Nakatsu

The dream of a bed and breakfast or a weekend café in Tsukahara is a long way off. It’s just not practical at the moment. A decision had to be made. If we moved to Japan without selling the house, then we had to work in the city during the week and enjoy Tsukahara on the weekends. If we waited to move to Japan until we sold the house, then we could remodel  the home in Tsukahara, but we still would have to have an income. Either way, we needed to spend some time in the city. Which city? Nakatsu ended up being the choice because of its location and schools. I’ll write more on this topic at a later time. Where in Nakatsu? We had to consider that we would have a business (an English school) in our rented house. Rented, because we could not afford another house. Since we had dogs and we wanted to have a business, we could not rent an apartment. So we needed to rent a house.

Finding a house that allowed piano, guitar, lots of kids, and two dogs was not easy. The house needed to be located near schools so that kids could easily come to our business. The house needed to be located near a park for the dogs. The house had to allow for extra parking for the business. The house couldn’t be too expensive to rent since we didn’t have an income. The house couldn’t look too old or run down or no one would come to our business. The house had to be large enough to accommodate two classrooms and a place to sleep and cook. As I mentioned in an earlier article, finding anything that had to do with real estate was a difficult task. Finding a house that met all of our requirements was an impossible task.

Erika searched many months for a suitable location via the internet. I’m guessing that Nakatsu has a population of 85,500. The city is spread out and it was important to know where our competition was located. This narrowed the search to a few areas. The largest middle school was located in an area that had a huge park. The competition was located a comfortable distance away. Erika started emailing a realtor that specialized in rentals. He was located in the area that we were interested in. As fate would have it, he had a home that was available that matched most of our needs. Our biggest concern was the floors. We preferred hardwood floors, but the house had tatami floors. We took a trip to the nearby home center and found some area rugs that could help solve the problem. The area surrounding the house was perfect. The schools were very close. The kids walked very close to our house as they went to school. The nearby park was huge! The dogs would love it. They have a large river, miles of hiking and biking trails, huge fields of mowed grass, a sporting complex, many picnic tables, and lots of mature trees. Parking was available at the house for 3 cars and extra parking was also possible for $40 a month. The fenced yard has a gate, so Kiley and Lucky can’t get out. The best part was that the landlord was willing to wait for us to move in October…fate. The rental papers for Japan will soon be ready to submit further committing us to move in October. Believe it or not, this is really going to happen. Stay tuned….