The Job Was Much Bigger Than the Bill

¥10,383 / $65

That’s what I spent clearing the last belongings from my former tenant’s house.

On a project that has involved months of renovation, ¥10,383 is a pretty small number.

But getting the job done was a lot more involved than that number suggests.

I had to buy the washing-machine recycling ticket in advance, wait a week because of the rain, rent a kei truck, load everything myself, and take the belongings to two different places because the municipal facility wouldn’t accept the washing machine.

At one point, I realized I’d forgotten the cash and had to make another trip.

None of those things cost much money.

They still took time.

The part that doesn't show up on the receipt

When we look at a property, it’s natural to think in yen.

Purchase price. Renovation. Taxes. Maintenance. Maybe property management if you live overseas.

Those are the numbers that go into the spreadsheet.

But there’s another part of ownership that is harder to put into a spreadsheet.

How much time does something take? Do you know who to call? Can you get it done when you’re only in Japan for a few weeks? Does one problem turn into another appointment, another trip, or another person you need to find?

The washing machine was a good example.

Most of the belongings could go to the municipal facility. The washing machine couldn’t. It followed a separate recycling route, and the ticket had to be purchased in advance.

Nothing about that was particularly expensive.

I just had to know.

And if I didn’t know, I had to find out.

This is part of owning the house

One thing I think is easy to underestimate when you’re buying a property from overseas is how much owning a house happens outside the house itself.

The property can look perfectly manageable.

Then something ordinary needs to be dealt with.

A broken appliance. A pile of unwanted furniture. A contractor who needs access. A local form. A repair that requires someone to come back another day.

The question isn’t always, “How much will this cost?”

Sometimes the better question is:

“What does it actually take to get this done?”

That’s a question I would ask before buying, especially if I wasn’t going to be living nearby.

Doing it yourself isn't automatically the answer

I chose to handle this cleanup myself partly because I wanted to understand the process and contribute some physical work.

After doing it, I can also tell you that hiring someone might have been easier.

I think there’s a useful distinction there.

Doing something yourself isn’t automatically smarter because it saves a service fee. Sometimes you do it yourself because you want to understand what’s involved.

Then, once you understand it, you can make a much better decision about what you want to handle yourself and what you’d rather pay someone else to do.

That matters even more if you’re going to own a house from overseas.

A few questions I'd ask before buying

If you’re looking at a property in Japan, I wouldn’t just ask what the house costs.

I’d also ask:

• Who will deal with ordinary problems when I’m not there?
• What local systems will I need to understand?
• Which jobs can I realistically handle myself?
• What will require someone on the ground?
• How much of my time will this property actually demand?

You won’t get a neat number from those questions.

That’s okay.

The ¥10,383 I spent on this cleanup tells you what the disposal cost was.

It doesn’t tell you about the week I waited for better weather, the trips, the physical work, or the effort of figuring out where everything needed to go.

That’s also part of owning a house.

If you want to see what that looked like in practice, I filmed the whole cleanup in the latest episode:

[WATCH Ep. 314: My Tenant Trashed My House 4]