Before complaining that your rental agreement offer is rejected because the property manager is a racist, have you ever thought why apartment owners tend to keep a distance from making rental agreement with those of you who come from outside of Japan?
The reason why the apartment owner didn’t want to rent you an apartment is because the apartment owner fears the risk caused by renting you a room
They are worried much more seriously about tenant screening than you imagine even though a person who desires to rent an apartment was Japanese. We Japanese even have more or less cases that our rental agreement offers are rejected if we don’t satisfy the conditions that the apartment owner showed
However, the cases that non-Japanese people are refused to move in is much more than the cases Japanese people are just as you say.
Why is that happened? Because apartment owners run risks as I said.
Contents
What kind of risks apartment owners take by renting you a room
The first risk is that legislative system based on rental contract protects the human rights of tenants. For example, in a case where a tenant rent has been overdue for a couple of months and it is time for an apartment owner to finally resort to force, muscling into a tenant’s room by making full use of authority of ownership and compelling a tenant to leave a room deserves guilt. See the following guilts down below.
- Muscling into a tenant’s room → Breaking and entering
- Squat continuously in a room in spite of being demanded to get out of there→ Unlawful trespass
- Giving a scream, using violence and threatening → intimidation, Blackmail
- Carrying furnitures out of a room without any permission from a tenant or breaking those→ Property damage
While a tenant who has fallen behind in rent is currently unemployed because of unavoidable circumstances in terms of conventional wisdom, demanding a tenant to displace from a room by force is legally to corresponds to” abuse of landlord’s authority”
To demand a tenant to displace from a room legally after some troubles, an apartment owner needs to take legal proceedings against a tenants through a court.
Moreover, eviction based on a lawsuit against tenant is allowed to be enforced after 5 months straight in the shortest after providing evacuation demand.
This 5 months until the enforcement of eviction is assumed the case that a tenant will not comply with evacuation demand from a court and still stay in a room continuously. This term gives time to tenant to prepare himself/ herself emotionally until leaving a room.
Which means, once an apartment owner accept a tenant to rent a room, even though he has some troubles with a tenant such as unpaid rent, he needs to have a tenant stay in a room for at least half a year if he doesn’t intend to move out.
Likewise, for the case that tenant has fallen behind in rent for a couple of months, if a tenant doen’t have sufficient solvency for compensatory damages, an apartment owner have the right to claim its payment to a tenant’s guarantors but it’s rare case that guarantors smoothly comply with the payment for compensatory damages.
Falling into such a situation, an apartment owner needs to take another legal proceedings against guarantors and tenants in order to recover losses.
These problems are primary reason that apartment owners avoid making rental contract with foreigners and there are a lot of cases in the past that they haven’t been able to avoid these risks. So these matters makes apartment owners unmotivated to rent you a room.
All rental agreements is basically assumed to be rented by Japanese
About 90% of rental properties in Japan is assumed to be rented by Japanese and its contract is also written in Japanese. Likewise, detailed regulations and conditions regulated by a contract with which you need to agree is of course written in Japanese
In addition, there are few real estate agent who speak good English enough to explain contract content to a person who desire to rent a room. So you are required to speak good Japanese enough to understand contract contents and explanation from a real estate agent.
Learn Japanese style rules
You may think an apartment owner’s circumstances is none of your business but probable reason that an apartment owner decide to resort to law to demand evacuation is because there is some sequence of events that bring him to loose credibility from you.
In the situation where it is very difficult to demand a tenant to evacuate after concluding a contract, the point of difference between the fact Japanese people are accepted and others are not accepted by an apartment owner or property manager is simply whether you understand Japanese unique unspoken rules other than conditions or regulations written on a contract.
The reason why there are so many apartment owners who are allergic to foreign people to rent a room is because people to whom they rented before repeated inconsiderate behavior and had troubles with the neighborhood.
We Japanese have a privacy zone that we don’t want anybody to infringe on. Speaking of “privacy”, it is defined as individual’s private life not being interfered by anyone according to a dictionary.
But Japanese privacy is a little bit different from this definition. To protect our privacy zone, we interfere mutually based on Japanese unique unspoken rules. This view is contradictory at a sight but what I want to insist on this is, even if you have your own way which shouldn’t be interfered by anyone, if your behavior is causing trouble to someone, your behavior should be interfered and stop doing it for someone who feels trouble to your behavior.
So in Japan, you cannot win perfect freedom in your room in Japan. For example, we want to protect our silent night, we want to protect our silent daytime, we want to protect our silent morning, we want to protect garbage separating rules, we want anybody to use cleanly common area. We want anybody to take care of household noises.
Individual’s privacy zones are keeping the exquisite balance by protecting unspoken rules mutually. This is pretty much common sense in Japan that everybody subconsciously practices every day in Japan.
While you have negative questions about this rule, it is very difficult for you to become familiar with the people in the community without any troubles.
What is unspoken rules?
There is no doubt that “Unspoken rules” is the one having formed uniquely in the specific community or region in Japan so the color of rules are a little bit difference from place to place. However, this rule is formed based on a certain way of thinking, which you can understand if you have been commonly educated from the society where you grew up.
Japanese unique rules and manners are generated by the feelings of “do not bother to others ” and “be more considerate to others”. This is a kind of concept that if you behave yourself as considering what other people think of towards what you’re doing, no trouble will be caused between you and others.
This concept has been propagated from Buddism and infiltrated Japanese mentality deelply, which is normally translated in English as “treat others the way you want to be treated”. But it does not show the essence of the concept because the essence of the concept is discussing the way you don’t want to be treated by others.
So changing it in my words, I would say like “don’t do things that you wouldn’t want others to do to you.” So this concept is totally aginst the stance ” you cannot help causing troubles to others in your life so others cannot help causing troubles to you too.”
In other words, a person who is bad at predicting people’s mind by using him/her imagination before taking action cause trouble with the neigborhood.
Of course, as the premise, you need to know what kind of things Japanese people don’t want you to do beforehand. If you get the following point, you can understand what Japanese people don’t want you to do. You cannot helped causing trouble to others in your life but you don’t need to deliberately cause trouble which you have room to judge in advance whether or not people bother just before doing it.
Noisy party breaking tranquility in a residential area is the typical example. All of sudden, large number of people come into a house in a residential area retaining a peaceful and quiet environment and scatter noises around the neighborhood.
Nobody will forgive the act of smashing peaceful tranquility regardless of the time zone no matter how much individual’s freedom is secured. If you invite your friend into your room to hold a party in Japan, police officer will knock your door in less than 30 minutes.
In that sence, the most important thing is that you need to constantly be conscience of living together with people in the community regardless of wheather you live in a house or an apartment.
I want you to imagine the following situations
*What do you think if your neighbor switch on music with full blast shaking your whole room at the moment you’re going to bed?
*What would you think if you were an apartment owner and you found a tenant who would move out of the terrible dirty room without recovering it into the original state?
*What would you think if you were a garbage collecting trader and witnessed a scene garbages put in a designated area are not separated although the Waste Management and Public Cleansing Law regulates the ways to throw away in accordance with the kind of the garbages?
*What would you think If your immoral neighbor started keeping a dog although you moved in this apartment which prohibited tenants from keeping an animal in a room because you were allergic to animals?
When you put yourself in each person’s shoes, you can understand the person’s circumstances and behave yourself to be more considerate to others. This is the basic concept of “unspoken rules”.
What do you imagine the following instead?
No laws regulate our party and it is none of your business anyway. If you want to sleep in tranquil silence, just plug your ear.
You complain that I am going to leave the dirty room behind though, renovating and cleaning up room and advertising for the next tenant are your tasks. It’s not my concern.
Does a law regulates us to separate garbages before bin-man comes to our house? Why do we need to? Because that is his task. He has got money from this.
I know my rental agreement indicated that keeping animals here were prohibited. But this contract didn’t say the kind of animals I cannot keep here so I decided to start keeping this dog. If you are allergic to my dog, you move out. This fault is originally from the property manager who didn’t add details about the animal regulation on the contract.
It is unacceptable stance in Japanese society to draw a line between your territory and others’ territories to segregate the difference of the role with self-centered interpretation and repeat excusing whatever suits you without imagining what people think of towards what you’re doing.
Your excuses and your interpretation will help nobody who are in trouble with your behavior but realizing and accepting your fault and being mindful to others can collect respects from others.
Conclusion
Japanese people subconsciously pay attention to others’ behaviors. If the behavior is quite unique for Japanese, that is the subject of taking warning and no matter how trivial rule to keep, if you break the rule, there is a possibility to be informed to a landlord and a property manager or maybe police unfortunately.
The force of enforcement rules made by a community is the same effectiveness as laws enforcement even though whether or not keeping the rule is basically left to residents’ conscience.
Individual neighbors become sometimes police officer to look if people break the rules. As soon as finding someone who is against the rules, some people complain it to real estate agent or police officer.
I know this is sometimes going to extremes but people are really sensitive about balancing harmony in a community.
But one thing I want you to realize is that basically Japanese society place an importance on being considerate to others mutually. There may be no freedom for you because the rules regulate your behavior. This is cultural difference between your country and Japan.
There is a reason no garbage scattering around the corner of roads and buildings in Japan.