Today I finally was able to go look at some apartments. Huzzah!
As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve decided to go with a company called UR, because they are more flexible for people in my situation who may not be officially working in Japan, since they let you pay the rent in advance. Unfortunately, this limits the places I can look at pretty significantly.
I looked at their online listings and tried to narrow it down by the following criteria:
- I want something in the Sakai area, as its a short ride to Namba, one of the larger stations in Osaka, but far enough away that the prices aren’t crazy.
- Keep it under 70,000 yen ($800) per month. I’d rather not be paying more than I was in Canada if I can help it
- Proximity to the nearest station
- Size: I was after something like a 2LDK (2 bed, and a living/dining/kitchen area), but ended up looking at 2DKs, since 2LDKs weren’t available in this area
After talking with my real-estate agent, we decided to take a look at 3 different buildings.
In the first building, we looked a 3 different rooms. This is when I learned a lot about older Japanese apartment buildings. Though these rooms were in good shape and fairly clean, none of them had any of the following: refrigerator, oven or stove, washing machine, or air conditioner. Not only that, only one of the rooms had hot water anywhere except the shower (sinks only had cold water, etc). I found this last fact a bit surprising.
Every one of the rooms I saw today had the exact same layout, with very little variation. A small entrance area with a closet, that is directly connected to the kitchen area, then on one side of the kitchen was the toilet and bathroom. And the 2 bedrooms were side by side, facing the outside of the building.
The second room I saw is the one with hot water, and a place for a washing machine. This was just renovated and that was reflected in the price, as it was about 175% of the price of the cheaper ones. However, this one had new flooring, new bathtub and kitchen, and was in pristine shape. As I went to go look at other rooms, and realized that they were all very similar, I made up my mind to go with the renovated one. The dirt-cheap rent on some of the others was appealing, but ultimately, I think I’d like a proper water heater and the ability to wash my clothes outside of a laundromat.
Having decided that, now I have to talk to some people about arranging payment and writing a contract. Hopefully this will all get settled tomorrow. Hopefully I will be moving soon!
Gallery (including a couple videos) available here
Hey Garrett – looks like you’re onto something with this place. Congrats.
Curious – is the rent comparable to Canada for similar sized apartments? I was under the impression unless people want to live specifically in Tokyo that the apartment rentals would be fairly affordable?
It’s actually cheaper than Canada, I think. Some of the places I was looking at today were $400/month + utilities, but they are very barebones and have no appliances at all. However, these were all 2 bedroom apartments which were about 45 m^2. I chose something that’s a little nicer, since I’ll be using my place as an office as well. This is also about 10 minutes away, by train, from one of the major city centers, and it only gets cheaper the further you get from large cities.