Japanese DIY Store Tour | I am a Foreigner Living in Rural Japan

Come along for a tour at a DIY store in Japan.

I am an American (of Mexican descent) living and working in Japan. My wife of 32 (plus) years is from Japan. We bought a vacant or empty house “Akiya” in the countryside of Japan near Iwakuni, Yamaguchi Prefecture for $35,000 (5 million Yen as of August 2022). The property consists of a 2-story house built in 1975, small guest house, large 2 car garage, storage building, and 3/4 acres of land with many fruit trees.

As very common when purchasing an Akiya in Japan, the personal belongings of the previous owner were still in the house. It took multiple trips to the local recycle center to dispose of all the property.

The grounds were overgrown with many weeds and vines. This will take a while to get under control, but it is looking much better around the property, and I think the neighbors are happy to see us cleaning up.

This traditional Japanese house also features a gorgeous Japanese Garden in much need of cleaning up and bringing it back to its glory. I am still working on the garden, but it already looks stunning under a beautiful maple tree and huge decorative stones.

We performed an extensive renovation in the entire house. We focused on keeping traditional Japanese features such as the engawa, shoji doors, ranma, shikkui, tatami room, but incorporated modern features making a very comfortable house for years to come. Walls, ceilings, floors were insulated. New modern kitchen, toilets and bathroom units were installed. We installed a wood burning cast iron stove (Quadra-Fire, Explorer II). New electrical throughout the entire house and guest house. Double pane windows and doors installed and much more.

#japan #japancountryside #japanesevacanthouse #akiya #traditionaljapanesehouse #ruraljapan #japanesegarden

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Other videos of our Akiya traditional Japanese house renovation:
https://youtube.com/@cocolenchojapan

Contact:
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****Recommend using “Chrome” as a browser for Japanese to English translation.****

Akiya Bank for my area near Iwakuni City and Hiroshima City: Miwa Town in Yamaguchi
https://iwakuni-iju.jp/akiyajoho

Miwa Town Information:
https://iwakuni-iju.jp/miwa.html

Dave Olson’s website:
Dave provides many links and information Akiya and Komika purchase.

“Akiya” abandoned, cheap/free* houses in Japan / annotations, resources, riffs, musings, stories

At Akiya Sumai you can search for vacant houses around Japan.
https://akiya.sumai.biz

At Ie Ichiba there is a Bulletin board to search vacant houses / Akiya Houses and old buildings in Japan
https://www.ieichiba.com

Other Useful Links:

Can A Foreigner Buy Property In Japan?

https://www.athome.co.jp/
https://www.kurasapo.net/
https://www.koryoya.com/
https://www.homes.co.jp/akiyabank/
http://www.inakanet.jp/index.html
https://www.akiya-athome.jp

Hi good morning everyone thanks again for tuning in to our channel here to Coco lentry Japan uh us a foreigner living in rural Japan this morning what I’m going to do I need to go to um the local like DIY store called the power comedy that’s what we have in this area

Power Comedia is a little bit um uh I guess more for like construction uh or more Advanced Construction I guess maybe I don’t know what the proper term would be they also have other places like nafco and other type of stores but uh what I’m looking for

Specifically is like a big heavy duty rubber mat and I explain to you here in a minute why but um just wanted to uh take you along and so while I’m at it I’m going to go ahead and uh put the uh my little K truck to use and uh buy some

More uh crushed rock yeah so however I kind of need your advice if you if you can uh provide any uh so uh I filled in right there with more crushed rock because um for certain cars like we have a like that car over there in the garage

Is kind of low and it was it was scrape on the bottom uh so I fill it up and it’s fine however um obviously through uh the usage the Rocks um kind of move around I know Steve uh from real rural Japan check him out check out his

Channel they’re not going know he uses um ashes from his uh wood stove unfortunately I don’t have that many ashes yet but uh so I don’t know is there some sort of uh sand or something that I should put in there to kind of

Pack it down but what I need to do is buy some more rocks to continue filling in here so I still have like this section I need to finish up um so little by little every time I go there I just uh buy a a bucket load they call it the

Um chisai Sai is the the the term for the small Crush rocks and they’ll bring their forklift and fill it up and uh yeah so once again my uh my little K truck um earns her pay every single time but what I wanted to do is while

I’m over there is kind of bring you along so you can see what it looks like in a DIY store here in Japan um I may not do a whole lot of talking because I be respectful to other people but I will when I can and uh so what I need to do

Is buy this big rubber mat to control the odor so if you have uh watched the video it’s a little bit long video my apologies but it’s the video that I made about how we bought and found and financed uh our Ikea which is

This house right here is a it used to be a vacant house a tra traditional Japanese house and uh part of that I cover some lessons learned and one of the lessons learned it was kind of a knucklehead mistake on my part was not to have the septic tank inspected from

The very beginning uh so yeah sure enough it needs to be replaced in the next couple years but ever since especially when when in this area and then inside our little guest house uh we keep getting a sewage order so I’m not quite sure if that’s going to fit fix

The problem that we have in the Casita but um at a minimum it hopefully will fixes the problem here here so the switch guys came by yesterday and we asked them we asked them is there something that we could do and if you see right here uh they they pointed out

That it does not fit flat because it’s been rusted right so order will come through here right now I don’t smell anything but it’s like um throughout the day or or the week or something like that not quite sure if um this I don’t know how seage works so I’m not quite

Sure if uh something moves in there during a certain time and just kicks up the odors so it’s the same thing here in our in our little guest house uh my daughter and son-in-law just spent about a weekend there and we keep keep getting the smell we plugged the the drainage

For the shower to kind of see if that was causing it it really didn’t do much uh the the sink does have an S trap so and then also the Swiss guy came and he you know he kind of looked at he says yeah well you know the line runs from

Here all the way down to here down this way so you shouldn’t have any problems uh so we’re still trying to figure out but since there are odors that come through here at a minimum we’re what uh we’re going to do is place a big heavy duty

Rubber mat and that is what the uh the switch people um recommended what we should do and just kind of lay it over there flat and that will kind of um uh help uh settle it and um and hopefully um trap the the order we’re really kind

Of creating a sale right that’s what I’m going to do right now uh so yeah just come along if you don’t mind and uh come and check out uh the uh local DIY store and again if you can provide some advice to how to pack this down I’m eventually I need to get

One of those machines that pack it down but you know every time you eventually it digs a hole and then the vehicle was scrape I was thinking is there some sort of sand or cement or something that I can throw there um but eventually this

Entire area I need to get it all covered up nicely all right folks so yeah let’s go ahead and head on over there and uh thanks for watching if you like what you see please hit subscribe like share this is just us a foreigner living working traveling in in Japan well living in

Rural Japan and uh so yeah so uh if you have any questions uh comments please uh uh send them my way thanks all right so here we are at uh Power comitti H it’s about maybe a 15 minute drive from uh where we’re at but

Uh it’s down by the ocean side the ocean side is right over there and a whole lot of factories on the other side uh every time I drive down this way I’m grateful for where I’m at because it’s such a beautiful area but uh so this is the

Particular um uh Crush rocks that I’m going to get so you just go in there and ask for a bucket load you get a bucket load and uh that’s uh like said what 2000 Yen so I don’t know what is that 14 15ish dollars so then while here I was

Kind of looking at this sand so folks let me know should I get some sort of sand like this and just kind of lay it uh in with the crushed rock would that help uh settle it a little bit I’m not quite sure yeah make sure you fill that up because

My truck will handle it it goes up that hill we basically we live up over there in the mountains and no problem whatsoever and the capacity for one of these K trucks is uh I think it’s 350 Kg oh I like this guy he’s filling it up sometimes you get a guy that just kind of like look just one little there you go keep filling it up you’re good you’re Good Hi Domo yeah and she handle it just fine yeah not to sound that I’m jealous or anything like that but uh as I was walking by I saw this really cool Toyota uh truck right there definitely really nice it caught my attention um really decked out and everything but do you

Think he or she can do with that truck what I could do with mine I don’t think so yeah let me go ahead and go inside and walk around a little bit and actually here I see those uh heavy duty Ms that I’m kind of looking for but uh

Yeah so let me actually let me just go ahead and just kind of walk around here and show you a little bit the different options that uh you can purchase if you are doing a DIY or thinking about doing the DIY here in Japan uh renovating the

House in Ikea whatever the case may be or if you’re just curious what does uh what does this compared to the country that you’re tuning in from uh let me know uh it’s kind of interesting I even before I bought a house I used to come

Over here and just kind of look at stuff and kind of daydream about what I could do and so on so you know and always different ideas of uh you know I could use this for this or that for that whatever the case may be eventually I

Need to buy something like this for my driveway as I drive into the garage so let me go ahead and make it to this side yeah so here we have all the different uh like fencing material and uh I guess like for um not scaffolding but uh what

Do you call it for a trilus uh for um for your gardening and whatnot and drainage system for like uh French drains let’s see it looks like here actually here we go this is kind of sort of what I’m looking for something nice and heavy that will flap

Over the um the three sewage systems um and then yeah it’s pretty heavy and that’s about 6,000 Yen so about maybe about $45 this one is this is not as flexible this is kind of hard I think this would do because it’s bendable let’s see let’s see if there’s

Something here that would work for my driveway as well something like that but I’m afraid those are going to just keep on moving all the time Anyways the rubber mats for like if you’re doing uh in the kitchen like restaurants back in the day when I used to work at a restaurant yeah actually these are the ones kind of I need to buy but I need to I need to figure out the exact um uh

Width that I before I commit to buying these uh wheelbarrows uh you know big tanks eventually I might need to get something like this to for uh watering uh lots of cool crates for storage that’ be kind of cool so that I can have everything uh standardize in the garage

Once I uh get that going that’s a big tank right here it looks like it has the uh little drainage system huh you might need something like that from when I work in my pond in the Japanese garden I’ve never actually came all the way back here before so that’s pretty

Cool all right let me go ahead and make it Inside they even have a stuff for vehicles actually that that won’t be too bad for my K truck it’s a little liner for the kit truck over here in this section is like a bunch of camping gear you can uh get everything you need for your camping different cool tents and

Seats nice big size tent this right here is where these are the different garbage bags you have to buy so you know you Tao in Japan so everything has to be in its own particular type of bag so normally we use the red for combustible and um green for um uh

Recyclables so choko asked me to get some medium and large and then specifically for Iwakuni so that’s the that’s the kanji writing for Iwakuni so each area has its own so let me go ahead and find some medium and large go if you want to learn some basic kanji

That’s uh well even though that says middle but it’s a medium size and large right here that’s the kanji for large and each one of these cost like 300 Yen so that’s a couple bucks right there they also have some basic Furniture so folks that are not uh from

Japan if you uh have not uh lived in Japan before you probably kind of wondering what’s to do with these uh short uh seats so basically because in Japan it’s still a culture that um tends to sit on the ground with the timey rooms and this it’s clean because that’s

Why they take off the shoes and everything but for the folks that still have the timing rooms uh these are the short chairs that you can uh get I guess that’s kind of interesting for folks that are not uh familiar with this different food tones uh again uh in

Japan many people they still sleep on on the the floor and tatamis and uh they will uh spread these out every morning I mean every evening and uh get ready for the day let’s go ahead and go over to the lighting section and the wood section which probably what most people that are

Doing DIY would be interested in all kinds of different lights uh when we got our house uh when we renovated our house we actually bought quite a few of the fixtures right here as a matter of fact uh chok and I spent several several evenings over here shopping and looking

At the different brightnesses and the track lighting which we uh installed in our house you can also get uh doors and windows and uh shutters and uh your sinks uh these are basically a little bit more of the kind of the basic um kitchen units and you just kind

Of buy a unit and uh just uh outfit it into your kitchen and a different shelving and they also have a little center right here where they’ll help you uh design it here’s another kitchen unit and over here on the other side there’s uh toilets and and the shower units as

Well and here you go so uh uh most modern uh showers now there’re kind of units like this is kind of similar to ours it’s kind of based on the size that you have available and the they just come and uh it’s like a little capsule

And uh stays pretty pretty uh dry and that it does not leak pretty efficient and you have like uh integrated heaters right there and all kinds of different features you can keep going on and on and on by the time you add all the other extras and all the other different

Vanities sinks that you can install and a whole lot of uh DIY stuff you know your uh for plumbing different uh heater units for your obviously hot water more Windows Doors shutters all kinds of different other uh sliding doors here as well yeah so if you like uh wood floors so

This is the section for the different types of wood floors that’s a really nice floor right there and you have all different types finished colored and on the other side over there is you can read in English the hardware tools and whatnot everything else that you need

So again like I said this this particular store you have uh pretty much everything you need over at nafco is kind of a little bit more of the basic stuff you different molding handrails all kinds of other stuff I I can I can spend all day here kind of

Daydreaming even though uh we did do quite an extensive Reen ation but uh uh there’s always something that you need to do for me it’s just fun to come over here and uh look at the different stuff that you could potentially do yeah more wood flooring right there

That’s kind of similar to what we installed we installed the actually unfinished cedar wood Floors H storage units shelving you know here Japan the space is kind of limited so you got to take advantage of any kind of uh stores you can uh possibly make different types of wood and little benches and little little boxes Even bamboo if you want some bamboo so for like bamboo fences different types of wood for wood fences huge ladders uh this is I’ve never really seen ladders like this uh in other countries but here in Japan you see them everywhere and actually I think they’re much safer this way look at

This for all your drainage systems really cool yeah everything you could possibly think of they have it right here I think uh even uh you can even uh rent uh different tools and you can even rent a k truck a so if you don’t have a k

Truck I know I like to talk a lot about my little K truck but if you don’t have that that ability to do that you can rent a k truck from here as well looks like a pressure treated wood for outdoors if you can build a deck they even have these kind of

Plastic units right here where uh you can find all the the components right here that way they will last Forever some more bamboo Fencing all this is kind of the untreated Uh Wood section so yeah right here all those those big uh blue uh boards right there foam boards just for insulation for under the um for mainly for under the under the wood floor so again we did

This under a house as well too so under the floor they’ll put these and then above that is the the wood floor and then insulation for the walls and ceiling and uh yes uh a lot of Japanese houses especially the old houses are notorious for not having any kind of

Insulation um nowadays obviously they’re getting a little bit better at it but uh back in the day um they did not do that so again with our our renovation uh they didn’t have none of this and uh once we tore out the floors they put these down and then once we

Tore out the um the fall celines uh they you know stuffed them uh with uh that insulation and then above that was the um uh drywall and then plaster the sh plaster in particular there some more fencing eventually I need to do that as well again there’s so many things I need

To do in different thickness of uh that the insulation and my apologies if this gets a little bit long but I think I it’s kind of cool so you can get an idea and and uh compare and again there you go sheetrock and you can also buy the tools

For if you want to buy it and over here they have like shingles and uh uh Roofing stuff yeah so there you have it folks uh thanks again thanks for tuning in I hope you kind of enjoyed this little walkth through please H subscribe like and

Share and uh follow us along um if you have any questions uh I something specific I’ll I’m willing to come back over here and kind of take a look and if there’s something that caught your attention you want me to kind of give you a little bit more details that’s

Cool I can make a trip over here and buy some more crushed rocks anyway so yeah thanks a lot folks have a great day bye