Before You Fly: Getting a Japanese Second Home Ready for Your Arrival

There is a particular kind of disappointment in arriving at your own house after a long flight to find no hot water, a damp smell and a stack of post with something urgent in it.

Almost all of it is avoidable, and the work is small. What matters is the order and the lead time.

Four weeks before

Book the gas. This is first because it is the only item that can fail outright. Reopening gas needs a technician and somebody physically in the house. Appointments are not always available at short notice, and the weeks around new year, Golden Week and Obon are worse. If nobody can be there before you land, book it for your first full morning and plan around it.

Confirm the water. If the system was drained for winter, restoring it is more than turning a tap: valves are reopened in order, and a system refilled carelessly can show up a joint that failed quietly months ago. If your house is in a cold region, have somebody restore it a few days before you arrive so a leak is discovered while you are still at home with options, not at midnight on day one.

Ask for the post. Whoever receives your mail should send you what has accumulated now, not when you land. Insurance renewals, condominium association notices and tax correspondence sometimes carry deadlines you can still act on from abroad — and cannot act on at all once they pass.

Two weeks before

Arrange for the house to be opened and aired. A Japanese house closed for six months holds a lot of moisture. A few hours of open windows, two or three days before you arrive, changes the entire experience of walking in. If somebody is doing this for you, ask them to open the wardrobes and the room where the futons are stored at the same time.

Have the bedding dealt with. This is the item owners most often overlook and most often regret. Futons and duvets that have sat in a closed cupboard through a Japanese summer are damp even when they look fine. They need sun, or a futon dryer, or replacing. Deciding this two weeks out is easy; deciding it on your first night is not.

Check the air conditioning. A unit unused for a year may need its filters cleaned, and in the worst case it has become a mould problem of its own. In July or February this is not a comfort question.

One week before

Order what you cannot carry. Rice, water, cleaning supplies, a replacement kettle. But note how Japanese delivery works: the courier attempts delivery, leaves a slip if nobody answers, holds the parcel for a limited period, and returns it to the sender afterwards. A delivery timed to arrive before you do will not sit on your doorstep. Either have somebody receive it, or schedule it for the day after you land.

Tell the neighbours you are coming, if you are on those terms. In a quiet street, lights and movement in a house that is usually empty is the kind of thing people notice and worry about.

Confirm heating fuel. In winter, in parts of Japan where kerosene heaters are normal, an empty tank is the difference between a usable house and a cold one. Kerosene also degrades in storage, so last year's leftover is not necessarily this year's fuel.

The day you arrive

If the preparation above happened, this list is short: open the windows, run every tap for a minute to refill the drain traps, check under the sinks and around the water heater for anything wet, and look at the ceilings for stains that were not there last time.

Photograph anything that has changed since your last visit. It is the only record that makes an insurance conversation possible later.

What needs a person in Japan

Reading the list back, a pattern emerges. Almost every item that can go badly wrong is an item that requires a human being at the property:

Task	Can it be done from abroad?
Reopening gas	No — somebody must be inside
Restoring a drained water system	No
Airing the house	No
Receiving a delivery	No
Meeting a repair technician	No
Reading the post	Only if somebody scans it
Paying a Japanese bill	Difficult without a Japanese account
Booking appointments in Japanese	Difficult

This is the practical reason a second home in Japan is harder to run from abroad than a second home in a country where you speak the language and hold a bank account — and the reason the solution is a person, not an app.

While you are there: the three things worth doing

1. Deal with anything you have been postponing. A dripping tap, a sticking lock, a tile that moved. These are ten-minute jobs while you are in the country and major undertakings when you are not.
2. Introduce yourself, or say hello again. The neighbour who knows the house is yours is your early warning system for the next eleven months.
3. Leave the house properly. Everything in the empty-house checklist applies on the way out, and the ten minutes it takes decides what you find next time.

The administrative items that do not wait

Two obligations exist whether or not you are in the country, and both are solved once rather than every year:

• A tax representative (納税管理人) registered with your municipality, so property tax notices reach somebody who can pay them. See how to appoint one.
• A domestic contact (国内連絡先) recorded with the property registration, which owners who live abroad are asked for. See how the roles differ.

How Japan YES helps

Before you fly, we open the house, air it, restore the water, meet the gas technician and tell you what we found — with photographs. While you are away, the post comes to us and the bills get paid. You arrive to a house that works.

See how it works for a second home, or tell us about the property and your next trip.

Utility procedures, delivery rules and heating practice vary by provider and region. Confirm the position for your own property and providers.