Found it!

Eventually we identified two excellent housing options. Both were houses, with the right layout – kitchen looking into a longer living/dining area – and both had central heating, space for offices and a guest room, and were near train stations.

So we put applications in for both, just in case. Unfortunately, without Japanese friends or neighbors, we had to use a “guarantor company” to establish we were real people (who had emergency contacts).

The same guarantor company handled both applications, and eventually called foul – we cancelled one of the applications and held our breath for a week while the application was processed. Finally, success! We were approved. The next step was to sign the contract and pay the deposit.

The contract proved to be a stack of paperwork, all written in Kanji.

Kudos to our real estate company, which must deal with enough westerners to have an interpreter on staff. She kindly read through our paperwork for us – or probably recited it, since most of the stipulations sounded like Japanese boilerplate - No shoes in the house. No nails in the walls, etc.  The interpreter DID perk up when she got to “don’t cut down the olive tree”. This puzzled us too – why warn us not to cut a really great tree? We decided that previous renters (with no taste) must have tried to chop it down.

Then signing: all in little squares, most Japanese people use a special stamp with their name. Then money: a stack of yen the thickness of a Tolstoy novel. It reminded us of Uzbekistan – except the highest denomination of Uzbek Som is about equal to a dollar. THERE, our wad of cash there was only about 100 USD.  HERE – well, the stakes were equivalent to about four months’ rent. 

In exchange for our paper bag, we received a receipt and a house key. A trip to our new home (and ice cream) to celebrate!