Apartment in Japan: Things that foreign students must know
Posted on: Jul 11, 2011
Looking for an apartment in Japan can be complicated for foreign students because of the difference in renting system, the language limitation, and the way how Japanese view the foreigner itself.
In case of Okayama University, if you're coming alone and this is your first time to Japan, you can ask your professor to enroll you into Okayama University student dormitory. The monthly rent is cheap, it gives you a community consists of 100% foreigners to start with, and more importantly it gives you time to prepare yourself before actually involved with the Japanese community. Unfortunately, when I wrote this article, there is still no room for family in that student dormitory.
Soon or later, the day when you must look for a common apartment is when the pain start. Actually there are several housing companies that provides a furnished apartment with renting system commonly practiced by the earthlings outside of Japan. But apartment of this kind is usually expensive and may cost too much for those who want to stay in long period. On the other hand, the system done by common apartment also requires you to pay a lot of cash in front too. The so-called key money is perfectly linear with the monthly rent, as I will explain below. Extremely cheap apartments is not always a good choice, particularly if the building is old and has poor insulation that makes it hard to get warm during winter and you have to spend more energy (and money) to get a proper temperature, or it may have no individual toilet and kitchen as both are located outside of rooms and shared by all tenants. In addition to yachin (monthly rents), some apartment may request for another fee such as environment cleaning fee, common use of utilities, etc. This fee is usually shown explicitly on flyer or contract, so make sure you notice it when you're looking for a cheap apartment.
If you are planning to look for a common apartment in Japan, here are a few things that can serve as a knowledge base before you start. This is based on my experience in Okayama, but I believe in general it applies to other region too.
1. Key Money: Reikin, Shikikin, Tesuuryou
These are the prime reason why you need to prepare a lot of money before renting an apartment in Japan. Reikin is given as a gift to the ooyasan (landlord / owner). The amount is vary, but usually it is equal to one month rent. Shikikin is a deposit money which, I think, will stop you from disappearing suddenly without paying for this-and-that. The amount of shikikin can be 1 ~ 4 times of monthly rent, and maybe higher since you're a foreigner. At the end of your stay, you can have a portion of shikikin refunded to you, but hardly 100% because shikikin is also used to repair the house damage, or at least for cleaning fee. If the room condition is so tragic before you leave, chance that the shikikin is not enough to cover the repair cost and you will be charged with additional sum to cover the rest. So make sure always to keep the room in a good shape during your stay. Tesuuryou is a service fee that must be paid to fudousan (housing agency). The amount starts from one month rent. I found some people can make a deal with ooyasan directly, and thus bypassing the fudousan. Given such multiplication factors, added with the rent for the first month, most likely that you need to pay 4 or 5 times of monthly rent before even starting to use the room. I heard that the international department of Okayama University can give a loan to foreign students who need to rent an apartment for the first time.
2. Guarantor
I think all apartments require you to have a guarantor. Foreign students usually have their professor to be the guarantor. After all, in Japan, once a professor accept a foreign student, it is the professor responsibility to look for a proper housing to stay. Strangely, I found that some professors refuse to act as a guarantor. Maybe the professor doesn't want to take a risk, but still I consider that the root of problem clearly lies on the fact that such professor does not trust the student. If this is the case, you can try to consult with the university office that handles foreign students and they may look for someone who can act as a guarantor.
3. Staying period
Most of apartment requires you to stay for a certain minimum period. Unable to do so after the contract is made may cause a penalty. The penalty can cost one month rent. If you plan to stay less than one year, make sure that you discussed it with fudousan or ooyasan. If you're staying for only three months or less, consider looking for a furnished apartment.
4. Fire insurance
Most of fudousan or ooyasan require you to have an insurance to protect you and the room from fire or other disasters. Some fudousan may offer such insurance from an affiliate company, but mostly you're free to choose any insurance company. Several years ago I was told by university co-op that they have such kind of insurance with low price (about half price of common insurance company), so you can try to ask university co-op first.
5. Room equipments
Common apartments do not come with furniture, but some provides minimal equipment such as air-conditioner, gas stove, common washing machine, or even internet connection. You should include such thing in your calculation. There is no point to have even a slightly cheaper apartment if you must pay a lot to buy an expensive machineries such as air-conditioner. Make sure that you personally look the room condition before signing any contract.
6. Type of gas
There are several kinds of gas available. If you already got a stove or gas-heater, you need to check if those stuffs use the same type of gas that is running on the apartment that you want. Two most common type of gases are toshi-gas, and LP gas. The LP gas is commonly stored in a big tank that you can see at the backside of a typically old apartment. LP gas is generally more expensive than toshi-gas, so you may want to take this as a consideration.
7. Understanding the room size and type
The room size is commonly expressed with a unit called jyou （畳） based on the standard size of tatami mat. I found that six jyou (6畳) is the most common size for a room. The number of rooms is expressed with a number followed by letter D, L, or K, which respectively means dining, living, and kitchen. So 1K means you get one room with a kitchen, and 4LDK means you get four rooms, a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen. 1K is common for single, and 2DK is common for family. The room type generally either washiki (Japanese style) or youshiki (Western style). Washiki room has tatami mat flooring, while youshiki room has solid flooring. Toilet type can also either washiki or youshiki.
8. Neighbours
Neighbours in Japan are very powerful to determine whether you can stay long in that apartment or not. If your room-neighbours are all foreigners, you are safe. If your room-neighbours are mostly Japanese then beware and be cautious. Most of Japanese are not used with foreigners, let alone to understand the differences in culture, so their prejudice may be negative from the start. There are three general things that you need to keep in mind: First, the Japanese doesn't like to hear any noise, and their decibel limit of tolerance is very low, especially if they're single or if they have no children. It's better to keep the speaker inside its box and purchase a headphone. Second, keep clean, especially if your neighbours are living with family. Make sure you know when and how to put the garbage. For example, if you put a broken television in a plastic bag and left it at garbage station, the television will stay there forever and you may displease the Japanese who also use that garbage station. Third, and this is the worst, when your Japanese neighbours felt disturbed, most likely that they will NOT directly confront you. Instead, they will tell the fudousan or ooyasan to deal with you while remain anonymous. If you are out-of-control then the fudousan may contact your professor which may then damage your reputation.
9. Don't forget that you are gaijin!
Last thing, since you're in Japan, keep in mind that not all apartments accept foreign student or simply foreigner. Some apartment flyers even explicitly mentioned that they don't want foreign student (click the image below to see what I mean, and notice that it shows ALL flyers on the board located inside a university). No need to stage a protest, just find an apartment that originally welcome foreign student. If an apartment is open for foreign students, that means the owner is trying to trust the foreigner and in return you should honor the trust.
Click image above to enlarge (full size: 1.2 Mb)
Some common terms related to apartment
- Ooyasan（大家さん）: landlord / owner
- Fudousan（不動産）: real-estate agency
- Kasaihoken（火災保険）: fire insurance
- Reikin（礼金）: gift money
- Shikikin（敷金）: deposit money
- Tesuuryou（手数料）: service fee
- Keiyakusho（契約書）: contract document
- Hoshounin（保証人）: guarantor
- Yachin（家賃）: apartment rent
- Kinjyo（近所）: neighbourhood
- Wa（和）: Japanese
- You（洋）: Western
In DSLR, Shall We Trust?
Posted on: Apr 18, 2011
"Camera is an expensive hobby," said my father to me. I remember it was in 1996, and a film-roll was worth of ten meals in Indonesia. Of course that excludes the additional cost to develop the film. The moment when I got the film, I know that there are only 36 shots before another set of meal-tickets need to be sacrificed for taking the next photo. I wondered if the words of my father will be a long lasting.
Here I am now, the age of digital. A wide of selection is on the table, range from the expensive full-frame DSLR, APS-C/H, micro four-third, prosumer, point-and-shoot, to the cheapy 'camera' attached inside the hole of a mobile phone which I hardly consider as a real camera. For certain, I don't need to exchange my meal-ticket with film-roll anymore. Stay away from the DSLR and everything related to camera looked so cheap. I thought the words of my old man are no longer valid in this era.
I once had a 5MP point-and-shoot camera, and it was superb. It helped me to capture a lot of precious moments that I spent with my wife. But no matter how great the moment was, the results were just a plain and typical image. Before you start to argue using the magical phrase, "The most important is the man behind the gun," try to think why don't professional photo-journalists and wedding photographers use pocket-camera or mobile-phone camera for their work?
Aside from the obviously small sensor-size and poor lens, the most important thing that is missing from a pocket camera is the degree of freedom, in trade for its simplicity. But freedom most likely, if not always, comes with more complexity and photography is not an exception. Freedom in here means you can put your hands on various variables, such as lens, focal length, aperture, flash power, shutter speed, etc., and combine them to unleash your creativity. Sounds complex? Yes it is. I never said photography is easy. But let's say you have an interest in operating system (OS), for example, you won't be happy to stay with its standard load, right? You may want to hack the Windows to lift its limitation, or trade the simplicity of Windows with a freedom in Linux. If you have a deep interest in iPhone, you may want to jailbreak it so that you can do as free as your imagination can go. Things will surely become complex, but you know that you are happy with the freedom that you get. I feel the same way for photography. More freedom is needed to feed our creative-side, and the complexity is a mere challenge. Like always, once you tame the complexity, invaluable knowledges will be your reward.
Like most people, I use my camera mostly for capturing a moment. Many moments happen only once in a life time, and that makes them extremely precious. When my daughters came to this world, I knew that there would be a lot of wonderful time to share with them. As they grow up, I won't be able to repeat the moments with their younger faces anymore. Photography is a unique field. Even though you can get a great composition with your mobile phone camera, you won't get a sharp, wide-gamut, and noise-free image. It is the same as if you watch the new Transformer movie with a black-and-white TV produced in 1950s. The actual image is great, but all you get is just a noisy and dull images because the TV cannot do more. Actually low-end camera can also produce a decent image, but at a rare situation. Given such low probability, entrusting our moment to be captured with such camera is no different to a gambling. I'm not good at gambling, so what I want to do is to capture every moment as perfect as possible, and that has to be done with the best technology at that time which I can handle and afford.
The downside is, it turns out that the words of my father are still valid after all.
Misha (3 years 0 month) and Eri (0 year 7 months)
f2.0 1/50s ISO200 (EF 50mm f1.8 II)
Misha (2 years 1 month)
f6.3 1/60s ISO400 (EF-S 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS USM)
Photos on this article: © All rights reserved.
Any use of the photos without the permission from the owner is in violation of copyright.
Is Okayama University Mediocre?
Posted on: Jul 6, 2008
I was told by several foreign students that Okayama University is low-rank with mediocre publication, while many other universities in Japan have better publication. Some are even referring to a certain ranking system, which I didn't ask what kind of criteria was used to rank. Interestingly, they were student of Okayama University, not an outsider. Really, I could simply pretend nothing happened because I doubt any of them has a real competence to spit such judgement out.
But let's get straight with the title. At an instant sight the answer may be yes, but the fact is it doesn't even half true.
There are seven imperial Universities in Japan and they have long history which of course have made glorious reputation. Unfortunately Okayama is not one among them. According to an associate professor, based on research fund received by University in Japan, Okayama University stand in 13th position, which means other than imperial universities Okayama university is inferior only to five universities.
That's the general thing. What I want to emphasize is that since Okayama University is a research university then judgement should be based on the research. When we are talking about research, then you have to look at the laboratory, not the university in overall, as University has a strong point in certain field. Shortly, judge by looking their individual laboratory.
Let me get one small example: my current laboratory. When I wrote this, the boss is 52 years young, and the associate is 40 years young. Both of them are used to publish their work in Nature, a journal whose impact factor is 27, the rest of publication can be found in ACS publication whose impact factor can't be underestimated too. Then what kind of publication else can you expect?
In case of paper test, this is quite amusing. As you may already know, University is far from being a magic box which transform idiot student to be a genius one. University with long history and reputation of course naturally invites many students to apply and they can freely select the best of the best among them and discard the others to less famous university. If you, ryuugakusei, are looking for a fame, then there is no point to choose Okayama University because it is meaningless to boast "I'm an alumnus of Okayama University" in front of alumnus of imperial university no matter how good your publication is.
When I heard from those who regret that they are studying in a University which they think mediocre, I was wondering, "You guys can use internet and get information of a laboratory and its publication, yet why did you choose a university or a laboratory which you think mediocre from its publication? And what is the point of complaining what you have chosen? Second, you are a free man, why don't you just quit and move to 'elite' university?"
Nihongo ojyouzu desu ne
Posted on: Jul 5, 2008
Most foreigner who came to Japan with little knowledge or skill in Japanese language will certainly have experience of being praised by Japanese with this sentence.
When the Japanese people start to point this phrase to you, it actually indicates that your Japanese is very bad. I said "indicates" and that doesn't mean the Japanese saying such thing on ill purpose. Really the Japanese doesn't want to let you down and probably want to motivate you also. This is a part of their habit called oseji (flattering), in which almost all Japanese are expert (read my article about oseji in this page).
I think the Japanese are actually not lying either because maybe they have not finished the words. While "Nihongo ojyouzu desu ne ..." is the first part of the sentence, the later part: "..., Nihongo zenzen shabettenai gaijin ni kurabetara" may be kept in their mind. So it is not necessary a lie.
If your Japanese is really cool, you will notice that they keep talking normally to you without praising your Japanese skill (either they forget or they feel it is unnecessary). Your Japanese is even better when the Japanese said "kare/kanojo, nihongo ojyozu desu ne" in low-voice to their Japanese friend, instead to you.
Those who don't get disturbed with this oseji can happily enjoy the daily life. But for those who become irritated and want to get rid of that repetitive words from their ears, the only way out is to master Japanese language up to intermediate-level where the praising frequency will slowly decrease. If you translate "Osuki na dake tabetekudasai" as "Please eat only what you like" then prepare to be praised by the Japanese with "Nihongo ojyouzu desu ne", which means your Japanese is bad.