Every cheap property town in Japan has a story. The story usually goes like this: beautiful setting, fascinating history, incredible price, three and a half hours from the nearest city with a hospital and a department store. The house costs $8,000. Getting to civilization costs you half a day. Otaru’s story goes differently. JR Rapid …
Read more “Thirty-Five Minutes to Sapporo: Otaru’s Killer Advantage”
Most preserved cities were saved on purpose. Somebody formed a committee. Somebody else got a building designated. A third person wrote a grant proposal. The stone facades survived because organized people with clipboards fought to keep them standing. Otaru was saved by going broke. The Gateway That Got Left Behind In the late 1800s, Hokkaido …
Read more “Why Otaru: A Port City That Accidentally Preserved Itself”
There’s one date in Japanese real estate that matters more than any other: June 1, 1981. On that date, Japan’s revised Building Standards Act went into effect, establishing what’s called the 新耐震基準 (shin-taishin kijun) — the new earthquake resistance standards. Every residential building in Japan falls on one side or the other of that line, …
Read more “Earthquake-Proofing and the 1981 Building Code Divide”
The cheap house you found online might be cheap for a reason that has nothing to do with the house. It might be cheap because it can never be rebuilt. Or because the road it sits on is too narrow for legal construction. Or because the land underneath it is classified as farmland and you …
Read more “Land Rights, Setback Rules, and the Things Nobody Tells You”
Otaru gets five to six meters of cumulative snowfall per winter. I want to make sure that number registers. That’s not a dusting. That’s not a white Christmas. Five to six meters is sixteen to twenty feet of snow falling on your house, your yard, your street, and every surface that faces the sky, accumulating …
Read more “Snow Country: What Hokkaido Weather Does to a House”
Everyone wants to know the purchase price. That’s the wrong number. The right number is the total cost — purchase plus renovation — and in Japan, especially in Hokkaido, renovation is where the real spending happens. A house that costs ¥3 million ($20,000) might need another ¥3-8 million to bring it up to the standard …
Read more “Renovation Costs in Japan: What Things Actually Cost to Fix”