Affordable Renting Advice

[yellowlightman]

Apologies for not posting this in the Tatami subforum, but I figure it might get a bit more traffic in here.

I'll be arriving in Japan in a couple of days, staying for a year studying Japanese. Don't have a ton of money, so I might have to go the gaijin house route, but I'd really prefer living conditions with more permanent house mates. I've been looking through a number of classified pages for room share listings, but they don't seem too common and they go fast. Is renting out rooms pretty uncommon?

Anyways, worse comes to worse I'll get a room in a gaijin house, but if anyone can suggest some good methods for tracking down room shares, I'd be very appreciative. For that matter, any recommendations or advice concerning guest houses would be great too, as there's so many it's a bit hard to narrow it down.

Thanks

[bolt_krank]

I knew quite a lot of FGs sharing places - but I found the practice to be quite rare amongst Japanese.

Which part of Japan will you be going to ? And do you know anyone there ?
It might be good to get a monthly mansion (no bond, etc and easy to get into) and while you're there look around for somewhere else to live.

If you want to rent someone - it'll help to bring a Japanese person with you to the real estate agent, and that's not just for language reasons.

If you're going to be in Tokyo though, I'm not too sure renting out a place will be a good idea if you're only there for a year. The bonds, key money etc. will take a big chunk out of your pocket and a lot may not come back.

[Visitor K]

hey there, cheap rent is pretty damn hard to find in japan, but it is possible.. probably you will need to get into a place first and hunt around then.. as bolt krank mentioned, sharing a place is pretty uncommon for japanese people, but due to need of cheaper rent, many younger people are doing it these days, and probably for that reason bigger cities would be easier to find a 'room share' as they say..
im sure my story is pretty rare, but i made some friends with japanese guys (through playing music) that had an empty attic in their place which they let me rent out for ichi-man a month (around $100) .. this was the cheapest rent i have ever paid in my life and way cheaper than i ever heard anybody else paying, but cheap rent is possible if you hunt around enough and are willing to rough it (in my case, i was in an unfinished attic with no A/C or heating.. pretty rough, but fine for a single, broke pile of shit such as myself..)
as bolt krank also mentioned, the key money and all the money you have to put down (most 'deposits' are not refundable) wouldnt really make finding your own place for just a year worth it, which is another reason finding someone who already has a room for you to move into would probably be your best bet for real cheap rent.

i seem to remember some friends of mine talking about a website set up to help people find 'room share' deals.. anybody heard anything about that?

good luck, tokyo is an expensive place, but it is still pretty easy to keep it reasonable once you know your way around...

[omae mona]

Apologies for not posting this in the Tatami subforum, but I figure it might get a bit more traffic in here.

Anyways, worse comes to worse I'll get a room in a gaijin house, but if anyone can suggest some good methods for tracking down room shares, I'd be very appreciative.

How about taking out a classified ad and putting it in the "Help Wanted" section of a newspaper or magazine? You'll get more traffic than putting it in the "Place Wanted" section. A lot more people are looking for jobs than homes, and you can trick them into reading your ad by posting it in the totally wrong place. They will be pleasantly surprised, and not at all irritated.