The Hassles of Operational Setup for an Apartment Move

Previously, I wrote about my current plan to move to a new apartment in Japan, and all the hassles associated with fending off different moving companies as they offer ever-more competitive prices for trucking my few belongings somewhere just some ten minutes away by car. But after all the belongings went to the new apartment and set up in their proper locations, it was what end up being just one of many small paperwork-filled procedures that entails the end-to-end process of getting a new life set up in a new residence, Japanese style.

No talk of paperwork is complete without touching on the utilities. While electricity, water, and gas are all nominally run as municipal public services, the liberalization of the utility-providing regime in the late 2010s has made the market ever-more confusing for the average user. Starting out from the municipal manager of the infrastructure itself, consumers would be bombarded with several options that all lure people in with low headline prices and plenty of fine print. For most, the hassle of doing the compare and contrast means they will switch over to whichever company that made the first contact at the new address.

Moving to a new apartment would mean having to deal with both the infrastructure provider and the utility provider for registration, again. The process, while greatly smoothened by the existence of various online tools that utility providers have created to differentiate from their competitors, remains one that requires plenty of phone calls with representatives. For every visit to open and close gas and water valves, phone calls are needed with those at the customer service center and the local branches actually sending the personnel to the old and new apartments. They add to a dozen or more calls in a span of a few days.

Of course, moving to a bigger apartment also means buying furniture for a new place, suitable for more than one person. For a newly renovated location like mine, that also means securing the basics like air conditioners and broadband internet access. The need to have professionals come install the hardware means extra costs and time spent to schedule, monitor, and evaluate their work. Given that every worker, working from home day after day during the pandemic, the time lost will no doubt affect productivity and cause delays in output.

The fact that all such hassles are the norm among apartment movers, both in Japan and elsewhere, it is a wonder that people move at all unless absolutely necessary. Yet, given that many Japanese apartments have two-year renewable contracts (often with more expensive rent and additional renewal fees after two years) and some even have limits of four years in continuous residence for one renter, people often have no financial or physical choice not to move after a set time. The operational hassles are well-worth it considering all the expenses associated with not moving.

But perhaps more interestingly, the fact that moving apartments is such a hassle makes all the results of the move ever sweeter. For new couples and even regular friends moving in together for the very first time, the return on having to go through all the pains of moving may be stronger emotional bonds as well as a more practical understanding of how to divvy up the work. But seeing how their new housemates behave in the face of temporary adversity of overwhelming paperwork and phone calls, people sharing apartments have a better understanding of how not to get on each others' nerves living together.

Indeed, the act of moving an apartment has benefits that go beyond simply many businesses, from utilities to movers to real estate agents, getting paid. A new environment, living arrangement, and the need to share the same space with new people all provide the sparks that some people need to reexamine their lives and careers. After all, if the operational difficulties of moving apartments can be easily overcome through effort over a few days and weeks, can't the same also be said of finding new jobs, new hobbies, new life partners, and new communities?

If anything, moving an apartment is a small, physical symbol of larger moves in a person's life. Scaled up, all the problems of getting to a new apartment have their counterparts in moves across countries, careers, ideologies, and even families. Perhaps the specifics of the involved actors, processes, and resulting frustrations can be different, but at the end of the day, they are all just small parts of a larger change that are surmountable obstacles for a welcome, and also necessary, change, that one needs for rejuvenation. It would be wise for people to make the linkage and connections among all these life changes.