hard off and jein but for someone who's planning on living

somewhere for 6 months for example it would probably be cheaper to rent okay so we also need to talk about the prices of different apartments in Japan I come

from France and uh in my case I really felt like apartments in Japan were cheaper than apartments in France definitely cheaper than apartments in

Paris uh but also cheaper than apartments in other cities in France in my case I didn't look at apartments in Tokyo I only had a look at apartments in

Osaka and Sakai s is in the suburbs of wasaka maybe Tokyo is the exception uh it is possible that Tokyo apartments are more expensive than other big cities but

I do feel like anywhere else in Japan um apartments are much cheaper than big cities in Europe and big cities in America a big portion of the price of an

apartment is actually uh dependent on how far the apartment is from the closest train station living 3 minutes away or 10 minutes away by foot from the

closest train station is actually going to make a huge difference in the price of an apartment train culture is very important in Japan most people rely on

trains to get to work so usually people really want to be close to train stations especially because it's quite common for people in Japan to have very

long commutes to go to work so people usually want to get those extra minutes of free time and live as close as possible to the train station if you

don't mind walking an extra 5 minutes uh to go to the train station I really recommend uh looking at apartments that are more than 5 minutes or more than 10

minutes away from a train station you're going to see a huge difference in the price when it's basically just the house around the corner over there when we started apartment hunting my boyfriend

really wanted to be close to a train station because we knew that the commute was probably going to be close to an hour so he he wanted to be really close so first of all we looked at um

apartments that were 3 minutes away from the train station we saw that they were quite expensive or that they didn't really meet our other criteria and then when we looked at apartments that were

more than 10 minutes away from a train station we saw a huge difference in the price and also in the quality of life so for example we were able to find an apartment with more windows a bigger

apartment um maybe an apartment that was more modern that had all the amenities we wanted and that's only because we looked at apartments that were 5 minutes further away than the apartments we were

looking at before now let's talk about the lease contracts cuz I feel like it can be quite tricky when you're a foreigner and we definitely had a few surprises first of all most lease

contracts are 2 years so what that means is if uh you want to leave after one year but your lease is 2 years you're still going to have to pay the extra

year worth of rents so we don't want to do that you can definitely find apartments that have a one-year lease but just check on the Suma website check

in the description of the apartment that their lease is one year not 2 years because if you're only planning on staying for one year for example if you're planning on coming for a working holiday Visa you don't want to be paying

that extra year of rent in our case our lease is 2 years but um the contract said that if we left after 1 year we wouldn't have to pay that extra year of

rent but we still need to stay at least one year if we left after 6 months for example we'd still have to pay 6 months of rent to complete that one year another really tricky thing and

something you really have to take into account when you're renting in Japan is the key money the key money is an amount of money you're going to have to pay at the beginning of your lease it's not the

same thing as a deposit because when it comes to the key money you're never going to get that back it's us usually at least I would say at least 100,000

Yen uh you know sometimes for example in Euros it would range from you know €1,000 to a couple th000 which can be quite a big amount of money to have to

spend when you get to Japan not all apartments in Japan will require um key money it's something that was very very common um a few years ago but nowadays

there's more and more apartments that don't don't require key money anymore when you're scrolling through the apartments just check that uh the key money is um an amount of money that

you're willing to spend to get that apartment symbolically the key money is an amount of money you pay to thank um I don't know if it's to thank the real

estate company or to thank the owner of the building but basically to thank someone for being able to live in that apartment in our case what we did is we did have key money for our apartment but

for each apartment that I was interested in I took a look at the key money that was required I divided it by 12 and

added that amount to the uh price of the rent that way I could have an idea of what the actual rent per month would be although I know that the key money is an

amount of money you have to pay at the beginning I just wanted to have an idea of how much it would cost or what you can do is just multiply the rent by 12

12 and add that to the key money and you know compare that amount for each apartment you're interested in because sometimes for an apartment the rent will be cheaper but the key money is much

more expensive and then when you add it up you actually realize that sometimes even an apartment with a rent that is more expensive will actually be worth it

because the key money is lower so you know just take your time and uh check the different prices for the key money for the rent and try and make your decision knowing that you're going to

have to pay that key money at the beginning on websites like Sumo usually um there's different things you can see when you click on an apartment first of

all you can see pictures of the apartment of course you can see pictures of the building usually you can also see pictures of the neighborhood for example um parks that are nearby and usually

they'll show pictures of the closest convenience stores the closest convenes for example you know 7-Eleven Family Mart and usually they'll say how close

those cominis are from your apartment sometimes they'll also show pictures of the closest shopping centers or closest um clothes shop for example and usually

if not all the time there's a picture of the floor plan of the layout of the apartment let's talk about the floor plan let's talk about the layouts of the apartment one thing I want you to really check when you're looking at the floor

plan of an apartment is to see if the bedroom is a western style bedroom or a Japanese style bedroom western style bedrooms are basically bedrooms you would find

anywhere in Europe or in America uh it's a normal bedroom where you put a bed for example whereas a Japanese style bedroom is a bedroom with tatami in it so

tatamis are basically traditional mats um that are on the floor and they're quite fragile they're quite hard to take care of when you're not used to them so

I really wouldn't recommend getting a Japanese style bedroom if you're planning for example to put a bed in there they're not really made to put a heavy Furniture things like that so if

you're planning to put a normal uh bed you know with a bed frame and a mattress just get a a western style bedroom usually the names of the rooms will be written in Japanese sometimes they might

be written in English but again if they're Britain in Japanese just get your phone out translate the floor plan uh with you know picture mode on Google translate and you'll be able to see what

each room is in English or in whatever language you speak on the Sumo website I believe the size of the apartment was written in square meters however on the

floor plan where you see uh each room the size of each room will not be written in square meters it's probably going to be written in number of tatamis

that doesn't mean that there's actual tatamis in the apartment it's just U the Japanese way of measuring space in an apartment for reference uh one tatami is

approximately 1.65 square m and it's 1779 Square ft so what does the whole procedure look like when you're trying

to rent an apartment so again as I explained before first of all you're going to go on the Suma website um filter the apartments you like according to the train stations you want to be

close to or the areas you want to live in and of course the amenities you want or you know how big you want the apartment to be when you're scrolling on the Suma website and you find an

apartment that you like uh what you can do is there's actually a little button you can click to say that you're interested in the apartment and then the company will get back to you uh or you can send them an email explaining your

situation explaining that you want to visit the apartment or that you're interested in the apartment usually you can do most of it by email or you can

use um an app called line line is a very famous app in Japan it's basically the WhatsApp of Japan uh it's what families

use to communicate friends and also sometimes uh people use it for work uh I personally use it for example if I want to contact the closest Clinic uh I would

use line so I really highly recommend downloading uh the line app if you're planning on moving to Japan and it could be quite useful when you're apartment hunting cuz um some some of the Realtors

will answer much quicker if you text them through the line app if you don't currently live in Japan and your apartment are hunting to actually move to Japan I highly recommend sending uh

the company uh that represents the apartment you're interested in an email explaining your situation you can explain that you're planning on moving to Japan uh you know explain that you

have a job here waiting for you or that you have a special Visa you know explain your situation um and ask if you can video call them to actually visit the

apartment uh with a video chat that's what we did and it worked quite well we actually visited several different apartments and uh the Japanese Realtors were really professional a lot of them

tried to help us straight away we had usually the video calls were planned for the next day so it was really easy and usually they showed us several apartments and they were really you know

willing to help us I highly recommend sending all of your email emails and trying to do all of your Communication in Japanese I know it's hard if you don't speak Japanese but try and use

Google Translate or deot and send your emails in Japanese it will really go a long way I don't recommend sending your emails in English you really want to blend in and uh try to speak Japanese as

much as possible u Realtors will be more willing to help you if you're making that extra effort of speaking Japanese and you know they might be a bit scared if you speak to them only in English because a lot of Japanese people don't

really speak English that well so if you're making the extra effort of speaking in Japanese with them um sending emails in Japanese they'll most likely try and help you find an apartment if you want to plan a video

call uh to visit an apartment maybe you should send them an email in Japanese explaining your situation and asking them if it's possible to plan a video call to visit an apartment with a

realtor that speaks English that might be possible in our case we actually started contacting uh companies when we were looking at apartments about 10 days

before moving to Japan because our move was quite last minute we didn't actually know when my boyfriend's job was going to start so we basically had to find an apartment last minute and what we

quickly realized is Apartments go really really fast and especially with the time difference it was a bit tricky because you would contact a company and then go to bed but then the next day the uh

apartment you were looking at was actually taken already um by the next day so just be aware that Apartments come and go really really fast in our case we actually contacted several

different companies for several different apartments at the same time I don't know if that's what you're actually supposed to do I don't know if you're supposed to only work with one

company or several but in our case we actually contacted different companies because uh we didn't really have that much time to wait for one company to respond we were really desperate to find

an apartment once you're interested in an apartment and you know you want to get that one for example if you visited it through video chat um and you re

liked it you should definitely tell the company that you want that apartment they're most likely going to send you a form uh for example by email that you're going to have to fill out with different

information about you and uh you're probably going to have a few documents that you're going to have to send them for example your passport your Visa um if you have a job waiting for you you

should send them uh different documents related to your job things like that to prove that you're actually going to live here and that you have a reason for being here or at least that you have a Visa I'm not quite sure exactly what

documents you're supposed to send them I highly recommend checking that on the internet because I don't want to give out any uh false information I can't actually remember all the documents we

have to send but I know we had to send a passport or VISA and information about my boyfriend's job what's good is you don't actually need a guarantor for

apartments in Japan if you have one that's great in our case we had my boyfriend's Grandad who lives in Japan who was able to be our guarantor and we just had to give a little bit of

information about him and I think our real estate company called him to check that he was legit but if you don't have that you can just tell the real estate company that you don't have a guarantor

and in that case you're going to have to use a guarantor company I'm not quite sure how that Works um but it's basically just a company that's going to

be a guarantor instead of an actual person I think uh having a company guarantor does cost a little bit you might have to pay uh the company every

month or maybe it's just a fixed sum at the beginning of your lease I'm not quite sure I'm pretty sure the guarant has to be someone that lives in Japan and it probably also has to be someone

with the Japanese nationality once you've filled the different forms and you've given the different documents to the real estate company and given proof

of a guarant or a company guarant then in that case you're all done and you'll just have to basically get the keys of your apartment once you're in Japan and then when you get to Japan you're

basically just going to meet with the real estate agent and they're just going to make you sign a couple of documents uh they're going to make you pay the

first month's rent if not maybe the two first months of rent I can't remember and they're going to also make you pay the key money and the deposit also

there's usually a cleaning fee you're going to have to pay um when you get your apartment but it's not that expensive I think and then once you're in your apartment it's probably going to be unfurnished and you're going to want

to get your furniture what we did is we looked at the Ikea Japan website a few days before moving to Japan and um ordered the furniture we wanted and it

was actually delivered maybe the day we moved into our apartment or the next day a few things you're going to have to deal with when you have your apartment

is uh dealing with uh getting electricity water and uh TV but that is actually quite hard to explain now if you want I can make a whole other video about that I'm not even sure about

everything that happened cuz honestly I didn't deal with it myself uh my boyfriend and some of our Japanese friends um did that together but if you

want a video about that I can try to help you deal with that um but yeah just know that it's a whole set of procedures you're going to have to deal with when

you move into your apartment so yeah that's all for today's video I hope by now you have a little bit more information about what it's like to move to Japan how to find an apartment what

it's like um to find your apartment if you have more questions don't hesitate to ask them in the comments I usually answer every single comment so I really don't mind helping I can also try and

make a second video um about the things maybe I missed or if you have other specific questions but for now it's all for today so I'll see you very very soon

bye-bye [Music]