His house is pretty nice. Surrounded by oil wells and loaded with classic cars. It takes some serious money to live like that in L.A. Where did he get all of his bux? Not by being a maintenance guy in some crummy apartment complex. Also, he has a cot in his shed at the apartment, but he lives in that cool house. If he can't drive, how did the pickup show up at the apartment?
shareHe gets a salary from the owner of the apartment complex.
He doesn't do his job as a maintenance man, letting the pool deteriorate, allowing the plumbing and faucets to fall apart, etc. Instead, he likely skims from the maintenance fund that was intended to keep the apartment complex in good shape. He also steals tools and materials for his own use. He may even have a credit card to buy supplies and which he uses to purchase lumber, paint, tools, etc. for his own use.
He gets a special pension for those who have received the Medal of Honor ($1,100 a month?)
He probably steals a few bucks here and there when he is in the apartments doing "repairs".
He may have a cash stash he stole from Sato's father when he fled Okinawa like a coward.
He is not above theft, as seen when he steals the black belt from the gym bag of the poor tournament official.
I thought those grasshopper oil wells that we're all over his property might have had something to do with his income. Maybe he's rolling in oil royalty money and does the maintenance gig just to keep busy.
shareIf that was true he would have started his dream bonsai business without Daniels college funds.
If those pen pushers up at city hall don't like it,well, they swivel on this middle digit!
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Valid point
shareMiyagi has for the most part stopped buying since the 1950's, due to the cars in his parking lot. Before the 1980's, any common working man could afford to live decent in L.A. In the 1940's and 1950's; Southern California was the land of milk and honey, not an overpriced, overcrowded, overwhelmingly fake and superficial people hellhole like it is now. So more than likely Miyagi got a VA pension for his service, maybe had a decent job way back when, but gradually slipped into depression and apathy over many years of loneliness.
shareMedal of honor? He fought on the side of the Japanese!
shareNo. He fought for the USA. He was a member of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, one of the most decorated units in the war.
shareYeah some minor problems with that story. How did he emigrate here in 1942 AFTER Pearl Harbor? Proclamation 2525 suspended Japanese immigration. According to the story of the fictional My Myagi he came to the USA at age 17 and he was born in 1925.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Miyagi
Another problem is that the 442nd was made up of 2nd generation Japanese Americans not people just off the boat from Japan.
They keep messing up with Miyagis birth year. In KK3 I think it was presumed he was just about retirement age 64/65. The problem is, people take that as he would have been born in 1924/5 because theKK3 movie was 1989. But the movie is set in 1985. If we take that and Miyagis presumed age 64/5, that would actually mean he was born 1920/21. Meaning that if he made his way to the US at age 17/18 this would have occurred in 1937/8, before war had even broken out in Europe.
As for 442nd, let's just put that down to artistic licence eh?
Ah yes, the good old days when you could actually make a decent living and save up and get a nice house with a labor job.
shareBack in the day, things were much cheaper. Plus, there were more opportunities and ways of getting a nice house back then. He might've inherited, won, or been awarded the land and built the house himself, who knows. The cars are very old, and possibly relatively cheap back in the day, when they weren't considered valuable antique.
As a maintenance man, he knows how to build and maintain everything in good shape, so I don't see anything impossible about any of it.
as another poster pointed out. He's probably owned it since the 1950's. It's probably completely paid off.
FYI: He never said he couldn't drive. Just that he doesn't have a license.
STFU he is a mystic!
Stop being racist!