Will Miss #331 - rent contract terms

No, this is not where I live, but someone else does.
When I lived in the U.S., I lived in circumstances in which I didn't have to pay rent in both Pennsylvania and California. Lucky me. I only started forking over a pile of cash to a landlord upon moving into my Tokyo apartment, and I was annoyed at the key money and renewal fees, but figure that was the cost of business here. I've since come to

Read More

Won't Miss #242 - useless maintenance fees

My landlord uses my maintenance fee to paint the metal guard leading to my building a fetching shade of battleship gray once every 3 or 4 years. Yeah, that costs about $1600 a year (which is what they get from our entire building in maintenance fees).
Maintenance fees for rented spaces are not uncommon in many countries and there is no reason why Japan should be any different. However,

Read More

Won't Miss #232 - low sofas

For reasons I'm sure that I can only guess at, the sofas in Japan seem to be built for munchkins. I'm not talking about the kind of furniture which has  you sitting essentially on the floor with a back support (of which there is plenty in Japan), but about Western-style sofas and sometimes cushy chairs that are just about 4-6 inches too low to be comfortable to sit on (because there is increased

Read More