Getting a .jp domain

I have a super common family name in Hungary: Szabo. It means tailor, and appr. 2% of Hungarians have this family name (203,126 out of 9,730,000). Thus szabo.hu, szabo.eu, szabo.com, szabo.net, szabo.info, szabo.me, szabo.xyz etc. are mostly taken. However I recently checked and szabo.jp was available! Following a Tokyo Cheapo guide I found Star Domain and bought the domain there for 2560 yen/year. (Star Domain has a referral program, so if you use this link, I might earn a little money.)

I already had hosting elsewhere, so I only needed the domain and Star Domain has a pretty straightforward DNS configurator. I read that only people in Japan can register .jp domains, so I expected some verification, but only my phone number was checked and after I paid for the domain, I could use it immediately.

Most part of the site is text based, so Google Translate makes it possible to use it without knowing too much Japanese.

Times Car TCP test

I’ve been using Times Car Share for almost half a year now, and totally love it. I’ll write a separate post about it, but yesterday I took their online quiz for some extra TCP points. As I was googleing some of the questions, I found an older set of questions, so I decided to share the latest ones.

I still think that you should try to complete the quiz alone, as it is used to ensure you are aware of how to use the service properly, but if you failed or just want to double check some answers, here they are.

Revive this blog

After being rejected from ADDress, I abandoned this blog and focused on my blog in Hungarian. However a lot has changed recently, and I feel the need of a place to publish in English. Thus I decided to reuse this blog, but shift the focus from the original digital nomad life to more general life in Japan with occasional tech related articles. For this reason I also got a new domain name: szabo.jp. Szabo (read as サボー) being my family name.

Enjoy!

No ADDress for me

So I had the screening/service-explanation interview for ADDress on August 1. Everything seemed fine, and they asked me to send an email with the desired start date, which I did right away. In the call they said the next step is signing the contract, so I was waiting for that, but they didn’t get back to me. It’s summer and people are going on holidays, so I didn’t worry in the first week. After 12 days, on August 13, I sent them a follow up email, which was also left unanswered.

I looked for a phone number on their site, but couldn’t find one. So on August 18 I went back to the interview scheduling form and scheduled an other interview for August 20. Later that day they sent me an email saying that unfortunately I failed their screening process and that they won’t provide more details on the reason:

検討の結果、誠に残念ながら今回の入会を見送りせていただくことになりました。
今回はご希望に添えず大変申し訳ございません。

ADDressのコリビングサービスは他の会員様と共同生活をする場の提供をしております。
複合的な観点から弊社独自の入会基準を設けております。今回の見送りについて基準の詳細をお伝えすることは出来かねます。大変恐縮ですが、ご了承いただけますと幸いです。

In the email they also said that because of this they are cancelling my second interview booking. I was pretty disappointed, when I first read the rejection. Then I started thinking about what to do next, and came up with a plan, that is in some respects even better than the original plan with ADDress. But that's a topic for a later post. Overall they had all the rights to reject my application, however the way they did was rather unprofessional. I wonder how long would have it taken them to tell me if I would not have scheduled the second interview.

The ADDress sign-up process

So my process of signing up for ADDress so far.

I have decided to do this end of July and completed the registration form on July 26. After confirming my email address I was asked to provide some basic details and an ID (residence card worked).

Next morning I got an email saying that my identity has been confirmed, and that I should sign up on a https://form.run/ form. This form provided more information about the dedicated place option (専用ベッドオプション) and asked about whether I want it and where, if yes. It asked about the preferred start date, some demographic information (occupation, level of remote work, where heard about ADDress). In the end it also had a question about the reason of using ADDress (ADDressに申込みをした理由). I put 自転車で全国を見たいです
. 日本語を学びたいです
. which (hopefully) means seeing the entire country by bike and learning Japanese.

After completing the form the site said that the next step is going to be a screening interview before signing the contract: 続いて、サービス利用開始に際してご契約前に、電話・オンラインによる入会審査がございます。 and that I should use one of the provided URLs to book a timeslot: 面談のご希望日時を下記のどちらか1つよりお申込みください。 I was really hoping that I’ll be able to keep all communication written as my Japanese is not there to confidently do a phone interview. So when scheduling the interview I left a comment about the fact that I can speak some Japanese, but would prefer English: 私は少し日本語が話せますが, できれば, 英語が好きです。

The interview was scheduled to August 1 10:00am. I was pretty nervous, and tried to guess what they might ask and prepared some replies about what I do, what are my plans, why I want to do this etc. After the introduction in Japanese, she offered to switch to English. She said her English is not very good, but it was absolutely good (and hands down better than my Japanese). I love Japanese service: this was advertised as a screening interview, but it was much more her explaining how the service works to me, and making sure to answer any question I might have. She talked about the fact that the contract is for a year, but can be cancelled earlier with a 2 month notice period. About the booking rules, and staying with family members. She said that most people won’t speak English, and once a foreign student ended up waiting a few hours in front of a house due to some miscommunication with the landlord of the place (and it was winter). This had the opposite effect on me: knowing that an other foreigner with limited Japanese could use the service, and the worst thing was a few hours wait is actually reassuring.

She also said that my original desired start date (August 8, next Saturday) won’t work, as there are too many people using the service right now, and they are looking into opening new locations soon. The earliest possible start date is September, and she asked me to write an email to info@address.love about when in September I’d like to start using the service. In Japanese. So after the call this is what I came up with putting the start date at the first Saturday of September:

ご担当者様

こんにちは。

本日は貴重なお時間をありがとうございました。

わたしの利用開始希望日は ９月５日 です。

お待ち申し上げております

Szabo-Simon Mark
サボーシモン マーク