Or maybe he's not, because the AI is handling it all.

Indeed. It wasn’t ideal losing out on the first two houses, due to sending the wrong information multiple times, but I sleep so well knowing that I didn’t make the process even slightly easier by using an AI agent.

Haha thanks for asking! A couple reasons - first and foremost, Japan is just awesome lol. I have a personal connection that's prominent in the fact that my wife is Japanese, but beyond that, there's a confluence of universally applicable reasons why buying a house in Japan is kind of an insane proposition:

Homes are insanely cheap and get massively devalued over timeframes that would be mindboggling to Americans. In SF, I live in a literally 110 year old home that's clearly breaking down in multiple dimensions and yet just keeps inexorably appreciating year over year and is now worth something like $2.5 million for a 2200 sqft place.

In Kyoto, the top contender we're looking at is an 832 sqft unit that was build in the 80s and newly renovated in the past few years and is...9.8 million JPY, aka $62,000. Literally less than a year of rent in my SF place can buy the Kyoto home outright lol.

Incredibly conveniently located, 6 minutes walking from Ogura station, and a ~20-25 minute ride from there to the heart of Kyoto - one of the most beautiful and iconic cities in the world, and you can get an amazing home outright for $62k there?

The exchange rate from USD to JPY makes this especially compelling right now, being at a mind-boggling high for the USD that, adjusted for inflation, makes the exchange rate almost the best it's been in half a century.

My wife and I also happen to get free flights so it's super easy for us to take a direct flight every month from SFO-KIX, which is what we're planning to do - basically spending a ~week here every month.

Japan as it stands right now is hands down the clear pareto frontier in terms of cost and quality of life - no other developed country comes close in terms of just how insanely affordable it is (a nice sit down meal literally costs ~$5-10 a person, especially with insane lunch deals at izakayas and the like - I've eaten sit down soba/udon meals that are 500 yen each, or literally ~$3, tax and tip included), and I'd argue no other developed country also comes close in terms of how nice life is, period, not even adjusting for price. The crime rate is literally nonexistent, everything is wildly clean, the public transit is unrivaled, the food is some of the best in the world if not the actual best, the culture is also world class, the heritage the same, the fashion the same, etc etc - basically everything is just better about Japan lmao.

Highly recommend everyone look into it if you haven't!

> Highly recommend everyone look into it if you haven't!

I would absolutely do this, but if you're not married to a Japanese person it's basically impossible right?

Shockingly it's not! It's actually incredibly easy for foreigners to own property in Japan, and it's actually so established that we're buying the property in my name as a US citizen rather than in my wife's name as a Japanese citizen, for a few reasons that I won't get into here, but suffice it to say that there are very few downsides to being a foreigner that I've seen thus far.

Two things I will call out as actual disadvantages is that 1. you won't be able to get a mortgage like a normal Japanese person, which is in fact a real shame because on top of every other ludicrously wild fact about how Japan is a mythical utopia where everything makes no sense, Japanese mortgage rates are literally as low as 1% lol. So being able to get a mortgage would be a real benefit, but hey - at $60k for an awesome house, I'm not complaining :)

2. Some insurers seem to not support foreign citizens - Sony in particular told Dot that they wouldn't provide earthquake/fire/flood insurance to me as a foreigner. I'm still looking for the right insurance provider, and I'm not concerned that this is an impossible thing to resolve, since a ton of foreigners do own homes here with no issues, but it is at least some more friction than a Japanese citizen would have.

One other disadvantage you didn't mention is it's difficult to get a visa that makes buying a home there worth it, for the average Joe.

Most regular people can only visit Japan for 3 months out of the year. Even if you buy a home you can't get a visa just for that.

Maybe in your case the visa thing isn't an issue because of your wife but that won't be the case for most people.

Why buy in your name?

Japan is very interesting on that front, but I have heard a lot of negative things about what it's like to live there as a foreigner, especially if you have to work in the local economy.

Personally I'm excited about Taiwan.

I've had this same thought too, that Japan is ideal for a digital nomad except for two not insignificant speed bumps - the language barrier, and the medieval bureaucracy. It appears Claude has solved one of the two!

This also applies to village life in Portugal and Italy, and those also can come with EU passports.......

Free flights??? Do you guys work for an airline?

Nope :) but you're on the right track haha...we're just absurdly lucky people is one way to put it - once you start realizing there are ways outside the default path in life to live it's pretty incredible what random doors start opening up to you

What on earth does that mean? Can you answer in a less mysterious way?

I've been reading most of his replies in this post. I think he's using AI to reply. :D

Put literally any of my replies in any AI text generator like Pangram and you’ll see this is obviously untrue lol.

Not that I’m at all opposed to using AI for writing or any other task under the sun, and in fact wish I could train an LLM to speak exactly as me but haven’t managed to do it yet, and happen to enjoy ranting with my own two hands still for now :)

I can’t publicly but I’m happy to explain anything privately - mainly because it’s a gray area loophole like about 50% of the things in my life. Email me at [email protected] and happy to explain anything!

I emailed you bud :)

Can you be a bit less strange?

> I've eaten sit down soba/udon meals that are 500 yen each, or literally ~$3, tax and tip included)

You're tipping in Japan?!

He's supposedly trying to buy a house with an LLM without knowing any of the language and presumably the culture, so this kind of behavior seems right on point.

Slight misspeaking there - I just meant that that’s the all inclusive price, unlike places like in the US where ~30% can be tacked onto the list price of a meal after tip and tax. I recently had a meal in SF that went up more than a third after ~8.75% tax, 20% service fee, and a random 7% SF ordinance surcharge lmao

The more correct phrasing would have been 500 yen all in, with no tip needed and tax included, but sadly I don’t have the precision in speaking that an LLM does as a mere flawed primate running all these words through watery meat