Signed & Sealed
We signed the lease for our new place today which is good news. Normally renting a house or apartment in Japan can be quite an involved process, but this time it was really easy. When you rent a place in Japan you need to have someone act as a guarantor in the “one in ten thousand” chance that something goes wrong. For us, we normally use Chooch’s parents for this (you can use anyone really, providing the other party to the agreement is satisfied with the guarantor). This usually involves both parties signing (well affixing their name stamps or hanko to be more precise) the agreement - then the copies are sent to the guarantor for her or his stamp. Today however, they were quite happy for us to use the same stamp for both us and the guarantor which saved us a bit of time.
We met with both the landlord and the real estate agent today. Two very polite semi-retired gentlemen they were too. Our landlord is quite a history buff, and head of the local history society. He told us quite a bit about the connection between Akita and Ibaraki during the Tokugawa shogunate. They have quite strong accents which are noticeably different from the Akita dialect, at least to my ear so it was a little tricky keeping up with the conversation.
After signing the contract, and getting the keys, we went round to the house. I have been there before but today was my first time to have a look inside. It is quite spacious for a Japanese house - with a large 8 tatami mat room which we will use as a living room, and two smaller 6 mat rooms - one for sleeping and the other we will use as an office/study. The kitchen is quite large too. It will be nice to be able to cook on gas again. Our current place has one electric ring right next to the sink which makes cooking quite a mission.
Looking around the house has got Chooch into decorating mode - very dangerous.
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