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Comment by CobaltFire | Hacker News Reader

These don't have "minor" loopholes to renovation or occupation.

Typically these will require the use of licensed craftsmen who can restore the building if they are the older style, and almost all will require 5-10 year occupation agreements and/or agreements to productively farm the land it comes with.

Further, there are strict restrictions on ownership by foreigners, and most of the akiya bank properties aren't eligible last I looked. Those that are will have little to no internet, you will be an hour or more away from a decent sized city, and you'd better be fluent in Japanese because noone in these communities will be fluent in anything else. Even signage in many of these places is lacking the English foreigners that have traveled there will be used to.

For reference I've lived in Japan, have a Japanese spouse, and my children are dual citizens. We have investigated this going on 15 years now and it's just not something you'd want to take on, if you were able to, most of the time.

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Reminds me of an economics joke:

Two economists are walking down the street. One spots a $20 bill on the sidewalk. He bends to pick it up, but his companion stops him. "If there really were free money in the street," the companion says, "then somebody else would've picked it up before now."

I don't like the joke, tbh.

Because:

- In somewhat professional bussiness areas there is in general no free mony, but not because no one picked it up but because no one would place the money down/accidentally let it fall down without noticing.

- But in specific contexts there is "free money" it's just that "in general" this context doesn't apply to you, e.g. there if you are Japanese person who wants to spend the next decade farming in the country side this might be a awesome deal for you.

- But the "mony on the ground" analogy represents a "general but rare" situation, not a "very specific context", but you can find money on the ground and it's always worth picking it up, BUT you should check if there is a string attached to it (in that case literally ;=)).

So for me the joke sounds like what someone would try to argue in self defense when doing a bad deal to reason that all is fine because they are not "blind sighted economists".

In my environment (or more precise that of my dad) I have seen people going in that direction of "picking up free money" and making exactly this kind of jokes only to lose all the money they had maneuvering themself into a situation of basically falling into poverty not long before they normally could have gone into a nice reasonable wealthy retirement...

The humor in the joke comes from the mismatch between economic theory and reality.

Elaborate, because it sounds like a strawman.

I can agree with him the mismatch is what makes me dislike the joke as it can spawn bad ideas but also what can make it funny in a "dark humorous" way.

Me not liking the joke doesn't necessary mean it's not funny :=/ Like a joke which makes you both laugh and feel bad at the same time...

Perfect markets have no time lag, everything happens instantaneously. Thus it is always in the perfect state. The real world is not that convenient.

And? What does that have to do with the GP?

Your claim that economics does not consider time lag is ignorant nonsense.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/economics-econometrics-...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2343782

https://www.bis.org/publ/confp04l.pdf

It’s a joke.

If you get to the point where the $20 bills on the ground are being advertised online in other countries after being on the ground for years, then there is probably a massive catch.

Substitute $20 bills on the ground with $500 house in Japan and it’s obvious why this joke analogy doesn’t apply.

After laboriously explaining the logical errors in his companion's warning the first economist bends over the pick up the $20 bill again, only to find it quickly pulled away down the street on a fishing line being pulled by a couple of pranksters hidden around a corner.

Russian and Ukrainian are walking down the street. They both spots $100 bill. Russian picks it up and says: "Let's split like brothers!" and Ukrainian says: "No! Let's split 50:50"

Ah, another branch of the "Q: Which countries does Russia border? A: Whichever countries it wants to." jokes, I see :-D

I'm not Russian or Ukrainian, but I suspect this stems from the Stalin's treatment of occupied Ukraine in the early 1930's, where so much of their grain was shipped out of the country that 25% of Ukraine's population had died by 1933.

I don't know why you're getting downvoted. Often the core of comedy is pain. Knowing this puts the GP's joke in a darker, more grounded context.

Dark humor is like food. Not everyone gets it.

Meta humor

I suspect the reason is that in many western nations, it's becoming politically incorrect to paint socialism/communism in a negative light, despite the realities of the 20th century (and present atrocities being committed by the current mainland Chinese government).

You’re not referring to North America, which has spent the past century propagandizing against socialism, I presume?

Ha, classic. Works with pretty much any two nationalities.

Any two nationalities where one is typically bullying the other.

And yet somehow hedge funds exist to look for $20 bills in streets.

    The first economist picks up the bill anyway. It was a fake, and on the other side there's an ad for a strip club.
    Visit the strip club? (Y/N): _

There is no strict laws on foreign ownership, most of the time this falls under the idea that people/foreigners think owning land gives you a right to reside in the country. It does not.

Then not knowing procedures or having a Hanko is extremely detrimental to doing any paperwork in Japan.

Internet is not an issue, NTT will give you internet within 3 months, and there is always unlimited 4g/5g subscriptions.

Being in the Inaka is an experience itself, and you need to know the language. I agree.

Given that these require residency, there is a defacto restriction on ownership for those without the means to get a long term visa or residency permit.

I was not aware of NTT getting you internet; thanks for that info!

I seem to recall the wireless unlimited plans being rather expensive, but it's been a while.

Yes, Japanese government is it's own special issue. Hanko being an always fun issue for people!

I absolutely LOVE being in the Inaka. When my in-laws shut down their business they moved a little ways out, and we regularly visit their family friends in the mountains at their Onsen, which is a solid 40 minutes from anyone else at all.

Yep, as long as you have utilities, then you can get NTT Fiber.

It is much easier if it has a pre-existing phone line active, or sometime per-existing. Considering these properties were most likely occupied during the 1970's-1990's, a phone line most likely is present so it is on the "books" as serviceable.

If not, you get the phone line service first if you must.

Alternatively you can also look in TOWNPAGE for the address and see if it shows up.

NTT Flets coverage is really good since they'll replace PSTN by FTTH. Wireless unlimited (*with speed limit for heavy users) internet is now affordable thanks to 5G plan.

Parent comment said "restrictions" on ownership by foreigners, not "laws". The "restrictions" are semi-informal, barriers put in place as needed, in the form of a bunch of extra costly-to-satisfy red tape that isn't usually insisted upon, but which becomes a "must have" if you're someone the local Japanese-nationalist NIMBYs don't want living there.

(I would note that white people aren't likely to be hardest-hit by these "restrictions." Consider which ethnic groups an elderly Japanese person would remember directly fighting against in a previous war. Those same elderly Japanese people now form the inaka's governments, so AFAICT those same ethnic groups are most resisted.)

The second world war ended 75 years ago. There aren't that many people still alive who actually _fought directly_ in that war. Not even in notoriously long-lived Japan.

To clarify, by "directly fighting against" I meant "there were battles in which Japanese forces actually engaged [other country]'s forces" rather than just "Japan was in one big alliance and [other country] was in an opposed big alliance." That's the specific set of countries Japan holds higher levels of lingering xenophobia toward.

You're right, in that the people holding grudges today aren't likely to have directly experienced these events, but more likely are those who saw their fathers/brothers shipped to the front and never return, and so who hold a vague-but-strong grudge against whatever nebulous enemy the Japanese propaganda machine represented as being on the other side of those particular battles.

(Sadly, this can be a stronger foundation for xenophobia than actually having fought an enemy corps-a-corps, as these folks have never actually been exposed to the experience of seeing enemy soldiers hurting/dying, grieving, wishing they weren't at the front, and just generally being human.)

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/09/18/national/number...

You were saying? 2+ million 90 year olds in Japan. Maybe not old enough to have fought in the war, but definitely old enough to remember the bombings, for example.

> Those same elderly Japanese people now form the inaka's governments.

Not impossible, but quite unlikely.

As clarification, do you mean as Americans (a la WW2), or Chinese/Korean (a la Second Sino-Japanese War), or both?

The latter IIRC - up until recently, if you had 1/128th Korean ancestry or more, you were disenfranchised.

> up until recently, if you had 1/128th Korean ancestry or more, you were disenfranchised.

Do you have a reference for this?

My anecdata isn’t so specific, and supports the bias of the claim:

In the early 2000s I spent a cumulative ten months out so bicycling along Japan, attending graduate school, and being well-cared-for by strangers (I’m a male from the US with Western European ancestors). Several hosts who had ancestors from the mainland (Korea, China) said life in Japan was the more difficult for it.

Not specifically about 1/128, but there's plenty of reading about discrimination against masses of Koreans abducted and pressed into labor by Japan during WW2, basically ever since WW2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koreans_in_Japan#Integration_i...

https://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/koreans_in_japan

They don't speak to the particular law, but they are speaking of the patrilinear transmission of Japanese-ness. I'll keep digging - my source was a Zainichi family in Japan in 2004.

All I know for sure is in America anyone from any country can buy our land, and homes.

Absolutely no requirements besides an email, and money.

(I don't understand why their isn't more of an uproar, especially when the stock is so low to begin with, and housing is our biggest expense.)

> I don't understand why their isn't more of an uproar, especially when the stock is so low to begin with, and housing is our biggest expense.

When in doubt, think money.

It's always money.

We could do with some strict rules on foreign ownership here in the US. Seems questionable when all the housing in a neighborhood is owned by Chinese investment firms.

Probably the occupancy requirement would take care of the issue better.

In my neighborhood, many are occupied by a non-english speaking person, or small family.

(I'm not saying anything racist. I just know a few individuals whom shop at Safeway whom live in million plus homes that don't speak English. I feel we need more that a occupancy requirement. We need some hard requirements, a long with not allowing hedge funds to buy homes. This goes for American corporations too.)

Some hard requirements that go beyond occupancy rules and forbidding hedge funds from buying houses.

What are your suggestions?

So only US persons and companies can buy in the US right? That means Chinese investment firms can still buy but dude who is on some long-term visa can't.

Either way, real estate should be a free market. In the same vein you can buy any real estate you like, a seller should be able to sell to any entity that's giving him the better price.

I think real estate has proven to be somewhat of a market failure when so much is taken up by landlords and investment firms driving up prices without providing much or any value. The pandemic has only made this worse as big firms ride out the storms and buy even more land on the cheap to rent back out at an obscene profit.

My parents used to pay $1000 a month in rent for a property that I know the taxes on amounted to maybe $3000 a year, and the landlord rarely did anything else than pay that tax. Sent a bargain basement repair guy out a few times to fix the heater maybe. That's 300% profit for nothing, pure rent seeking behavior. That's not good for society.

More needs to be done to encourage individual home ownership and discourage people having no choice but to send a third to half of their income into a black hole every month.

> That's 300% profit for nothing, pure rent seeking behavior.

The landlord suddenly woke up with a house in his name? He might be in the red as house prices / interest rates varies from person to person. No one knows.

> That's not good for society.

Let's create laws to transfer wealth from certain individuals to other individuals that fits our profile. That's good for "society".

> The landlord suddenly woke up with a house in his name? He might be in the red as house prices / interest rates varies from person to person. No one knows.

Well, have you heard of that old fashioned thing called feudalism? You know, with a certain land owning class?

Now, the US didn't have feudalism, but let's say that due to family, someone in your distant past managed to get lucky and buy a ton of very valuable land. Or buy very cheap properties. At this point, your family is practically a lighter version of landed gentry.

You'd be making each year a ton more than the property cost to build 60-80-whatever years ago, property taxes generally aren't that high, if the location is good people will live there even if the living conditions are crap (for example from lack of maintenance), etc.

> Let's create laws to transfer wealth from certain individuals to other individuals that fits our profile. That's good for "society".

Ummm... that's how taxes work. We generally transfer wealth from "certain individuals" (generally the well off, that can afford to have some of their wealth transferred), to "other individuals that fit our profile" (generally poor people, those without housing, etc.).

And yeah, in case that was not a rhetorical comment, yes, it's good for society. It's literally how modern societies are built.

Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.

No, taxes were to be paid for war, then infrastructure. It's only recently that taxes have been diverted to social welfare. I think the jury is still early on whether that will build civilization or result in its demise.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Socialism_(Germany)

138 years and counting.

138 is too short. It’s only a few generations.

The average duration counted for a generation is about 20, maximum 30 years. So that would make it 6-8 generations.

If you consider the average lifespan during this period as being 60 years, it's more 2-3 generations.

By this logic, everything is experimental. Heck, we've had PCs for just 40 years, they're all just a big experiment, they might fail us soon.

Capitalism combined with the current money system creates a class of humans that cannot work and receive a living wage even if they wanted. It's the failures of capitalism and zero lower bound fiat that created the need of social welfare. The idea that social welfare is the cause of problems is completely absurd. It's just one of the hundreds of symptoms of a handful of core problems.

For example, Germany is conducting an import deficit policy, meaning it is exporting more to Greece than it is importing from Greece leading to money flowing out of Greece. The capitalist answer is that the entire Greek population should move to Germany because that is where the jobs are. It's not just Greece, it also applies to every country that is poorer than Greece. We then get to enjoy the benefit of blaming the other nation for committing band aid policies like social welfare. Haha, they are so stupid, right?

I can list more second or third order effects of a broken monetary system but you will probably think that the demise will stem from the symptoms.

> The capitalist answer is that the entire Greek population should move to Germany because that is where the jobs are.

No, the capitalist answer would be to lower wages and costs by devaluing the currency and thus bringing in investment and jobs but that is impossible because Greece joined the EU and Euro. Greece's elite benefits from the EU slush fund and their money's value protected by the Euro but it's not so good for the country as a whole.

You mean land owners extorting the productive work out of the people that live near or on the land of that land owner? He did nothing to create the earth and he did nothing to conquer it.

He can keep the building and usage rights to the land, but he should never own the land.

We need a progressive land tax. Meaning people with a single property receive a low tax bill and large corporations with lots of land receive a much higher tax. I personally do not think this is optimal but it's politically impossible to do the correct thing of charging everyone the fair amount.

At least this watered down version of a land value tax will hit large corporations. Property taxes apply to corporations and individuals equally, but there are more home owners so they will vote for a tax policy that benefits corporations.

Without associated rules around buying/selling then land tax becomes a way for the state to control the populace by threatening to kick them off their own land. It's why I favour Georgism[1] but I do have doubts as I don't know it's ever been put into practice anywhere.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

1. If I had it my way yes. We will revisit ownership laws in a few decades when most American citizens own their own homes, or at least the ones that want ownership.)

2. I would ban US corporations from buying homes as assets yesterday.

3. I would even put a limit on how many homes an individual could buy. Five sounds reasonable?

Yeah, messing with free markets. That has proved to work really well.

Yeah, not messing with free markets. That has proved to work really well.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Japan does not allow dual citizenship ... rather your children are young enough that they have not had to declare their ultimate citizenship?

My wife and I are naturalized US citizens. My country of origin allows me to retain dual citizenship, as does the US, but my wife was obliged to renounce her Japanese citizenship when she became a US citizen. It's annoying and unfortunate that she had to do so.

Japan does not consider someone an adult capable of making that decision until they are 20. Further, they won't force the decision (nor will the US) even after that point.

This leads to interesting issues. One such individual was in training with me but had to sit and wait 6 months until he turned 20 to renounce his Japanese citizenship so that he could obtain a clearance. This was 20 years ago, so things may have changed.

Anytime something seems too good to be true, it usually is.

A side topic: I also find English translation of Japanese locations and names often loses much meaning. It's almost unbearable to live in Japan and uses only English translation. For instance, Miyamasou does not mean a thing for English-speaking foreigners, but the corresponding Kanji or Chinese translation, 美山庄，means a ton.

I'm curious as to what the rules on foreign ownership are. Is it an outright ban, or can it be circumnavigated by having a Japanese lawyer draw up some sort of agreement where they are the owner, but the foreigner pays them $X a month, or something like that?

There are anti-dummy laws in Japan.

These require residence at the property, and if you can't get a residency permit (rather difficult for the amount of time needed by this agreement) then it's a defacto no foreigners rule for these homes.

Some estate agencies, who don't want to sell estate to a foreigner but would not openly say it, just let some other Japanese customer (who appeared suddenly) take the precedence and buy instead of you.

Source: unfortunately I can relate...

It doesn't even have to be that underhanded. Many rental agencies will ask house owners if they want foreigners or not, it's a simple tick box.

Yes but in this case it's to sell it not to rent it.

I can (almost) understand that you don't want foreigners in the apartment that you own, but in this case they don't even want to receive money -- the same amount -- from foreign buyers, and in this case it's clearly because they want to protect their village from "being invaded". Yes pretty ridiculous, but unfortunately very common.

Thanks. Out of curiosity, do you still live in Japan? Or, if not, what do you miss it the most?

I moved back last year in the middle of the pandemic.

Honestly, life in Japan is much more relaxed for me. I’m not as competitive, not as wrapped up in being successful. That’s a very individual thing, but that disconnect was my favorite thing. I know I was an outsider and I was fine with that.

Thanks. Were you in Tokyo, or elsewhere? I spent 3 months in Kyoto in 2020 (just at the beginning of the pandemic) and really liked it there. Would love to go back for a few more months in 2022, and possibly study some basic Japanese (I only learned some Hiragana so far)

How much have things changed in these 15 years? Are prices and regulation rising or falling?

It's been pretty static, honestly.

Shouldn't be a problem with Starlink, $100/month for 50-100Mbps.

You mean except for the part where isn't not available in Japan right now.

By now before Starlink becomes available and a flood of people jump on the opportunity - happening soon.

Arriving 2022 for Japan.

I know this is off-topic and not your fault in any way, but I'm tired of the "spousal perspective" on this site when it comes to East Asia. Somehow most of the East Asian perspectives we get here are partners of East Asian folks, despite East Asia having lots and lots of engineers.

I understand your perspective. However the solution is for those native to East Asia to post, not non natives to post less. I agree that more viewpoints is better, just wanted to point that

Does that make my perspective as someone who lived there invalid?

In this case the "spousal perspective" is that we aren't subject to many of these barriers and we STILL aren't purchasing one due to the remaining barriers and issues.

It most definitely does not, and as I said it's not your fault in any way. I would just appreciate more non-spousal perspectives, especially when it comes to things like Japanese nationalism where it helps to have a Japanese perspective.

Speak Japanese then.

もう分かりますけど？

You're going to have to take what you can get on an English-speaking forum. Move to a Japanese forum and you can find all the Japanese perspectives you want.

Has it occurred to you that on an English-speaking board, posters in non-English speaking countries might be more likely to be spouses/expats? Just as the same would be true for Japanese speaking spouses on a Japanese board?

HN tends to be US-centric, and there are not a ton of Japanese immigrant engineers in the US last I checked. Some but not all that many. Most of the immigration from Japan to the US occurred generations ago. Plenty of Chinese people who chime in on these threads though.

The level of English in Japan is very low generally. Among engineers it is higher but mainly for reading and writing, and even then it's generally not fluency or anywhere near good enough to read or write comments on HN and (probably) not attract downvotes, more of the level to be able to get just enough from technical documentation so that you can get on with your day.

That's not true for all but the vast majority. I don't mean any of that as a slight - my Japanese is terrible, you wouldn't find me on whatever Japan's version of HN is. (That the level is so low is perhaps a valid criticism of the education system or society in general but certainly not valid against any individual).

Source: I'm a partner of an East Asian folkperson, living in Japan, giving a spousal perspective whilst reading a site in my native language. I save struggling with a foreign language for study and finding the login button on Japanese websites (harder than it should be[1]), I can understand why a Japanese engineer would be doing similar.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25148942

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