Horiguchi san and the Revolution
Our sacred quest for a home with two western style toilets that would cost well below one million dollars began in earnest when Pam met Horiguchi san.
In a fascinating capitalistic inspired turn of events, Japan’s increased accounting transparency, vast dumpage of bad loans, and a Hara Kiri like slicing of the connective monetary web that until recently held the Japanese financial institutions together, Japanese banks are looking for legal (and transparent) ways of making money. One of the more radical ideas to come from this is that it might be profitable to loan money to gaijin –foreigners. Let’s think this through carefully: We have foreigners in Japan. Those foreigners are making money. If we loan them money, we can charge them interest. If we charge them interest, we can make money. If they have a home, they might stay longer (oops, that would be a downside…lets not talk about that at the moment). Construction companies will want to borrow money to build those houses. We could make money from those loans. The foreigners will want to buy things…things here in Japan…they will be spending money in Japan. We could loan money to the companies that are selling them things. We could make money off those loans. Those foreigners (hey, maybe they should stay) will probably want to buy other things that need loans, and we could make more money.
Mind you, that line of thinking, which to you may appear linear, is quite radical here. And have I reminded you lately that this is the second largest economy in the world. And that it is largely cash based! Personal lines of credit and personal loans…I don’t know, on second thought it sounds too risky. Maybe we can just pretend to do it. Transparent pretending. Sounds oddly like the emperor’s new clothes…
Sarcasm aside, it was understood until very recently that in order to apply for a home loan in Japan you needed to be a Japanese citizen, be married to a Japanese citizen or have a permanent resident card, which you can acquire only after having lived in Japan for 10 years. This limitation has theoretically been removed. We are currently testing this theory to see if a simple alien resident card and proof of being in country for two years will land us a loan. Well, that and a minimum down payment of 10% plus an additional 5% of total cost in closing fees. Both the down payment and closing cost fees need to be in cash. Remember, as a rule of thumb, Japanese banks don’t like to handle money transfers from other banks – I wish I were joking, but I am not.
Pam used her “how to buy wine” rule of thumb to select a real estate office, “Oh look, that one has a pretty label.” This process ruled out all but one real estate office in Nezu. Pam walked into the lone pretty real estate office.
Enter Horiguchi-san.
Inside the pretty office, sitting in the corner, was Horiguchi-san. (If you are wondering how to pronounce that, think prostitute + a + expensive handbag = whore-a-Gucci. Pam wonders why my Japanese pronunciation isn’t better. If I did it right, it wouldn’t be this much fun.) Horiguchi san is a nice young man. Since he is a bright young man as well, he politely and patiently listened to all of Pam’s questions and answered all of them with a resounding “yes.” I suspect Horiguchi-san of being a full-blooded capitalist with entrepreneurial tendencies. This theory is also currently under investigation.
The initial conversation went something like this:
Pam: Do you have any houses for sale?
Horiguchi-san: Yes
Pam: Do any of them have two toilets?
Horiguchi-san: Yes
Pam: Do they have tall doorways?
Horiguchi-san: Yes
Pam: Do any of them cost well below one million dollars?
Horiguchi-san: Yes
Pam: Will you show us those houses?
Horiguchi-san: Yes
Pam: Will you sell a two-toilet-high-door-frame-less-than-a-million-dollar-house to a gaijin?
Horiguchi-san: Yes
Pam: Will you help us get a loan?
Horiguchi-san: Yes
Pam: Do you frequently lie through your teeth to make your costumers happy?
Horiguchi-san: Yes
Pam: And do you do all of the above with appropriate politeness and respect?
Horiguchi-san: Yes
Since Horiguchi san is such a nice young man, we are thinking about adopting him if this whole house things works out. We will change his name of course. I won’t have people making fun of his name! And with such an easy start, maybe this house buying thing in Japan won’t be all that difficult.
Written -September 6, 2005