The Hard Sell

When you look around for some land upon which to build a house in Japan, it is pretty easy because the information comes to you. Especially if you live in an apartment – we’ve got advertisements and fliers in our mailbox every week about places to live. It is fine to look through catalogs, look at fliers, look on the internet, but the minute you walk into a realtor’s office, your life changes forever.

As is typical in Japan, they seat you, serve you drinks (non-alcoholic, unfortunately) and then have you fill out a simple survey. The survey involves your contact information, how much money you make a year (which Japanese people do not consider private), and where you want to live and how much you expect to take out as a loan.

Then, some dude comes over and reads through the survey, asks some questions, and starts to try to build a rapport with you. When a foreigner is on the scene, they are really nervous – can he speak Japanese? Does he understand what I will be saying? Should I look at him when I talk or at the wife? Actually, are they even married for that matter?

The company will then pull together all the properties that they have in the area that might match your needs, and then talk them over with you. They’ll even chauffeur you around to each property and show you first hand what they are like – the benefits and drawbacks, etc.

And then they drop you off at your house. Thanks very much, we’ll be in touch, bye bye.

Do this a couple of times, and you develop quite a fan club. We get calls all the time now from visiting just two real estate offices. The hard sell is popular in Japan because of the tendency for Japanese people to not say “no”. It doesn’t work on us, however.

We are looking at two properties that we like, both in Okubo. The are almost identical, except for location. Both are about the same distance from all the important landmarks in town, and price and size are almost exactly the same as well. This weekend Kuniko and I will brave the real estate offices once again to get into more detail. This will be a long and stressful process, one mainly experienced from the outside as my Japanese skills are no match for the terminology and lingo in the real estate industry. To be continued…


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