Trouble at home
One of the most frustrating tasks of living in Japan is finding and keeping a place to live. Japanese land agents are reluctant to find apartments or houses for non Japanese. You may be the most upstanding, law abiding citizen that ever walked this fair earth but unfortunately others before you have muddied the water.
Non Japanese going home abruptly and leaving unpaid utility bills. Keeping apartments in damaged and dirty condition. Sub letting to total strangers. Hosting loud and long parties disturbing the all important ‘wa’ are all sins attributed to those damn long noses. Japanese do it too but in their case land agents have some recourse to the renter’s family members or employers. Not so with non Japanese who can up and leave for foreign fields seemingly at a moments notice.
Let’s say you do manage to find yourself an apartment and all of a sudden the landlord starts acting up. Maybe he wants to increase the rent unfairly, maybe he won’t fix the leaking toilet, maybe he wants his favorite brother in law to have your little piece of turf. He can make life difficult for you in many ways. What to do?
In all cities or towns you will find your local town hall or ward office. If you’ve lived in Japan for any length of time you’ve been there to get registered. Just about all Shiyakusho or Kuyakusho have a department setup specifically to arbitrate between renter and rentee. Go there and tell them your tale of woe. They will contact the land agent or land lord and find out what’s going on and try to help. You can even withhold paying your rent to the land lord and pay the Shiyakusho instead during the ‘negotiations’
Try it the next time you feel like taking an axe to your noisy neighbor.
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