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All right. As we're coming sort of to the end of our Brad in Japan Series, I've heard that you also bought properties in Japan, and I say properties not just one house, but you've bought multiple. And...
Yeah, I bought two.
OK. How was the process? Was it difficult foreigner to buy properties to buy houses, flats in Japan?
It wasn't so difficult, buying a flat is going to be more difficult simply because there's like a kind of a group, you know, like an apartment complex group where... because everyone owns the property and so you're being brought into that group of people and you're all living together within the same complex.
And so that can become a problem, especially with like paying for the apartment fees and things like that nowadays you can't send money very easily without being like a resident of Japan. So if you live here, buying a flat is great, but if you don't live here, I would probably not suggest that now. But buying a house you don't have to do those monthly fees and you don't have to deal with like that group and so...
...on the land.
It's actually much easier, yeah.
As far as like buying property goes, it's quite a simple process as long as you have everything taken care of. They... not something... I have seen like stamps being used in China, right, like in the US we don't use stamps.
But like in China people use stamps like when you always stamp a document. In Japan they also stamp documents and you have to have like a registered stamp with the government to do things. If you're a foreigner, you can use your signature, but you actually have to go to your embassy and get a special like notarized document saying that this is your signature in order to do it. But aside from that, if you have money, cash is king so to say, as long as you have the money to buy the property, you can buy the property.
I see. So it sounds like you really got it sorted in Japan like you're assimilating quite well, you're enjoying your life there. But for sure there are frustrating moments, no?
Yeah, I just dealt with like a whole month of a frustration after a frustration.
Oh, wow.
And I needed a few documents, so I could apply for a program that I wanted to enter, I was gonna enter a motor sports engineering program.
I had my mom sent me a bunch of stuff and got lost in the mail, like the package had got damaged. It was like held up for an extra 10 days. And when I got the package finally, it didn't have one of the most important documents, my birth certificate.
Either my mom had lost it and forgot to send it or it was taken out of the package or fell out of the package when it got damaged.
Like everything kind of like got set back and I got a PDF copy of a new birth certificate in which took a little bit of time. Then I had to do all the translation and stuff.
And so I'm already late on... not really late, but getting really close to the deadline of having to submit all my documents. The last thing that I had to do was make a payment for all my test fee and entrance fee and everything.
I went to the post office because I don't have a bank account, I have a postal savings account, which is essentially the same thing. It's just at the post office and that's the closest to my apartment.
So that's what I use, but that the document that I was supposed to use had a place for a stamp and the post office doesn't do stamps because they're not a regular bank. They told me that they couldn't send the money and it's like, okay, I went to the bank. The bank was closed early. Banks already closed really early, they close at like 3pm.
3pm?
I went to the bank. There's actually one bank that's open later, but it's not even remotely close to my apartment. So I went to the bank, the bank was closed. I'm like, so what am I going to do? I contacted the school and they said well, try to pay at the convenience store.