Having a second house in Japan
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By Kim Ji-myung
How about having a lovely second house in a small town in Japan almost for free?
It sounded like a fairy tale when I first learned that one of my high school seniors spends half of her year in a second house near Nagoya, Japan. This retired couple in their seventies began enjoying their life in the small town of Komono, Miye Prefecture, several years ago.
They stay about two months at a time there, reading and writing. Of course, they enjoy a lot of walking and trekking in this calm mountain village with brooks and spas. As in many Japanese towns, there are lovely places to visit such as a museum and restaurants.
It sounds like a millionaire’s program! But it cost them almost nothing. House rent is 50,000 Korean won per month, which is about 50 dollars. To set up at the beginning, they picked a rice cooker, toaster, microwave oven, and some basic furniture at the community center free of charge.
The return flight from Seoul to Nagoya costs just about US$200 per person on a budget airliner. Then it is a bus and train ride to the village. They have packed their laptops and new books to read in their luggage for the two months they will stay there.
In fact, they don’t feel they are that far from Seoul as they have the internet over there. Moreover, she and her husband attend a weekly Rotary meeting together, which gives them a sense of camaraderie that spans the world.
“What we enjoy most about living in this village are the locals. There are not many children around, but when they see us in the street, they stop and bow, taking off their caps,” she said. It reminds her of her school days in the 1960s and 70s when teachers emphasized similar polite manners.
I almost decided to ask her to find a house near her neighborhood in Komono. It was easy to find a decent and cheap house as there were many for rent on the same block. But I woke up from my fantasy, realizing that I am not yet retired, nor can any of my family speak Japanese.
Living in an foreign land without knowing the language can be like hell. Some years back, my husband and I traveled around Japan for a few days in a chauffeured car, thanks to a relative. The driver did not know a word of English and we could not get him to understand our Japanese. I know the frustration of failed communication.
From an outsider’s point of view, the pleasure of owning a house in a Japanese town sounds attractive. But I realized that the other side of the coin is the daunting problem of empty houses that the Japanese countryside has been facing.
The recent report in The Japan Times warns about not only the diminishing and aging population, but also about possible “disappearing towns.”
“A quiet crisis looms in this town of Kanna in southern Gunma Prefecture, one that may foreshadow the fate of hundreds of other aging rural communities across the country,” said the article.
The town has 2,139 inhabitants and as of April 2015, 55 percent of them, or 1,186 were aged 65 and older. It is predicted the community will “vanish,” with few children being born and most young people moving away, according to the paper.
The article also cites that Nomura Research Institute forecasts that more than 8 million homes are already empty, and that number may reach 21.5 million by 2033, or about one-third of the nation's housing stock.
Besides the issue of demographic change and population concentration in urban areas, building practices and a preference among Japanese buyers for new homes is compounding the problems. Half of the Japanese houses across the country are wooden structures, with short lifespans.
Another reason for this is the tax system. Japan's tax office typically depreciates the value of dwellings to zero in about 20 years, as many Japanese homes are wooden and aren't built to last.
According to the Japanese tax law, wooden houses have no value after 22 years while concrete apartments depreciate to zero after 47 years. This causes a very low rate in the secondary housing market in Japan, compared to other countries.
Then how is Japan is coping with this problem?
The Japanese government announced in January 2016 that the total number of abandoned houses and apartments will be reduced to around 4 million or less by fiscal 2025.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism set up a new 10-year national housing plan, which includes this target.
Over the past decades, Korea has followed Japan with something like a 10 to 15 year time gap in experiencing similar economic and social problems.
An excess supply of apartments is also emerging in Korea, although we don’t have empty and dilapidated houses like Japan yet. Many Koreans in their 60s and 70s have recently moved to the countryside for their post-retirement lives.
Could it be a solution for Japan to invite Korean and Chinese seniors to come and live in those empty houses at low cost?
Taking lessons from Japan, we need to fix land use regulations and tax laws to suit the future requirements of the housing situation.
The writer is the chairwoman of the Korea Heritage Education Institute (K*Heritage). Her email address is Heritagekorea21@gmail.com.