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! 

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

Plans: Part 2

A few weeks after feeding back to the builders about the first plans, we were called back to the office to have a look at version 2. We were a little nervous given that the first set had been quite different to what we had expected and we had suggested quite a lot of changes. Nevertheless, we were pretty excited to see what they had come up with.

The new plans were revealed and the changes were instantly apparent. The house overall was much more spacious and we could see at a glance that it now contained all the elements that we had initially requested (although of course the quotation had also increased by quite a lot!).

Perhaps the most striking difference was the remodeled parking area, rotated 90 degrees and now big enough to accommodate two cars with a large concrete retaining wall surrounding it in place of the original stone. The previous space had been barely enough for one car and parking would have been tricky. This particular modification came with an eye-watering price-tag due, in part, to the very expensive cost of groundwork in Japan.

After some initial reluctance, we started to come around to the idea for two main reasons. Firstly, the original stone wall was not in wonderful condition and would likely be even more expensive to repair or replace at a later stage, until which point parking would be severely compromised. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, this was an opportunity to invest in the land itself as opposed to the property that sits on top. We were pretty sure that one of the main reasons we got this land for such a good price was the problems presented by this wall and so any money invested in alleviating this problem would likely see at least a partial return when/if we sell. The same cannot be said of money invested in the property which, in Japan, will depreciate in value as it gets older.

The solution is kind of a half-way between leaving things as they were and removing all of the stone retaining wall. It involves incorporating this new concrete retaining wall into the foundations of the house in order to leave the three-stepped stone part to the west untouched (and therefore to reduce the cost). We were actually rather keen on keeping this anyway as we like the character, if not the impractical nature, of the large stone steps.

Elsewhere downstairs, the kids’ bedroom has been expanded and no longer has access to the outside which gives us some more garden/lawn space. The entrance to this room is also better and it can easily be split into two separate rooms in the future if needed using various configurations of wardrobe and wall.

The laundry room, although open to the corridor, is now much bigger with enough space for the washing machine, cabinets and an ironing area. The small bathroom has been moved to the south-east corner to accommodate this. The stairs have gone from a straight layout to a U-shaped alternative.

The master bedroom is similar to how it was before but the attached walk-in-closet has almost doubled in size. Some of this increase has come from an overall increase in the footprint of the building but some has also been claimed back from the original large square storage area that was too large for our needs. The adjacent study is a much more prominent room now with easily enough space for two computers, bookshelves and a small sitting area with coffee table.

Upstairs, the layout has changed just a little with the introduction of a proper-sized pantry and the toilet moving to the north. I think this is one of the reasons why the staircase has changed shape. The Japanese room has been made considerably bigger and everything has moved outwards to give us more space. The new plans have generated about another 25% more floor space upstairs.

Finally, the whole house has been raised to increase its overall height so that the roof balcony views over the house in front will be much better protected in the event that a new taller house is built there. Raising the house also means that access to the roof balcony can be made much easier, although a full height door will probably remain out of reach. The ceilings throughout the house will be a little higher too, which should add to the sense of space.

Overall, we were pretty delighted with these new plans. We were seriously impressed with the speed and efficiency with which they were put together and how closely the builders had listened to our revised brief. This was much, much closer to the house we had in mind when we started out on this project. There were and still are countless decisions and alterations to be made but we felt as if we’d finally managed to draw together all the elements we wanted into the design and could begin to focus on the detail.

Here are the plans!

The downstairs with new car parking space

The larger upstairs space

North/South skeleton aspect. Note the house is much taller and roof balcony access is better

North/South on top, South/North on the bottom

West/East on top, East/West on the bottom