In theory this would hopefully reduce my monthly rent costs and my payments would go to the new 2nd property to build equity.

So, I make more money by reducing vacancy/turnover and having fewer tenant issues more than by collecting additional income from the pets. 

This prevents them from reducing rent, signing new 5-year leases on tenants you didn't want to keep, or other shenanigans.4.

This approach helps ensure that buyers have a clear understanding of what they are purchasing, reducing the likelihood of surprises and issues later in the process.Of course, this is market location and cycle dependant.

Your gain will be Sales price less sales expenses(Commissions, closing costs) less Adjusted basis.Your Adjusted basis will be Purchase Price plus Improvements less accumulated depreciation.Depending on how you categorized the improvements / furnishings will determine how you will calculate your gain.If you already took depreciation / expenses for the furnishings, you can't also count it towards basis to reduce your gain.Best of luck.

You can trade yourself, you can hire a financial advisor, but either way if you want to keep your money, you should be watching what your investments are doing, otherwise how would you know if you should be reducing your position in certain stocks, or if your advisor isn't giving you terrible advice.

The con of this though is that the monthly payment is much higher, thus reducing my cash flow significantly (if anything).Since I am somewhat new to real estate, I know there are more variables to consider like appreciation, or refinancing or HELOC down the road.

Has anyone found a way to reduce/limit Japanese capital gains tax in such situations? 

If you screen the tenants well that’s the key to reducing the amount of time spent managing the property.  

Notify the seller of any large issues you find so that it must be disclosed to subsequent buyers which could reduce subsequent sell price and would provide some incentive for the seller to meet you somewhere in the middle.