Apartment hunting in Tokyo

Isn't she cute? A snake pastry for 2013!

Apartment hunting.

It's a pain in the butt. Granted, apartment hunting is pretty stressful and time-consuming anywhere. Or so I imagine. I've only done it in two places actually. But let me tell you, apartment hunting in Tokyo as a foreigner can be quite discouraging. Luckily I had a lot of help and all of the agents I met were really nice. (They wanted some money, so of course they were, right?) But that doesn't mean it's been an easy or fun process.

Apparently January and February are the peak seasons so there are a lot of open places out there. However there's also a lot of competition. Let me explain how the process goes if you go through one of the big agents. There's a giant database of available apartments and you look through that database with an agent. Then you pick a million (or so it felt like) possible options, the agent calls to see if they're available, and then you go look at them. Basically it goes from thousands of options, down to a hundred or so (after you specify what your looking for), then a couple dozen (that you might possibly like), then maybe five (after calling the management companies, because owners don't manage their properties). Then if you like a place and decide you want it, you submit an application, and then after a week you find out if you can get the place or not.

Now as I said, this is the peak season, so I can't tell you how many times the agent and I heard "Sorry, it's already taken." Okay no big deal. Disappointing, but that's competition for you. The thing that really frustrated me was "外国人？ダメです (Foreigner? No"). I was prepared for this, so it was no surprise. But it was still tiring. The process was exhausting enough to begin with without adding the  discrimination element. Anyway.

I had just about given up and decided to settle on a place that was in an interesting location but that's it, when my current landlord and good friend offered to help me out by taking me to a small local agent in the area I wanted to move to. Let me tell you, this is the way to go! It might have just been a lucky day, but we found a place and got approved for it within two hours. I'd been searching for three weeks with three different apartment agents! And all it took was popping into a random local place and two hours with the gentleman there. The system was completely different. The company is small and just deals with a few places. They contacted the owner directly to ask if I could live there and aside from the wonder saying that she would contact my friend if there were problems instead of me, there was no problem whatsoever. I just need to transfer some money before I move in. (Oh, another plus side to this local company - it gonna end up more than $1000 less to move in, so I can buy some appliances since Japanese apartments are void of any of the necessary ones.)

So, my main goal of the first part of the year seems to be nearly accomplished. There's still a chance that something is going to go wrong, but I'm optimistic.