A room with a sorta view

Several months ago we looked at house in Sakura, Chiba Prefecture that was built in the early 90s. It was on the side of a fairly steep hill and commanded a view of Inba Marsh to the northeast; or, at least, that was what the info at various real estate portal sites implied. The place had already been on the market for almost six months, and when we noticed that the price had been cut for the second time we thought we might take a look at it. Originally, it was about ¥18 million and now it was ¥13 million.

The owners were still living there, but the agent said it would be no problem to look at it. Inspecting properties where people still live isn’t much fun and usually not very helpful. Though you can get some idea of the functionality of a place by seeing how people live in it, those people’s mode of living is always very different from our own, so there’s nothing to gain from it. We have to imagine ourselves in this place without all their stuff.

This particular house was even worse than we could imagine, since the photos on the web didn’t include interior shots. The residents didn’t even bother to clean up and we walked through bedrooms (they have two kids) with laundry thrown on the floor and a kitchen so cramped and cluttered there didn’t seem to be anywhere to stand. Even the “view” that the portal site had publicized turned out to be nothing. The only vista was from one of the bedrooms. It was impossible to tell how much work the place would need since it was difficult to see the floors and walls.

We promptly crossed it off our list and would have forgotten about it completely but it remained on the market and thus on all the portal sites we checked regularly. Last week we noticed that the owner had decreased the price again, this time to ¥8.9 million, which is quite a drop. That means the asking price is now about half what it was when it first went on sale. The agent let on that the family couldn’t move until they sold this house, but if that’s the case they are going to have to do something more than just keep cutting the price. Maybe the house is unsellable anyway, but in this market, which is filling up with older homes all the time, a low price isn’t enough. This particular house isn’t that close to the station. Would a better “presentation” help? It couldn’t hurt, but in any case it’s hard to imagine that there is a buyer out there who would want to buy such a place.

Interestingly, one of the most expensive housing developments in Japan is in a relatively remote corner of Chiba. The Azumigaoka New Town is part of Chiba City’s Midori Ward, but the nearest train station is Toke on JR’s Sotobo Line, which means it’s practically in Ichihara. The exclusivity of portions of the new town development, coupled with the unusually large plots of land contained therein, have earned at least two subdivisions in the area–Prestige and One Hundred Hills–the nickname Chibaley Hills, a takeoff on Beverley Hills. We’ve never seen this neighborhood with our own eyes since, as with the real Beverley Hills, the residents discourage tourists and gawkers by restricting access. When it first opened the development got a lot of media attention, which in turn attracted motorcycle gangs, so now they have a patrol that politely keeps out pedestrians who have no business there. Nevertheless, you can find properties in the area on sale at almost any real estate portal site, and they remain pretty expensive, though certainly not as high as they were when they were first built during the bubble era. What’s considered a super luxury in Japan would be more or less upper middle class in the U.S., essentially backyards big enough to provide privacy, two or more bathrooms, and lots of windows and open floor plans. We even saw one property at a realtor’s site with a swimming pool.

Azumigaoka was developed by Tokyu, whose real estate projects in the Tokyo Metropolitan area differ from those of its rival Seibu, which tends to think in terms of monopolistic synergy. Seibu housing projects are all built along Seibu railway lines that invariably teminate at a Seibu department store or supermarket. Tokyu has built plenty of housing developments that have no connetion to their railroads, and for that reason they tend to have a reputation for higher class properties, even if those properties adhere to the cramped tradition of Japanese subdivisions. Azumigaoka is an exception. More characteristic of the company’s methodology is Kiminomori, whose nearest train station is Oami, the next station south from Toke on the Sotobo Line.

Kiminomori was also developed during and after the bubble period, but it hasn’t retained as much of its original upscale image, though it contains some ostentatious properties. It’s built in and around several golf courses, with the most expensive properties overlooking fairways. In between you get large homes with a more Western style sense but still built on postage-stamp plots. We’ve heard that the landscaping design was carried out by a California company, but the effect is mostly clutter since there isn’t enough space between homes to seed a decent patch of turf; which isn’t to say it isn’t attractive, only that there’s sometimes a fine line between tasteful and tacky depending on the shrubbery a property owner plants.

We have friends who live in Kiminomori but so far we had avoided the area for house-hunting purposes; not because it’s out of our price range. On the contrary, in certain sections of the development, which is very large, there were houses going for as little as ¥14 million, which is a third of what they cost new 20 years ago. Granted, most of the properties for sale were more expensive but not by much, and quite a few, we noticed, took a long time to find new owners. The main reason we weren’t interested in the area is that it’s definitely a car community. It takes 10-15 minutes by bus to get to Oami Station, which means a bike ride of 5-10 minutes or a 20-25-minute walk, but it’s all downhill. That means walking or biking back would be a real chore. But there are buses that circulate through the development and go directly to Tokyo. They’re pretty cheap and run more often than you might expect. Also, the elevation means that the ground is fairly stable in an earthquake and there aren’t a lot of terraced properties to shift in the event of a big one.

However, there was one house in Kiminomori South that had been on sale for about a year that intrigued us. Kiminomori South is newer than the rest of the development. This particular house was built in the early 00s, and had been bought by a real estate company at auction, meaning that the person who built it had defaulted on his/her loan. The buyer carried out the usual cosmetic changes and put it on the market for ¥16.8 million. The layout was unusual–a large LDK area on the first floor that included a “slate-floored hall” next to a regular bedroom with a huge walk-in closet, and one large room on the second floor with its own toilet and sink attached. It was also on a corner. We made an appointment with an agent–Tokyu Livable, of course–and while we were there we figured we’d check out at least one other house that was built in the 90s.

We took a taxi from Oami Station that deposited us at a 7-11 inside the south part of Kiminomori. Walking to the property we saw a lot of empty lots, some with signs indicating that construction of a house would begin shortly, but most seemingly unsold. The house we were interested in was on a corner overlooking an island of empty lots that looked as if it would make more sense as a neighborhood park due to its triangular shape. Unfortunately it was to the north of the house, and there didn’t seem to be any windows facing it. The southern exposure faced two houses at close proximity, which means only the second floor would get sunshine all day. The salesman arrived and opened the place up. The new owner, which was not Tokyu Livable, had repapered the walls and replaced the floors. With all the shutters open it was quite bright, though the only unblocked vista was to the east, and the vacant lot there would soon have a new house on it. We liked the LDK since it was so big, and though the floor of the sunken “hall” in front of the sliding glass doors wasn’t slate, the ceramic tiles were a nice touch and would keep the room cool in the summer. But since there was no “backyard” to speak of, we weren’t sure what the purpose of this hall was, and when we asked the salesman why he thought the original owner had installed it he confessed ignorance. In fact, he didn’t know anything about the construction of the house, who the original owner was, or how much the new owner had spent on reform and what exactly the reform entailed. To us these were important considerations, and not just because we wanted to put them in our blog. We still find it strange that there are no industry rules that require salesmen to provide potential customers with at least all the renovation information data on a property.

The big room on the second floor wasn’t as interesting as it looked on the Internet, and as we mentioned there was no north window to provide ventilation since the closet and the bathroom took up all the space on the north side. It was a custom-made house whose interesting design purposes nevertheless escaped us but whose orientation cancelled out its peculiar charms. The salesman didn’t seem to have any opinion on why the seller hadn’t reduced the ¥16.8 million price tag after a year on the market.

The second property was deeper into the development, in an older section where the houses looked more standardized, as if they had all been built by the same company. The distinctive feature they all had in common was a small wood deck attached to the living-dining area. This house was bigger than the previous one and cheaper, probably because it was about 10 years older, and it, too, had been renovated, at least partially. The floors in the second floor bedrooms had not been replaced and the veneer was starting to peel. Here, the southern exposure faced the street, but the other three sides were closely boxed in. Again, there were no windows on the north side of the house, even on the second floor. Though it wasn’t as drab as some houses its age we’d seen, it was distinctly unexceptional considering the Kiminomori image and we wondered what the protocols were for keeping the outward appearance of the neighborhood up to standards. Later, while walking over to the slightly more upscale Kiminomori East section we noticed how the clothes-drying apparatuses ubiquitous in Japan were less noticeable but still in evidence. Many upscale condominiums prohibit residents from drying their laundry on their balconies in order to maintain appearances. Where there were balconies here they looked like real balconies and not just drying platforms in the sun. But people tried to make them function as such and the result was even more ridiculous: elegant verandas with bedding draped awkwardly over the sides. The closer we got to the golf course, the more land each property commanded and laundry became easy to hide.

We also wanted to look at a few empty lots near Honda Station on the Sotobo Line and decided to walk the distance to Toke to catch the train. At the western edge of Kiminomori the landscape apruptly changed to agriculture with no intermediate, lower income suburban sprawl as a buffer zone. It was an instructive contrast, especially since the farmland was so beautiful, stretching out in all directions on rolling hills. Regardless of how much money the residents of Kiminomori sunk into their exclusive properties, they will never have the vistas or sense of open space that these farmers do. Some of the farmhouses were like mansions, with huge windows overlooking their domains. Farmers have it really good in Japan, since they get tax breaks for their land. Who needs Beverley Hills when you have an unobstructed sunrise every morning and an unobstructed sunset every evening.

For us, however, the visit was purely for research purposes. The house was well-made but the basic design and overall aesthetic was dully conventional: boxy rooms, white walls, nondescript fixtures. Of course, the buyer could pay more and make the improvements he liked, which is the whole point, but given what there was to begin with we weren’t inspired. Moreover, the company seemed to limit its land selection to cramped housing developments, specifically orphan lots that hadn’t been sold after a particular development had been opened for sale.

In fact, the visit wouldn’t be worth mentioning if not for one feature that stood out so prominently it seemed to define the house. The owner, whom the agent told us was a “foreigner,” had exercised his design option by installing a separate shower stall on the second floor, in addition to the usual unit bath on the first floor. Stand-alone showers aren’t very common in Japan, certainly not as common as they are in the U.S. or Europe, but you do occasionally see them. What made this one odd was that it was built off the second floor hallway. It was designed almost like a closet: there was a folding door, beyond which was a capsule-style unit shower. There was no space for changing clothes, you just stepped directly from the hallway into the shower. There was also a toilet on the second floor, but as is the Japanese custom it had its own separate room, and was down the hall from the shower. The second floor also had two bedrooms. Japanese houses usually don’t provide a distinctive “master bedroom” in the sense of a room with its own attached bathroom, but the larger bedroom in this house had a huge walk-in closet that was positioned adjacent to the shower stall but didn’t connect to it.

We asked the agent why the owner didn’t put the shower stall in the bedroom or made an entrance to the shower from the walk-in closet. She said that they had another customer who did just that, but such a design change was very expensive and didn’t fit within the overall budget of the person who ordered this house; which is a reasonable explanation but all we could imagine is family members and weekend guests dripping water everywhere as they walked naked around the house (there was a third bedroom on the first floor) after taking a shower. The agent, noting our bemusement, remarked, “Yes, it is strange, isn’t it?”

A recent article in Aera, however, has confirmed our initial sentiments. Opening with a frightening “what-if” scenario describing a 7.3 magnitude quake happening under the capital, the feature makes the case that even though these highrises will not collapse, life will essentially be impossible in them indefinitely. The most immediate concern, and the one that made the biggest impression on us in the aftermath of the 311 quake, whose epicenter was hundreds of kilometers away, was the loss of elevators, which shut down automatically when a building shakes. According to law, they can only be turned on by a certified technician, which means even when the shaking stops residents will have to wait for that technician to show up, and he may be inspecting other highrises. This problem multiplies with the intensity of the jolt. And if the quake is strong enough to knock out electricity, then the elevator problem is exacerbated. Under such circumstances, the residents on higher floors become like “people stranded on the top of a mountain in bad weather.” The idea of walking down and then up emergency stairways to run errands or whatever is just impractical, and virtually impossible for the elderly, the handicapped, and pregnant women. Most highrises have emergency generators, but these are for contingencies and thus only have enough power for maybe two hours. So if the elevators are out due to loss of power, that means the stairways are also dark. And even if the building structure is sound, some elements, such as doorframes, could be compromised, making it difficult to get out of an apartment. All highrises have emrgency ladders connecting verandas for use during fires, but it will be very difficult to use them to get all the way to the ground. The Tokyo metropolitan government has said that in the event of a major quake their estimate is that it will take at least a week to recover electrical power. Also, highrise residents will likely be lower down on the list of people receiving attention during rescue operations because of the difficulty for crews to access higher floors. Emergency services will first attend to victims they can reach more easily.

One of the reasons people believe that Japanese highrises are so safe in a major earthquake is because very few have actually gone through one. It wasn’t until the late 1970s that residential apartment buildings of more than ten stories were built in Tokyo and other major cities, and according to Prof. Koichi Nakagawa of Osaka City Univ. experts can only guess what will happen to them if a major quake occurs in their vicinity. There are three general types of quake-proofing construction: taishin, meaning the structure itself absorbs the energy; menshin, meaning the structure has shock absorbers in the foundation; and seishin, meaning the actual building material absorbs the energy. These technologies are designed to prevent the structure from collapsing and, especially for menshin and seishin, to minimize swaying on the upper floors, but there are two types of vibrations caused by earthquakes, long cycle (choshuki) and short cycle (tanshuki). Tanshuki vibrations are more readily felt and tend to last only about 20 seconds. This sort of vibration characterized the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995, which caused a great deal of damage close to the ground. Choshuki vibrations are less noticeable physically but since they last longer they cause more damage on the upper levels of highrises, which sway much more. During the 311 quake, the top floors of the Sakashima government building in Osaka, which is 52 stories high and located 500 kilometers from the quake’s epicenter, swayed up to 2.7 meters in either direction. Ceiling panels fell to the floor and more than 360 points of damage were recorded. Moveover, any major quake will inevitably be followed by aftershocks, which could do more damage to individual units. This was our main anxiety after the 311 quake. Every day there were aftershocks, some strong enough to knock out the elevators again and generally just working on our nerves.

Even if there is no damage to your own condo unit, highrise living becomes much more difficult in the aftermath of a disaster. If there is no electricity there is no water pressure, meaning no drinking water or flush toilet usage. Rooftop water tanks might be damaged as well as exterior pipes. One highrise in Sendai had problems with leaky pipes, and raw sewage from the upper floors flooded units on the lower floors. Residents will have to keep their personal waste in buckets on the balcony because there will be nowhere to dump it.

But another consideration that the article brought up, and one that we became acutely aware of the very day of the 311 quake, is that highrise residents “are usually the kind of people who don’t have relationships with their neighbors.” Communication and cooperation are essential in a disaster, and there was virtually none in the building we lived in. It seems to be why people move into highrises–to be left alone.

The existence of such new homes made ¥15 million seem like a lot for the house we had been interested in, so we did a search and found several developments in northern Chiba where brand new homes were being sold at prices below what we had come to think was the average for used homes. Two were in Shiroi on the Hokuso Line, each about 15-20 minutes from the nearest station. In one development they were going for as low as ¥13.7 million and the other as low as ¥14.8 million, which is dirt cheap considering that new homes in the same area with the same floor space and land area, and probably less in terms of fixtures and amenities, were likely going for ¥30-40 in the early 1990s. Of course, comparing anything real estate-wise to the late 80s/early 90s in Japan is a chump’s game, but it does provide a perspective that’s instructive when it comes to making priorities.

Ours weren’t significantly altered when we took a ride to see these two developments. The first was fairly large and had construction begun only on a small portion, but it was proceeding quickly. Predictably, the houses were positioned very close together and little if no attention was being paid to orientation. Since the structures were all of the same general design, the sides that were supposed to face “north” invariably contained all the mizu-mawari functions, such as the kitchen and bathroom, and very few windows, which were all frosted or pebbled. It didn’t matter if the north had some sort of clear vista and the south was right up against the neighbor’s north (thus shutting out some of the precious sunlight that provide the reason for having southern exposures in the first place). None of the houses were open for inspection yet, so we could only judge the quality from the exterior: uniform beige siding in a variety of styles, from fake-looking brick to fake-looking mortar to fake-looking shingle. In once house we looked at the caulking between the siding panels already seemed to be loose and protruding.

The other development was on the other side of the tracks and because it was more convenient in relation to the station the houses were on average about a million yen more. These were even more tightly packed, but since there were only three rows and to the south was a pear orchard and to the north a rice field, if you didn’t buy a house in the cramped middle row you’d get some relief from having to stare at your neighbors’ walls all day. That said, the pear orchard was separated from the development by netting on which the owner had affixed signs stating that agricultural chemicals were used in the cultivation of the fruit, and that there would be “strange smells” and “noise.” It was certainly nice of the orchard owner to provide this information for potential buyers, though we suspect the real reason is that the owner disapproved of the development in the first place. We’re sure there’s a long and much more interesting story behind the signs, but in any event most of the houses were already sold, so agrichemicals be damned! (This reminded us of when we lived in Kawasaki near a house with a small vegetable garden that had a sign for potential tomato thiefs: “Pesticides used: May be dangerous to eat”) There were no salesmen around so we couldn’t see inside. We had called one of the related realtors beforehand who offered to show us one of only two houses still available but all we wanted was the address. (As it turns out, this development wasn’t the one we intended to see, meaning that there was another cheapo housing development not far away. These things are springing up like mushrooms after the rain) Maybe because the development was farther along it looked more presentable–slate paths between the houses, some rudimentary landscaping–but the houses were just as cheap-looking as the ones we’d seen earlier. The only difference was that the windows were a little bigger.

A week later we rode over to Usui, in Sakura, not far from where that house we were interested in was located. In an area called Usiudai, on the top of a hill, was another new development with half a dozen cheap new houses. This particular area was already developed, and the neighborhood had a pleasing ramshackle atmosphere characterized by older plots of small farmland and patches of forest and vegetation. The development had been carved out of a sliver of land that lined one road, so all six houses were positioned in a row along the road, north-to-south. When we arrived there was no one there, though we had been given to believe three of the houses were open for inspection. In any case there were no other lookers, and then we discovered the salesperson sitting in her car in one of the driveways, apparently to get out of the cold. She emerged when she realized why we were there and seemed half-grateful-half-put-out, as if relieved she had something to show for a day’s work (even if it was only the questionnaire we filled out) but irked that we took her away from her novel.

So far, only two of the houses had been sold, the two on the far south end. The farther north a house was located, the cheaper it was, and the cheapest was ¥15.8, though the woman hinted to us that the price could easily be bargained down, thus indicating the developer (whom she didn’t work for–her boss was one of the realtors in charge of sales) either didn’t have as much confidence in the appeal of these houses of was itching to get rid of them as soon as possible. From the outside, they looked better than anything we had seen in Shiroi, and there was more space to the west and east of the houses, though not a whole lot of air between them. The layouts were almost all the same. The first floor contained a large living-dining-kitchen area on the west side with an eight-mat tatami room between it and the foyer. The bathroom area was on the north side. The second floor contained three rooms laid out in parallel, all with southern exposures. It was all very new and rather drab, with conventional veneer flooring and the kind of spongey white wallpaper that housing companies think everybody likes. We were less impressed with the standard double-glazed windows and full insulation (according to the salesperson’s pitch) than we would have been a year ago, mainly because the workmanship seemed less than good. There was plenty of closet space, but when you looked closely inside you could see where the dry wall wasn’t properly fitted. There were small gaps in the corners where the joints weren’t plumb. If you tapped the interiors of the closet they made a flimsy, hollow sound, and the nail heads were conspicuous, as if the carpenters (or, more likely “framers,” since the house was apparently assembled from a kit) didn’t care if you saw them. All we could think of was all those 15-20-year-old houses we’d inspected that already seemed unlivable because the construction was so shoddy. On the surface, these houses looked fine, but you could guess that within five or ten years they’d look as cheap as they were. Though location has much to do with it, there was a reason they weren’t selling as fast as the developer hoped, and why that other, older house we’d been interested in had eventually found a buyer. (More information about this subject is included in our most recent Home Truths column in the Japan Times.)

Kobe 1997

While victims of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami continue to struggle with housing issues almost two years into their ordeal, a group of refugees from an earlier natural disaster has been given notice that they will soon be on their own. Ever since the 18th anniversary on Jan. 17 of the Great Hanshin Earthquake, various media have reported on the notifications distributed by local governments to residents of 6,600 rental units saying that they have two years to vacate their apartments. These people were living in public housing for low-income residents when the earthquake struck in 1995, and most of their dwellings were destroyed, so the governments of Hyogo Prefecture and six cities made contracts with private landlords. The residents paid as much rent as they could in accordance with their incomes and the local governments made up the rest. The deal was limited to 20 years, which means that between 2015 and 2017, depending on when they moved in, the tenants will have to move out of their current apartments, either to public housing or somewhere else. Most of these people are elderly, and the public housing (shiei jutaku) that has been built in the meantime tends to be located far from where they presently live. They are reluctant to move at their age, having formed bonds with their neighborhoods and their neighbors, which are extremely important in terms of mental and physical well-being.

The authorities say they have given the tenants ample notice. According to an article in the Tokyo Shimbun, announcements were first distributed in 2010, and the contracts the residents signed when they first moved is stipulated the 20-year limit, though supporters of the tenants point out that this term is vaguely stated and buried in small print. Most of the apartment buildings were hastily constructed by developers right after the earthquake in anticipation of just such a need for low-income housing. With local governments guaranteeing the rents of tenants, it was a virtual goldmine for landlords, which include semi-public housing juggernaut UR, and one can easily imagine that the landlords are fully supportive of the residents who are protesting the pending evictions since they themselves will lose revenue as a result–the rental housing market is not in good shape. The mayor of Nishinomiya recently received a petition with 3,251 signatures.

The local governments have said there’s nothing they can do about the situation since the 20-year limit is built into the civil code and Public Housing Law, even though the law itself was revised right after the earthquake to allow commercial properties to be used for public housing (kariage fukko jutaku). Some media, including the Japan Communist Party organ Akahata, mention that the controversy has ramifications for the current situation in Tohoku. As in Hyogo, private developers have been invited to build rental housing for people who lost homes to the tsunami or nuclear disaster, and apparently the authorities learned their lessons in Kobe because they are explaining to tenants that there is a 20-year limit. Of course, in Tohoku there are considerations that people in Kobe didn’t have to worry about, so at the moment a 20-year lease may be the least of their problems.

For sale? No thanks

As we’ve looked at properties over the years we’ve invariably absorbed certain truths that don’t require statistics to verify. One of these is that Japanese single family homes are very large in proportion to the amount of land they occupy. I’m sure someone has done a study using ratios of land to floor area, and I’m also sure that Japan is probably high on the list of countries where the rate is the smallest. This situation, of course, explains the cramping not only in suburbs but in rural neighborhoods that undergo residential development. Another certain truth that may be more difficult to prove is that Japanese have more stuff in relation to the amount of storage space available. The clutter of residential subdivisions is mirrored by the clutter inside individual homes, but more to the point it is characterized by one particular item that almost every property features: the tool shed.

In Japanese they’re called monooki, which literally means a place to put things. Sheds are hardly unique to Japan, but because of the aforementioned cramped conditions they are unavoidable, ubiquitous eyesores. Most are grey and metallic, which is bad enough, but because land is such a premium and people who build houses naturally want at much interior space as they can get, sheds take up a great deal of whatever exterior space is left over. We have seen so many properties that looked OK, and then we looked out a window and–BAM!–there’s a shed blocking whatever vista that window might look out upon. And it doesn’t always belong to the property we’re checking. Once we were inspecting a house in Nishi Shiroi in a very well-tended residential neighborhood. The kitchen had a nice corner window that looked out on the leafy walkway that separated the rows of houses, but the scene was totally destroyed because the neighbor had erected a shed on the edge of his property that interfered with the view. Obviously, anyone who bought this house would have to contend with that big, grey box and we mentioned this to the realtor, and he pointed out, quite naturally, that there was nothing anyone could do about it since the shed was on someone else’s property. This seemed strange to us, because there are lots of local property laws that regulate what sort of windows you must install to protect privacy and how much sunlight you have a right to and where the driveway should be positioned so as not to bother neighbors, but there seems to be no law regulating the placement of monooki.

So we’ve concluded that it’s us, not everyone else, because sheds are so common it must mean people actually like them. (They need them to store tools? Most people don’t have gardens big enough to justify that many tools) Last week, we rode past a relatively new housing development with near-identical houses lined up in neat rows, and every one had an identical grey shed positioned in the exact same spot on the property, as if it were a standard fixture they were proud of. There is a house not far from where we live with what should be a pleasant southern exposure except that there is not one but two large sheds situated in front of what we assume is the living room sliding doors. The only reason we can think of for this unbelievably bad choice is that there is a public road to the south of the house and the occupants don’t want passers-by to look in their living room window. We understand their desire for greater privacy, but that’s why curtains were invented.

Though land prices have fallen since the bubble period, it’s still pretty expensive anywhere within, say, two hours of Tokyo. We’re not commuters so we don’t need to be on a main train line, but we do need to be on some train line. We started our search at the bottom, in two areas not that far from where we live and which we’ve come to know through our house-hunting inspections in the past year-and-a-half: northern Chiba along the Narita line, and south of where we live now, along the Keisei Hon-sen through Sakura. As it turned out there were more than a few very cheap properties that were still large enough for our purposes. By cheap, we’re talking ¥5 million or less, and for that price you definitely have to give up something. In some cases, the plot isn’t properly developed, meaning it may not have sewage or gas lines extended into the property itself. Also, cheap plots tend to be holdouts in sub-divisions that are already mostly filled, meaning no one wants them but the developer is desperate. The lot might be stuck in a dark corner of the neighborhood or have problems with access, which isn’t a concern for us because we don’t have a car, but sunlight is one of our priorities. Then there’s the state of the lot itself. Some appear to require a great deal of “preparation” before they could have a house constructed on them, and we have no idea how much that would cost.

We inspected four plots in Sakura without the aid of realtors. We simply found the properties on the web and and called the agents for the addresses. The first two lots were not far from the Usui house we have been looking at, and both were located at higher elevations, which is what we want, though they also happened to have addresses with the name Usui-da (Usui-den?), which makes it sound like they should be near rice paddies. The first plot was in a very nice old neighborhood where the houses weren’t so tightly packed together and which had a commanding view of Inba-numa to the north. However, the land itself was located at the end of a narrow private road and surrounded by dense bamboo growth to the east, a tall two-story house to the north, and a retaining wall to the south. No sunlight there, thus explaining the ¥3.9 million price tag, which we had already been told was marked down from ¥5.9 million.

The second lot was in a more densely populated subdivision, but on the edge of a ridge with a nice view of rice fields to the east. Considering how big the land was–239 square meters–¥5 million sounded like a steal…until we saw it. Apparently, a house used to stand on this lot, and the fact that it didn’t any more should have impressed us. Almost any house in Japan that’s over 25 years old has no value, so if you buy one you’re essentially paying only for the land, which means you have to pay extra to have the house torn down if it’s only the land you want. So it was nice of whoever used to live here to have gotten of the structure–but they left the foundation. Also, the realtor had told us on the phone that gas lines and sewage (gessui) only came up to the edge of the property and it would probably cost another ¥700,000 to have them extended. Obviously, even before construction could begin a lot of expense would be involved. In any case, the view in all directions wasn’t that great.

The third property was near Keisei Sakura station; only six minutes away, in fact, which made us wonder how it could only be ¥3 million. We had some difficulty getting an address from the realtor, who was located in Nakano, Tokyo. The agent in charge was a woman whose handy bio on the company’s home page revealed that her hobby was “growing bananas.” In any case, it took several calls before the banana lady was free enough to fax us a totally useless map and a partial address, but we’ve been through this enough to know how to use such sketchy information, and were able to locate the lot, which happened to be at the top of a bluff overlooking the railroad tracks. At first, we mistook another vacant lot for the one we were looking for, but after looking it over we concluded it was too large to be that one and walked up a little farther and found it at the end of another narrow private drive. Interestingly, it was completely covered in asphalt. It had an amazing view to the north and the west, but houses in close proximity to the south and the east. We understood why no one had scooped up this prize yet: once a house, even a very small one, was built on the lot there would be no room for a parking space. The lot was about 100 square meters, and the occupancy rate was 60%, which means the footprint of the house couldn’t be more than 60 square meters, which isn’t bad since the capacity rate was 200%, but it doesn’t leave room for much else. And how much would it cost to rip up all that asphalt?

The last lot was at the bottom of the bluff, right across a narrow street from the train tracks. Maybe it was the noise from the Keisei Line; maybe it was the retaining wall on the south of the property holding up a small parking lot; maybe it was the puny 79 square meters you got for your money; but in any case it only cost ¥1.9 million, and by the looks of the weeds and the weathering on the huge for sale sign it appeared this lot had been begging for a buyer for quite some times. It would have to beg a bit longer. For less than ¥5 million, you get what you pay for.

Sakura city office

In the weeks since we visited the house in Usui we have, indeed, thought a lot about it, and our interest has blown hot and cold. Though we like the layout and the unblocked view to the south, we’re still not sold on the location. Keisei Usui Station is 20-25 minutes away on foot, and the train takes about an hour and fifteen minutes to get to central Tokyo. It’s considerably cheaper than the Hokuso Line, which we use now, and there are more trains per hour, but the Hokuso Line gets directly to the heart of Tokyo in about an hour and is never very crowded, even during rush hour. And it only takes us about 7 minutes to get from our front door to the platform. Of course, the train isn’t a monumental consideration since neither of us goes into Tokyo more than twice a week. Then there’s Usui itself, which as a bedroom town is older than Inzai and experienced the kind of suburban sprawl that plagued most Tokyo bedroom towns developed in the 60s and 70s, while Inzai was better planned and has more parks and open spaces. That said, Inzai is also somewhat antiseptic and lacks the kind of character older Japanese communities offer. Usui was incorporated into the larger city of Sakura some years ago and Sakura is one of the great castle towns of the Kanto region. Parts of it are quite beautiful and well-preserved, it’s just that those parts are not in Usui.

The more practical concerns have to do with the house and the land it sits on. As we said in the previous post, the real estate agent wasn’t very helpful in regard to the history of the structure or even who lived in it previously. All he could tell us was that another real estate company had bought it at auction, fixed it up, and put it on the market. Oh, and this company was “scary,” whatever that means. Eventually, if we really wanted to find out we would have to deal with this company, but before we did that we wanted to find out as much as we could on our own. As far as the land went, the elevation is 10 meters, which isn’t as high as we would like (at least 20 is our ideal). The open land to the south, we learned, was once rice paddies, which means it is even lower, about 6 meters. Now it is neglected and overgrown, so while the view is unblocked it’s an upward view, like being on the edge of the floor of a basin, looking at the opposite rim.

One day we rode our bicycles to the property to get a better idea of the neighborhood. Underneath a layer of dead leaves and acorns, there is an old, rutted, paved road that skirts the western edge of the overgrown rice field, and walking along it we could see pools of water amongst the vegetation. Though it had rained recently, it was obvious the area could be inundated under certain conditions. A middle aged woman came walking along the path in the opposite direction with her dog. We asked if she lived in the area. She said she lived over the western ridge on higher ground, and had been there for 20 years. She confirmed that there used to be rice fields in the open space but couldn’t remember when they had been abandoned. Was the land going to be developed, we asked? She wasn’t sure, though there had been some talk about a developer wanting to put a sub-division on the top of the southern rim of the basin but it never happened. We told her why we were there and pointed to the house we were interested in. She knew the next door neighbor to the east and offered to introduce us to him.

As it happened, he was in his (very small) backyard. She called to him from across the field and he came out to meet us in front of the house. He had bought his in 1990, seven years before the one we were interested in was built. Strangely enough he never got to know the people who lived there, and though he knew they had kids he couldn’t recall how many. He couldn’t even remember when they left. The woman who lived on the other side of the house came out to pet the middle aged woman’s dog. She also said she didn’t know much about them. This seeming portrait of unneighborliness was neutralized by the impression that all three of these people appeared to be good friends. We asked the man about the land and he said it was pretty solid. His house was even lower than the one we were looking at but he said he’d never had any problem with water, and that the 311 earthquake hadn’t had any adverse effect on his house, which was quite large. We mentioned our concerns and our ignorance about the structural aspects, and he said that when the house was being built he was impressed with the insulation. Since his business had something to do with sales of window sashes we thought such a comment qualified as being informed. We mentioned the central air conditioner that had confused us during the inspection and how you just didn’t find such things in single-family Japanese homes. In fact, we had called the manufacturer, Mitsubishi, and discovered that this particular model was designed to heat as well as to cool, though from what we saw the one in the house was only used for cooling. Mitsubishi also told us that they had stopped making this model more than five years ago and only kept replacement parts in stock for ten years, which means it might be expensive to maintain and if it broke down after five years it would be difficult to repair. Getting rid of it might be even more of a burden, since we were told that we would have to hire an expert to remove the freeon or whatever coolant it used. Taken together the air conditioner, the insulation, and the double-glazed windows might indicate an acute respiratory problem in the family. Maybe the child had severe allergies. Maybe the house was custom built.

In subsequent weeks we made other trips to Usui/Sakura with regard to the house. One Friday while in Tokyo we took the train from Nihonbashi to Usui to see what the trip was like. Despite the fact that we had to change trains twice, it was smooth and didn’t take as long as we thought it would. We then walked from the station to the property and it took us about 20 minutes. We chose another route to return to the station, using backroads in what we thought was a straighter line, but it ended up taking more time.

One day we also rode our bicycles to the Sakura city office, which is located on the top of a hill and commands quite a nice view of the surroundings. The building itself is something to see. A modernist structure designed by the late Kisho Kurokawa, it looked like that famous capsule apartment building he designed in Ginza. We were there to find out as much as we could about the field to the south of the property; more precisely, if there were any plans to build on it. In the planning department two young men waited on us enthusiastically, eager to demonstrate their usefulness. They pulled out various maps related to the land we were interested in but they didn’t have much to tell us. As of now there is no plan to develop the land but they said that if the owner or owners decided to sell it to a developer they could do that. And then the developer could start construction right away? we asked. They said yes, and we were confused. We had been under the impression that land designated for farming could not be used for housing until is was rezoned for residences, and in order to do that the local agricultural authority would have to approve the changeover. But apparently, it wasn’t that strict. The difference, we had always been told, is that agricultural land is taxed at a much lower rate than residential land, which means agricultural land is worth less than residential land. But the two officials said that it didn’t really make a difference. If a developer wanted to buy it as agricultural land and the seller wanted to sell it, the process wouldn’t be that difficult. Of course, the advantages were different for either party. A developer would prefer paying agriculture prices while the owner would prefer residential prices, but in any case if the two sides agreed, they could develop this land at any time.

Obviously, the Sakura planning department wasn’t going to be any help, so we went to the local branch of the justice ministry, which registers land titles. We paid a small fee and found out the names and addresses of the parties who owned the field to see if they were companies. They were private citizens and lived nearby, so whatever the status of the land, it hadn’t yet been sold to a developer, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be.
To be continued…