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The story
On 5ch’s Newsspeed VIP board, the “Bored Old Guy” — famous for his AA (ASCII art) avatar — showed up, and the thread rambled from haggling over air conditioners and appliances to the inside scoop on investigations he used to handle as a jack-of-all-trades handyman.
What really grabbed posters’ attention was the cost of investigations: his claim that digging into someone’s property records and personal conduct yourself runs about ¥50,000, while hiring a professional agency costs ¥800,000, left the thread stunned.
What people said
./ *・ω・ヽ Bored
You really got that much free time?
__,.,,_
./ *・ω・ヽ I'm only free right now
(´・ω・`) Toshiba, I think? One size up from 40 (inches)
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./ *・ω・ヽ I want a 55-inch Regza (Toshiba TV brand)
At Costco it's been fluctuating between ¥68,000 and ¥89,000
A different gig?
__,.,,_
./ *・ω・ヽ Nah, this is my actual main job
That's a Panasonic, right?
__,.,,_
./ *・ω・ヽ Guess so
This Panasonic air conditioner
I got as a monitor freebie 5 years ago
It's slow to start and doesn't cool fast
The casing's flimsy too
Feels like Panasonic's gone downhill compared to the old days
I forget
__,.,,_
./ *・ω・ヽ I still do a bit of it
My brother recently bought me an old TV recorder
Thinking back on it now, sure it's old, but the lifespan might've been pretty short too
What was the toughest job you had as a handyman?
__,.,,_
./ *・ω・ヽ The National (Panasonic's old brand name) days were good
Around 2014 it started rattling for some reason
The tough one?
Detective work
Got it done that same evening, installation included, for ¥96,000
(´・ω・`) Apparently modern ACs are more energy-efficient but have less power than the old ones
Electricity cost is supposedly cheaper than running a hair dryer
__,.,,_
./ *・ω・ヽ For air conditioners I want the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries BEAVER home model
That one breaks down the least
Like solving mysteries?
Or affair investigations?
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./ *・ω・ヽ Two weeks of surveillance work
(´・ω・`) !! The old one was actually an AC named Beaver
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./ *・ω・ヽ Mitsubishi Electric makes Kirigamine
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries makes BEAVER
Everyone says Daikin's the best
but Daikin's pricey
BEAVER's the cheapest
Kirigamine is positioned as BEAVER's upgraded version
I guess agencies charge more
How'd the surveillance go?
__,.,,_
./ *・ω・ヽ Pointing a telephoto camera at the apartment building across the street
to track down the affair partner
I hear specialists in that field charge a ton
Or maybe you just didn't realize it went that far?
__,.,,_
./ *・ω・ "Or maybe you just didn't realize it went that far?"
Meaning?
I meant affair/infidelity investigation firms
They apparently charge quite a lot
__,.,,_
./ *・ω・ヽ Hm?
You mean the cost?
Or the fee for hiring them?
Saw it on TV — worst case it runs into the millions of yen
__,.,,_
./ *・ω・ヽ I see
Honestly, you can do the investigating yourself
The only ones who can't are either clueless about this stuff (johaku, "info-weak")
or people who won't even try
or people who just don't have the energy
Looked like he was having fun
__,.,,_
./ *・ω・ヽ Mahjong's about luck and strategy
It's a different beast from gacha (lootbox gambling), which is pure luck
It's perfect for killing time, after all
Hey, hospital guy — you still in there?!?! Huh?
If you've got the energy, an affair investigation's a piece of cake
What you can't do alone is stuff like breakup agencies (wakaresase-ya, professional relationship-wreckers) or honeytraps for when you want alimony but don't have real grounds for divorce
__,.,,_
./ *・ω・ヽ Back in the day I handled a personal case digging into someone's real estate
Doing it myself cost about ¥50,000
Hiring it out was about ¥800,000
__,.,,_
./ *・ω・ヽ Kuma-tan (the bear-emoji poster)
Kuma-tan, that job's about the level of a Silver Human Resource Center (senior-citizen job-placement service) gig
Hey, there's that bear bastard again 🐻
Hey you bastard, if you don't hurry up and learn this, Kashiwa and Observation Deck, those yakuza bastards, are gonna rough you up, you bastard
__,.,,_
./ *・ω・ヽ HAHAHA
Re: #100
__,.,,_
./ *・ω・ヽ Not yakuza
Though it might be a shady kind of business
__,.,,_
./ *・ω・ヽ Anyway, go download MJ (a mahjong game)
Background and Key Points
Japan’s private-investigation trade sits on a much lower regulatory bar than English-speaking readers might assume. Since a 2007 law, anyone opening a “tantei” (探偵) agency only has to file a notification with the prefectural police — there’s no licensing exam, no mandated training. That’s part of why prices swing so wildly, from the thread’s citied hundreds of thousands of yen up into the millions for extended surveillance. Digging into property ownership, meanwhile, is genuinely a DIY-able task in Japan: the touki (登記) real-estate registry is public, and a certified copy of who owns a given lot or building costs a few hundred yen at the local Legal Affairs Bureau — no subpoena, no gatekeeping, just a form and a small fee.
The thread doesn’t really argue over facts so much as over who the ¥800,000 markup is for. The poster’s line — that only the “johaku” (information-weak), the unmotivated, or the exhausted pay a professional — is presented as settled, and no one seriously pushes back on it; the disagreement is more about scope, as other posters steer the conversation toward wakaresase-ya (paid “breakup agents”) and alimony-motivated honeytraps, which the poster concedes are a different, murkier tier of service he wouldn’t do himself.
What’s missing from the exchange is any mention of legal risk. Japan’s 2000 stalker-regulation law criminalizes exactly the kind of unlicensed telephoto surveillance the poster describes doing himself; agencies charge partly for staying inside that line. And the ¥50,000-versus-¥800,000 contrast is one ex-handyman’s decades-old anecdote, not a market rate.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Newsspeed VIP) thread “./ *・ω・ヽ The Bored Old Guy.”
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