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Japanese Suicide Apartments
- detaro 11y agoCan anyone elaborate if these are the hot tip for people that don't care about this stuff (expats?) to get a cheap place, or not so much in reality? Seems like an obvious thing, so I bet it isn't ;)
- benmanns 11y agoMaybe even become ordained so you can exchange free rent for a cleansing.
- krapp 11y agoThere is definitely an absurd comic anime plot in there somewhere.
- adrtessier 11y agoIs it even possible for an expat to become a Shinto priest?
- mahranch 11y agoYes. A 27 year old Austrian man became a Shinto priest in Japan. Source: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2014/06/10/our-lives/blue-eyed-austrian-finds-calling-shrine/#.VmyuNr_Xu88 http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2014/06/10/our-lives/b...
- patio11 11y agoThere's apparently somebody who is way ahead of you: find all of the apartments that fit this description, scope down to ones which are otherwise desirable, rent them with the intention of Airbnbing them.
- arielweisberg 11y agoI follow how there can be liability, but unless the families are co-signing how can they be liable? Can families that fight back recoup legal costs potentially getting a judgement against some or all of the landlord's property? The post raises more questions than answers. Seems like a "proper" legal system should deal with this soon enough without any extra legislation. Granted it's Japan.
- gizmo686 11y agoI am not a lawyer, nor do I have any familiarity with the Japanese legal system. My guess would be that the landlord can make a claim against the dead tenant's estate. Because this estate would usually be inherited by the family, and the family is the party responsible for handling it, this situation is effectively the landlord suing the family. And, of course, as the article identifies, you have families who do not fight it, in which case no legal justification is necessary.
- arielweisberg 11y agoA claim on the estate isn't a claim on the family. AFAIK you can't inherit debt or liability unless you actually signed on to the debt. So they can sue the estate, but they can't sue the family. They have no claim on assets that are not part of the estate.
- patio11 11y agoI follow how there can be liability, but unless the families are co-signing how can they be liable? It is highly likely that the parents were "guarantors" (保証人) for their children, which is standard practice here. This is similar to the US concept of co-signing. Also, socially speaking, "my adult child caused trouble for you implies I have a responsibility to you" is something that more than 90% of Japanese people would strongly agree to.
- rmason 11y agoCurious, can you specifically search for suicide apartments? If I could save 30-40% with the high cost of living in Japan that is where I would want to live.
- rhaps0dy 11y ago>how much of a discount would you need to continue living there? $0. But that was an interesting read.
- cli 11y ago>So tell me, would you live in one of these suicide apartments? I would probably seek them out, as they seem to be much cheaper.
- avar 11y agoThis question paraphrased in the context of the article is basically asking whether or not you believe in ghosts. Not only would you have to believe in ghosts, but some of these apartments are in cities that were firebombed by the US in living memory, you'd have to believe in ghosts that couldn't move around and were local to specific apartments to care about this more than "were there firebombings in this area?" or "was this house constructed before WWII?".
- p1mrx 11y ago$ ping localghost
- conistonwater 11y agoping: cannot resolve localghost: Unknown ghost
- baldajan 11y agoIt feels like the loses from a suicide apartment should be covered by insurance, rather than estates or families of the deceased. I'm not saying this insurance does or doesn't exist (I don't know); but this is the "ideal" case for it. This way, families can grieve in peace and the landlords can't bully their way to get "repairs" done.
- roel_v 11y agoThen you need to have insurance, of course. A life insurance could be used to pay off such costs, which I'm sure happens in many cases. It's the uninsured cases that make the news.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- WalterBright 11y agoI find this curious, since nobody seems to have a problem with hospitals where lots of people die. If people haunt the place where they die, wouldn't a hospital be crammed with them? Why don't ghost hunters look in hospitals?
- zo1 11y agoI think it's because, unless the hospital gets deserted/abandoned, it's generally always filled with plenty of living people. A house, on the other hand, would more-easily appear ominous because it's not as public.
- dragonwriter 11y agoGhost hunters do look in hospitals, though they are generally restricted to abandoned ones; operational ones aren't particularly welcoming to them.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ck2 11y agoThe older the place you live in, the more likely someone died there. And given how old civilization is, I bet someone probably died within 1000 feet of where you live right now. Certainly hundreds of animals have died around you for sure, many within your lifetime. In fact you probably ate a dead creature today. WTF is with people and "ghosts" ?
- fbbbbb 11y agoI would say that someone died within 1000 feet from where you live, while you actually lived there. This is probably true, unless you live in a remote house. And they all forget to count ghosts from microorganisms and insects.
- krapp 11y agoIt may be that, in Shinto Buddhism (the predominant religion in Japan,) the "ghosts" of microorganisms, insects, etc. don't exist, or aren't worth worrying about, because they're part of the natural order. Also bear in mind that, if one believes in reincarnation and animism, "ghosts" on earth may be considered a special case, when the expectation is that most spirits rejoin the karmic cycle (or whatever.)
- PhasmaFelis 11y agoIf one did believe that the disembodied spirits of the dead could be trapped on earth near the place where they died, it's not really much of a additional stretch to postulate that they would be specifically bound to a physical structure, or their pre-death conception of "home." It's weird to me how so many people's approach to mythbusting is "if ghosts were real, they would behave according to this set of rules I just made up, and they clearly don't, therefore ghosts aren't real." A much better argument would be "There is no evidence whatsoever of ghosts existing, therefore ghosts aren't real." There's no need to try to define ghosts as elementary particles or whatever.
- gotchange 11y agoSuperstition (proto-religion) is the enemy of reason.
- sakopov 11y agoThis isn't the only article i read on this topic. It's shocking to me how inconsiderate the Japanese are of suicide and grieving. Just goes to tell you what happens to a society when a troubling issue is ignored - it becomes mundane part of daily life and the majority ceases to care.
- adrtessier 11y ago> It's shocking to me how inconsiderate the Japanese are of suicide and grieving. Eh, I think it's a different perspective. Simplifying things greatly, Japanese society is a collective one, and one could argue that suicide is a selfish decision that damages the collective by removing any possible utility you may be giving it for the sake of yourself. As even small transgressions of this nature are frowned upon in Japanese culture, it's not surprising to me that the bigger transgressions have these reactions.
- morgante 11y agoI partially wish that the US had the same stigma so I could exploit it. I'd happily live in an apartment where someone committed suicide, since there's absolutely no logical basis for fearing it.
- gotchange 11y agoMe too with open arms. A superstitious person's plight is another person's delight.
- derefr 11y agoOn the other hand, an apartment where someone killed someone else, or suffered a psychotic break and had to be institutionalized permanently, or died of mysterious causes? Higher-than-average likelihood of mold, lead, mercury, carbon monoxide, etc.
- morgante 11y agoI'd probably do an extra review of environmental factors to be safe (as I would with any below-market apartment), but it's unlikely that even the majority of deaths are driven by persistent factors.
- gotchange 11y ago> "In one case, a young woman killed herself in her apartment and the landlord showed up during her funeral to demand ¥6 million (~$75,500) so that he could hire a priest to “cleanse” the property." Any Japanese people here to comment on this specific point that there are "exorcists" who dedicate their time and effort for this economic activity and that's well established phenomenon there?
- sdrothrock 11y agoThis is a dodgy article. I've lived in Japan for almost a decade and heard about these "cheap suicide apartments" exclusively from foreigners or Japanese people who "learned" about it from foreigners; whenever I looked around for Japanese sites for this kind of thing, the "discounted rent" would be the same or around $5 to $40 cheaper per month, well within the normal variation for apartments in the same building (due to facilities, size, shape, location, time since renovation, etc.). Additionally, the "cited" articles talk about the extortionate practices of individual landlords who seem to be taking advantage of the families' grief to send them through the wringer for more money, rather than "cheap suicide apartments." The real story here is the minority of shady landlords who indulge in those practices -- no doubt they would also be the ones who keep your deposit and additionally try to charge thousands of dollars for "cleaning" fees after you move out. This kind of scum exists in every country.