Air BNB in Japan Changed Law About House Sharing

All Blog Posts, Pro's and Con's of Japan

AirBnB in Japan to Never be the Same Again!

What’s happening with AirBnB in Japan this month?

I just a few weeks ago put in a reservation for Sasha’s Mom to come out and see us later this month (June 2018). But just today I got an e-mail from AirBnB basically stating. HEY! The Japanese government just got rid of a bunch of competition, people can not freely rent out their apartment or homes any longer… without a… LICENSE! Go figure. This seems to be another punch to the gut for free markets and competition. Lyft and Uber are not allowed here in Japan either, go figure.

There are some people that will end up with a license, but no doubt they will charge out the roof for a place now. Hostel’s still seem to be functioning okay. I guess we’ll see if this truly is the death of AirBnB in part here in Japan.

Hi Nathan,

We’re writing with an important update about your upcoming stay in Japan. Unfortunately, your reservation on 2018-06-16 has been canceled. We’re deeply sorry, as we know how surprising and frustrating this news is so close to your trip.

Below, we’ve listed important information about refunds, credits, and assistance to help you find alternative accommodations in Japan.

Full refund and coupon
We’re here to help make this last minute change as easy for you as possible. In addition to a full refund, you’ll receive a coupon worth twice your reservation value to use on a trip within the next year.

We’ll also provide you with an Airbnb coupon to use on any Airbnb Experience worth up to $100.

Your refund and coupons will be sent within the next few days.

Reason for cancellation
Japan recently passed a law that regulates home sharing. In order to comply, all hosts are required to register their listing and display an approved notification number on their listing page by June 15th.

On June 1st, the Japanese government unexpectedly instructed us that any host without a valid number should cancel all upcoming reservations. Unfortunately, your reservation on 2018-06-16 is booked at a listing that hasn’t received a valid number.

This is understandably frustrating, as many hosts are working hard to acquire their licenses as quickly as possible. However, given the unknown timelines—and because your trip is coming up so soon—we believe it’s best to cancel your reservation and obtain other accommodations as soon as possible.

Finding a new place to stay
In the event that you can’t find a home that meets your needs on Airbnb, JTB—a leading travel agency in Japan with access to other accommodations—is available to assist with finding a new place to stay. Please visit JAPANiCAN if you want their assistance.

We’re here to help
We’ve also set up a fund to cover unexpected and unavoidable expenses that are incurred as a direct result of this cancellation– such as flight change fees.

Our team is standing by to help if you have questions or concerns. Please reach us by calling 1-855-424-7262 or emailing us at [email protected].

Once again, we sincerely apologize for this situation, as well as for the disruptive inconvenience it poses for you and your host. Unfortunately, these circumstances developed outside of our control, but we’re here to help resolve this issue as quickly as possible.

Thank you,

Airbnb Support for Japan

All Blog Posts, Learn Japanese

Japanese Transitive and Intransitive Verbs

You may or may not have heard these words before, and you may or may not know what they mean. Transitive means that something is being done by someone (or something). AKA, transitive verbs are the ones that you (or someone/something else) has direct influence on. When beginning to learn a language, transitive forms are used since most people talk about things they do/ are doing or things other people are doing. Examples of transitive verbs are: I opened the door, I returned the boy home, I made the cat disappear.

Intransitive means that something happens/ed on it’s own. For example, the door opened, the boy returns home, the cat disappears.

In Japanese, transitive verbs use the particle を with the action (verb) following the particle, and what is being affected by the verb before the particle. For example, when you say that you eat a banana, the banana is what is being affected by the verb, so therefore it proceeds the particle and the verb to eat follows the particle. Some people have a hard time with the verb 紹介します (しょうかいします) where the person you are introducing (to someone) follows the を particle and the person you are introducing someone TO follows the particle に because they are having something done TO them (similar to something being given TO someone with the verbs あげます).

Intransitive verbs use the particle が because there is only a subject and an outcome (verb), so basically something happened. Hajimeru 始める vs hajimaru 始まる (to begin [something] vs. [something] began), I have remembered that hajimaru is the intransitive verb which uses GA because I connected the MA to being similar to GA. Also, “I woke up” would be intransitive because it automatically happened, versus “I woke someone up” which would be transitive because you are doing an action.

I may come back to this article in the future and add some more insights once I formally learn about transitive and intransitive verbs, but for now this will do I think ^_^

I suggest you check out my Japanese Verb Conjugation post lesson here, for more on the Japanese language.

Better Ways to Learn Japanese Fluently

–Nihon Scope

All Blog Posts, Learn Japanese

Onomatopoeia Verbs in Japanese

This is the second video of the Waku Waku Japanese video series teaching simple Japanese words and phrases. This video teaches three onomatopoeia expressions for feelings turned into verbs by the addition of SURU which is the general verb used for doing things. This video teaches the meaning of waku waku which means to feel happy or excited, doki doki which is to be nervous yet excited, and ira ira which is an expression of anger. I’m not excatly sure how imprtant these three onomatopoeia verbs really are, and I’m also kind of confused why they would jump from teaching basic introductory phrases into teaching three (possibly seldomly used) onomatopoeia verbs, but whatever, we will continue onto the next video. If you would like to know more than these three words, I created a couple courses on memrise a while ago. The first one only has a little over 100 Japanese onomatopoeia words, and not all of them are necessarily useful, but it does include animal noises and such. The second one has over 1000 onomatopoeia words in Japanese, but I still don’t know exactly how practical most of this really is. Japanese children’s books usually contain a lot of onomatopoeia. The book, Penguin’s pillow especially had a lot of onomatopoeia words.

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