Japan invents the ghost inspection, and honestly? Five stars
What do you do with 9 million vacant homes, some avoided over 'jiko bukken' — stigmatized property — status? If you're Kazutoshi Kodama of Kachimode Co, you invent the most wonderful job of the decade: professional ghost investigator! For ¥88,000 a night, his team stays from 10pm to 6am running video, audio, electromagnetic surveys, thermography and noise checks, then hands the owner a comprehensive report certifying the place officially spirit-free. Demand, he says, is SOARING. Of course it is — it's brilliant!
And it works with the grain of everyone's feelings instead of against them. Renters get reassurance, owners get tenants, and the report comes co-signed by methodology — he works with an actual university professor of supernatural monitoring. Even AkiyaMart, selling Japan's empty rural homes, added a package where a Shinto priest performs a cleansing. 'A bit quirky, but there has been interest.' Quirky WITH interest is how every great service begins!
Best of all, look at the honesty underneath: Japanese law REQUIRES agents to disclose a property's full history to every buyer. Total transparency in real estate! Imagine!
Somewhere in Yokohama, a shuttered two-story house with an overgrown garden is one thermography report away from being someone's beloved first home. The ghosts, if any, are welcome to the housewarming. Another gift!