[decimalenough]

I'm familiar with Japan and find it quite believable.

You may be familiar with the "akiya" phenomenon, where empty houses in the Japanese countryside are sold for a song. The same applies not just to residential homes, but to other buildings as well, and their price tag is very low for the same reason: the property has serious issues and/or has been vacant for years, and will require far more than the initial investment to make habitable.

Here's a fascinating blog post by someone who went poking around the ruins of one hot spring town (Kinugawa) that went through a particularly dramatic boom and bust cycle: https://spikejapan.wordpress.com/2010/06/14/983/

This particular hotel at least appears to have been open until fairly recently, but Google reviews describe the "Showa-era" furnishings (read: 1980s at best), and it's on the fairly grim slate grey Kujukurihama beach 3.5 hours from Tokyo by train: https://maps.app.goo.gl/G53KWyCsmeUy8JyR9

[acchow]

I get that there is undesirable real estate in Japan that gets sold "for a song".

But then how does it quickly get resold at 40x?

[overfeed]

> But then how does it quickly get resold at 40x?

Because the new "owners" are buying the Business Manager visa, not the actual property.

[ludwik]

Performing 40 songs in exchange for a property does seem like serious effort...

[LorenPechtel]

Suckers who don't realize it's not worth what they're paying.

[omcnoe]

This really is a great blogpost, I'm really glad you shared it.

[ekianjo]

We are not taking about akiya here but actual businesses. A thriving business would never sell for one million yen.

[decimalenough]

What makes you think these businesses are thriving? It's scams upon scams: the Japanese mastermind buys failing businesses on the cheap, pumps up the price and sells them to Chinese people, who then proceed to use them to essentially scam residence visas from the Japanese government.

[ekianjo]

> these businesses are thriving

Maybe not thriving but they were paying salaries and bills before they were bought. They were not in a bankrupt state.

[Retric]

Not bankrupt doesn’t mean the company is actually worth anything. A large number of tiny business are still in operation because the owner is willing to work at below market rates to keep it operating.

[foundart]

Re the spikejapan blog: The author’s About page includes this line which describes my experience of the article very accurately, having bailed after a couple of minutes:

“It's a species of anti-blog, as there is no way that you'll get through a post if you suffer from any kind of attention-deficit disorder; even then, you may need a strong cup of coffee and an hour to kill.”

[eudamoniac]

Yeesh - interesting blog post, but terribly sophomoric prose, distracting and clumsy. The author is at least 40 and should know better.

[antonvs]

I respect the attempt at belletristic writing, even if it falls a bit short. If they had an editor to rein in some of the thesaurus usage it’d be fine. Not everyone appreciates the style, though.