Some Notes on Moving to Japan – Satoshi Manor

1. 1. It took me a while to figure out that Amazon.jp works well here but you need a new Prime membership if you want the free shipping. Once I cancelled my U.S. Prime and changed to Japan, life suddenly got a lot easier. I don’t plan on having a car so being able to have things like a mattress delivered to my house is a huge win. My bedroom, by the way, is starting to come together.
  2. Disposing of garbage is one of the hardest things for me to figure out in Japan. Household trash needs to be sorted to burnable, non-burnable, recyclable, paper, and plastic. The first two categories require special bags and may require a fee from a neighborhood association (but I’m not sure). Large items need to have a special ticket purchased at the municipality and there is no public dump or disposal site. You can’t simply fill up hefty bags because there is nowhere to take them or put them. There are specific days for specific kinds of rubbish. They don’t necessarily repeat (like Monday for recycling, Tuesday for household trash etc)
    
    I’ve filled my shed with everything that was in the house that wasn’t useful or salvageable (futons and blankets with heavy mold/mildew, old plastic jugs, excessive pots and pans, stinky carpets etc) and will have a guy come and look at it to give me an estimate to haul it away. I don’t think there are junk sales, yard sales, or charity shops here – or much of this could go that way.
    
    Additionally, if you are out and buy food or drink and then go somewhere nice like a park to consume it – there are no rubbish bins. Often you can find recycle bins next to vending machines or rubbish bins in convenience stores – but not always. Walking and drinking or eating is considered bad form. But if you end up with rubbish, you need to carry it home.
    
    If the USA had a system like this – there would be garbage dumped on every spare lot and the streets and parks would be littered with trash – but in Japan, you are hard pressed to find litter – I mean, I’m sure you can find it, but it’s not common.
  3. I’ve yet to find a very good way to connect with other expats or travelers. The Otaru Facebook group has been the best source but old favorites like Lonely Planet Thorntree (closed), Couchsurfing (no one there), Meetup.com (closest meetups in Sapporo), and other places where I used to meet up with travelers and expats no longer seem to work. There aren’t really blogs (like this one) any more. I probably need to go to Youtube more. Here are a few more pictures from rooms in my house that have become more usable:
    
    Living Room, Guest Bedroom, and Kitchen
  4. I’ve been making videos and sharing them through Substack – you can find them at https://vagobond.substack.com and they should also be posting to https://www.youtube.com/@vagobondmedia
  5. Japanese is hard to learn, but I’m getting better. It’s not as hard as Arabic.
  6. At the moment, my house in Japan has cost about 11 months of Honolulu rent for a Studio Apartment. That includes my purchases of furniture, replacement of the stove, boiler, and furnace, and the cost of the house plus taxes, commissions, and fees. So if I live here for a year (not paying rent in Honolulu) , the house has essentially paid for itself with the rent I would have paid in Honolulu.
  7. It’s some work to share all of this, but I hope you are enjoying it. If so, please share the two links above (and like them). Thank you.