I am thinking of moving to japan on a special visa that would let me stay in the country for 1year. I am single, female, and have very brown skin, which I have heard makes rental accommodations more difficult. Is this a reasonable fear for me to have? How can I find reliable accommodations?
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**How to find accommodation as a person of colour in Japan**
I am thinking of moving to japan on a special visa that would let me stay in the country for 1year. I am single, female, and have very brown skin, which I have heard makes rental accommodations more difficult. Is this a reasonable fear for me to have? How can I find reliable accommodations?
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It’s tough for a lot of foreigners sadly and time consuming. I honestly don’t recommend going through the standard realtors in Japan. Also, typical contracts are 2 years so you’ll limit a lot of apartments and make it harder and more stressful for yourself. I know people who spend months in hotels trying to find accommodation.
There’s share houses (but they weren’t for me). Then I tried a combination of air&b and [https://realestate.co.jp](https://realestate.co.jp). They’re much more expensive, but really easy to just email, view, pay and stay. More flexible with contract duration and the process was in English. There’s plenty of other sites too like sakura house, oak house etc. I’ve not tried Oak, but I did have a bad experience with Sakura (we’re talking infestation level dirty when I arrived)
Not true at all. Brown skin is beautiful and anyone who has an issue with that is not someone I would like to rent from in the first place.
The biggest problem you will have here is how well you can communicate, and how much money you have.
Overcome those two obstacles and Japan is yours.
And why foreigners get denied, the typical excuses are that we can’t sort trash, we can’t follow rules (even if we are fluent in Japanese) and we might abruptly leave for our home country and leave all of our stuff.
On a 1-year visa, it may be hard to get a rental contract in any case, even without taking discrimination into account.
There are some sharehouse “companies” (?) – like oakhouse – that also rent out traditional apartments, maybe that could be an idea? Sharehouses in general are set up with foreign residents in mind, so the chance of encountering discrimination from the company should be very low.