"Ronnie Corporon" <corporon2001@sympatico.ca> wrote in message

> just wondering if anyone has experience living in both gaijin houses and
> their own apartment in Japan? my husband and i want to go teach in Japan
for
> a year and trying to figure out whats the cheapest way for
> accomadations...

A cheap gaijin house can be cheap, it's OK if you live like a hippy (really,
you'll see strangers in your bathroom every morning, they'll drink your tea
and wear your slippers, if you are lucky, they'll need to cross your
bedroom, to reach the toilets and they'll do it 4 times a night). If
that's your lifestyle, it's even cheaper to be a squatter and live for free
in the living-room of some gaijin-worshippers you meet in bars.

Gaijin houses that look like real flats or houses are more expensive.

To rent your own flat, you need to give about 4 months of rent in fees (real
estate agent fee + a key money that is a "present" to the owner) and pay 2
other months in advance (in average), plus you need a guarantor (a Japanese
male older than 40, or someone that owns a house. Employers can be
guarantors,
but if it's Nova, they do it only for employees they trust, not for for new
ones).

If you have no guarantor but can advance money, there are flats (weekly
mansions, etc) without guarantor and without key money. They are newer and
cleaner than gaijin houses.
Weekly mansions, like gaijin house have the basic furniture and equipment.

On the long run, renting a normal flat or house is the cheaper way, the rent
is about half of that of an equivalent gaijin house or weekly mansion. But
maybe for less than 2 or 3 years, it's not worth paying key money and buying
furniture and equipment.

>we would probably be going through NOVA to get out there and
> teach...so do you think it would be cheaper to go through them or live in
a
> gaijin house?

Nova owns 2 or 3 flats in Japan and rent them as gaijin house, they put the
rest of their teachers in other gaijin houses they don't own. Same sort of
price (that depends on location and on each place, some are only old, others
are in addition dirty and far from convenient stations so they are cheaper).
The gaijin houses you'd find on your own are the same Nova will propose you.

Don't listen to all of the horrors you hear about Nova. It's a factory, for
sure, but most of the times they are honest, they don't hire teachers
without visa, they don't make fake contracts, they pay the salaries on a
given day of the month, they don't sell stuff with your photo and name on it
without telling you, etc... It's not very common in the world of language
schools (I know quite a few of them). In Osaka, their salaries are above the
average. You quit them when you are tired of factory work, that's all.

Unless you have tons of money to waste (in that case you wouldn't need to
work), there is no way you rent a decent flat from where you are, you have
to visit the places. I'd be you, I'd ask Nova or whatever to find me a
gaijin flat for couple. You can quit it at the end of the first month if you
don't like it or think it's too expensive, and you'll be there to visit
other places.

CC