Progress and Land

Hi all. Just a quick message to say that we had a meeting last week and received the quote for shoring up the land in the area where the wall fell down. Again we were pretty tense before the meeting but the quote came in around what we were expecting and, although it isn't cheap, at least it will alleviate any future worries about the stability of the ground next to the parking area and we are still well within out contingency for overall land improvements.

The work is expected to take an additional 4 or 5 days, after which we can resume building properly. I think we will both be pretty relieved when the frame is up as the likelihood of expensive surprises should be greatly reduced at that stage. For now, fingers are crossed for a smooth few weeks of construction. I've asked the builder for some photos of the planned land improvements so will post these when we receive them.

In other news, I was perusing the various land and property portals the other day and found a nice, flat, ready-to-go piece of land a couple of minutes walk from our plot. It's unlikely to have the same impressive views and is slightly further from the station. The price per square meter is 3x what we paid for our land so even after the modifications and improvements we have chosen (and in some cases had no choice but) to make, we are still very happy with what we bought. In fact, at those prices, we would never have had a chance to buy such a good sized plot. Full marks to us for having a vision I guess!

Finally, I know there are a lot of folk reading this in Japan who are building or who are thinking about building here. A really useful resource that I think I have mentioned once before is the land registry website where details of land purchases and prices can be found. Amazingly, it is available in English!  

(http://www.land.mlit.go.jp/webland_english/servlet/MainServlet)

The Waiting Game

We're good at waiting. We've become quite accustomed to it over the last couple of years - phone calls, checks, paperwork, meetings, money transfers, exchanges, completions. In fact, it sometimes seems that we spend more time waiting than doing. Today marks the beginning of February which makes it 2 years since we started seriously looking at land in the area where we are building. Now, there have been a number of self-imposed delays along the way - we bought the land in the summer of 2017 and didn't start speaking to builders until well into the following year because of planning our wedding.

Fast-forward to December 2018 and not only are we still happily married (!) but we'd started building too. It seemed that the waiting was finally over and we were getting really excited about seeing our house shoot up out of the ground, as they tend to do here. Alas, the universe has a sense of humor when it comes to such things. As you'll know from the last post, we encountered our first minor setback when the wall fell down a couple of weeks ago.

On top of that, as it turns out, the company who were quoting to shore up the land close to the steps have looked at their availability and decided that they're not able to do the work so the builders have had to reach out to a different company for a quote. The head architect called me this week to explain the reasons for the latest delay and to offer his very sincere apologies. I was at the pub at the time (with my friend, the real estate agent, who helped us source the land) which was less than ideal since it was rather noisy and I'd had a couple of beers. Whilst I wasn't able to understand everything, it was clear that the architect was indeed very sorry and that they were doing everything possible to expedite the process. There's not much that they can do and it's a bit frustrating for everyone involved.

It seems, therefore, that work on site is currently stalled but we are hopeful of restarting in the next couple of weeks. Whilst we've become used to waiting, we really are pretty keen to get this thing built so we can go and start the next phase of our lives. I'll post again when we are back up and running!

Not sure what this is for but needed an unused picture and it looked a little despairing!