Solutions, not problems

As you may be aware, in Osaka there was a pretty big earthquake recently, reaching a magnitude of 6.1 on the JMA scale. We were at home at the time in our apartment, a newish block which is presumably fairly well protected against such things. Since we’re on the 5^th floor, there was quite a lot of swaying and the earthquake itself was very violent. We both dived under the small table in the living room, me banging my head in the process.

The earthquake on June 18th

Luckily we both escaped from the quake unscathed but the 4 dead and 400+ injured were not so lucky. One of the fatalities was a 6-year old schoolgirl who was killed by a wall which crumbled outside her elementary school. Tragic.

As often happens following these events, building codes and policies are reviewed and renewed and we discovered that this would also affect our house. As you may have seen from the pictures and plans in previous posts, we had planned to partially remove the East end of the stepped retaining wall and to build a parking area in its place. This would have allowed us to keep the large stone steps to the West end of the wall, which we really liked. Furthermore, since groundwork in Japan is very expensive, we had been advised to make as few changes as possible to the wall.

Alas, the city office decided to reverse their acceptance of the original proposal and we had a lengthy message from the builders which said, in essence. “There’s a problem with the wall. You don’t have a lot of options. We’ll probably have to remove the whole thing. We need to talk”. It sounded rather ominous indeed.

The large, imposing two-stage retaining stone wall (二段擁壁) was always something we liked but we knew it was likely to cause us some building difficulties and we had somewhat accounted for this. In the second plans which radically reformed the parking area, we had more than used up this contingency. Further changes were far from ideal.

We began Googling to get a rough idea on how much this was likely to cost us which was absolutely terrifying. The first page we looked at said “don’t buy land with a two-stage retaining wall”. Oops. The next quoted between $20,000 and $100,000(!) depending on the nature of the problem. Our wall is big too. More-than-oops. What had we let ourselves in for?

We spent the few days before the meeting going through various scenarios and solutions, some more ridiculous than others (pickaxes at midnight etc.) and resigned ourselves to the fact that we would just have to wait for the meeting. We felt stupid for not having done enough research (can you ever do enough?) and were both really nervous for several days. It was extremely unpleasant.

Finally, the day of the meeting came around and we met with the builders in a coffee shop in central Osaka. We sat down at the table and prepared for the worst. Now at this point, I should mention that we considered anything less than $25,000 a “positive” outcome, up to $50,000 was terrible but wouldn’t necessarily kill the project. More than $50,000 was probably game over. Sell the land at a loss and start again or, more than likely, give up.

The building company were great. They didn’t present us with a problem, they presented us with a solution. (In fact, 2 solutions, the other more elaborate and vastly more expensive which they advised against.) In the time between discovering the problem and meeting us, they had consulted the city office, fought our case, consulted an expert, engineered and priced a solution and then produced a plan of it all.

There was a quick explanation of the problem and then immediately the revised paper plan was brought out. Everything had already been accounted for. Remove the second and third steps of the wall and replace with a slope on which we can plant flowers, grass etc. How much? Less than $10,000.

In your face, scary Google! It’s weird being happy about such a huge unexpected expense but everything we had read suggested this was going to be so much worse. There is such an investment of time and emotion and energy and resources into these projects that to have to confront the fear of potentially giving up is really harrowing. It reminded us that there’s so much we don’t know and we just have to hope that, through a mix of luck and, hopefully, the experience of our builder, we will get there in the end. Until next time. 

Our new slope

First Planning Meeting

There have been a number of stages in the process to date that have generated excitement. Receiving the phone call to say that our land offer had been accepted, our first meeting with an architect, our first show home visit etc. etc. None of those could quite match, however, the excitement of the first planning meeting. This was the first real chance to explain and discuss what we wanted in detail and to start sketching out what we hoped would become our dream house.

The meeting would take place at K’s offices with the architect...oops. As I type this, I’ve just realized that our architect is also K. Right, executive decision time. K the architect is going to become A the architect (for architect, obviously). Let’s hope we don’t meet any Aono-sans or Aoki-sans later in this process!

We sat down with K and A and they started by asking us some more questions about our budget. This is not something we intend to discuss in much detail on this blog so let’s just say that we gave a modest figure that was below our maximum budget but enough, we hoped, to get us started and designing something close to what we want. All seemed pretty fine so far.

As we went through the features that we wanted to include in our house, it should be noted that, unlike with the builder who we had rejected, it was us providing all of the detail as well as showing photos, giving descriptions and indications of size. We were only questioned when something wasn’t communicated clearly, when we hadn’t provided enough detail or when they wanted to offer us some advice. No lifestyle coach questions this time around thankfully!

The list of stuff we mentioned in our meeting. English below!

I’m not exactly sure how to write up the specifics of the meeting so I think maybe the best way is for me to just give a list of what we want in our house and a brief explanation for each thing. That’s the important bit anyway, so here goes...

Downstairs

l  Porch area – useful for leaving umbrellas, buggies, muddy shoes and for having a covered postbox. No fetching the post in the rain!

l  Genkan (玄関) – A must in any Japanese house. A place to take off and put on shoes. In Japanese houses you never wear shoes inside (unless of course you are in a rush and forgot to turn the air con off but otherwise NEVER). We want a spacious genkan as it’s the first thing you see when you get home and, as any mother will tell you, first impressions are important.

l  Master bedroom – Size not hugely important but must have enough space for a Western bed and a couple of bedside tables. Dressing table space is a nice-to-have. We are adamant that we want a reasonable sized walk in closet. Right now, we have a kind of walk in closet/pantry/storeroom and it’s not big enough for all our clothes.

l  Kids’ bedroom – Since we don’t have kids yet we want a space that can be multi-use and could be adapted depending on how the future pans out. We decided we want to leave this space as open as possible for that reason.

l  Study – Since moving to Japan, I’ve never really had space for a desktop computer and, as such, a lot of work gets done on a laptop in the living room or at the kitchen table. We want a study which will have enough space for 1/2 computers as well as to store our books, paperwork and files. We want it to be big enough for a sofa bed and coffee table. If it can function as an overflow guestroom, so much the better.

l  Laundry Room – A rarity in Japan but becoming more popular in recent years. Washing machines are often placed in the bathroom (sometimes even outside) but, having introduced Yuko to the concept, she seems sold on the idea of having a small space for the washing machine, ironing clothes and for storing cleaning equipment and supplies. Important that this room has easy access to drying area outside.

l  Bathroom and Toilet – I was happy to have the toilet in the bathroom as per most Western houses but Yuko considered this sacrilegious and so I was quickly put in my place. The bathroom is one area we thought we could probably economize a bit. Neither of us takes baths often so a small Japanese-style tub/shower room would suffice. We used the words ‘cheap’ and ‘simple’ a lot. 

Upstairs

l  Kitchen/dining area – Large open plan kitchen with island and attached dining table. We want the island to have a bar counter with bar stools for breakfast and morning coffees. Some discussion as to whether to put the hob or the sink on the island but we suggested the sink at the meeting.

l  Wine cellar – The piece de resistance of the upstairs floor. We (mainly Tom) want to have an area where we can store and display wine. Three reasons for this. We like wine, it looks nice and the Japanese climate is horrendous for keeping wine so it needs to be stored properly. We (again Tom) showed pictures of professional-looking restaurant-style glass wall wine storage which were met with raised eyebrows. Plan B would be a wine room of some kind. Plan C a wine cellar fridge and bar area. Watch this space.

l  Living room with wood burning stove – Perhaps a nod to British winter culture, a coincidence that our builder is a specialist importer of stoves or a pragmatic heating solution, either way we have decided that we have to feature a wood burning stove in the house. Luckily, the builder produces lots of off-cuts when building houses so he has promised us a lifetime’s supply of free fuel as long as we are prepared to drive the 2 minutes down the road to get it!

l  Tatami-room – We want a traditional Japanese space called a washitsu (和室) or tatami room. The floor of this room is covered in tatami or Japanese traditional reed mats. Very important for special occasions and doubles as a sleeping space for Japanese guests.

l  Pantry – separate room for food is really important as we often shop at Costco (Western food is much cheaper there than in regular Japanese stores) so we need plenty of space to put all the pasta!

l  Upstairs toilet

l  Large outside balcony – We had seen this at the show house and decided that we also liked the idea of a raised outside space on the upstairs floor. This seems like an obvious inclusion until you read the next part...

Further Upstairs (!)

l  Roof Terrace – Since where we are building has some incredible views over Osaka, we want to make best use of this. There is a house directly to the west of our plot (albeit with significantly lower foundations due to the gradient of the road) but we want to maximize our view as best we can. As such, we want to build a large roof terrace where we can enjoy sundowners and maybe a bite of food. We had absolutely no idea how to work this and so made the request, stressed its importance and left it in the hands of K and A.

That’s the laundry list of house features more or less. There’s probably a few small things that I’ve forgotten and I’ll leave thoughts about outside the house for a later post but hopefully that gives a reasonable impression of what we are trying to do.

A few additional points:

-       We stressed that we want to go for (slightly more expensive) sliding doors where possible as these are a much more efficient use of space.

-       Several specific larger storage areas rather than lots of bits of small clever storage in unusual places which seems to be a bit of a trend. (How do you remember where anything is!?)

-       Nice wood in most areas. Cheaper wood in kids’ spaces.

-       Simplicity and open space wherever possible.

I’d say that this has become quite a long post already so I think I’ll leave it there for today. Soon you’ll see our laundry list turn into our first plan! Stay tuned!