Keeping Up Appearances. Pulling Weeds.

One of the downsides of living 45 minutes away from our plot of land is that it’s quite difficult to get there when we don’t have meetings with the builder. A few weeks ago, we had some pretty consistent rain followed by a spell of hot weather which meant there was bound to be a fair amount of new greenery onsite and so we decided it was probably time to go and take another look. We didn't want the neighbours to have a bad impression before we even moved in!

Yuko’s mum was keen to come up and see the land for the first time without a house on it (and us presumably!) and so kindly volunteered to come and help us with the weeding. Since there were three of us, it was cheaper and easier to rent a car for the day to head over there. Luckily we know a very, very cheap car rental place which has cars that I think originate from some time in the Meiji era.

The drive over was a bit eventful as it happened, since the car was struggling for performance. I was pretty sure the car was just old as per usual but we eventually discovered that I had forgotten to take the handbrake off. All the more embarrassing given there was a large sticker reminding the driver not to forget exactly that. Yuko was not especially happy about “nearly dying” and I’m not quite sure what her Mum thought. Best not to ask. Oops.

Things were much better after a quick lunch in the deathmobile but when we drove up to the land we found it completely covered in greenery. We had some latex gloves and these sort of mini-hoes for pulling roots out but it was clear that we had a pretty huge task ahead of us. We quickly set to work.

The problem was it was absolutely baking hot and the land in its current state is rather exposed to the sun. Thankfully, the house to the South side is much higher and has a huge wall which casts a welcome shadow over a small portion of the site. Useful for keeping drinks cool and for taking a rest.

No doubt spurred on by my automotive faux pas, I decided to make amends by ripping, tearing and slashing at the plant life with a huge amount of enthusiasm. I think both Yuko and her Mum were suitably impressed with my efforts. Kudos restored and a job well done.

It was actually quite interesting pulling weeds as it gave us a better connection with our land to see the types of plants that have grown there and an indication of the scope and scale of future gardening once the house is built. Weeding itself was tough as probably only 30% of the things we pulled came up with their roots. For whatever reason, the rest of the time the plant snapped at the pulling point and the weeds had to be dug out with the hoe.

Another issue was that we have some plants that look a little like ginger that have taken root and they go really deep into the earth. Other deep-rooted specimens were found in the flower beds and, with the tools we had, it’s quite likely that any progress made in removing them has been mainly cosmetic. We’ll see I guess.

All in all, we managed to fill 23 large rubbish bags full of plants, twigs, roots and other greenery. Since we couldn’t fit them in the car, we left them tidily along the large southern wall. We’d figure out what to do with them at a later stage. The only thing left was to head back into town, drop the car off and then for some celebratory grilled meat and beer at one of our favourite restaurants, M Matsusaka. (http://www.matsusaka-projects.com/english/restaurant/fukushima/)

Here's some pictures of the before and after!

The southern flowerbed - Before

The southern flowerbed - After

The eastern side - Before

The eastern side - After

The view to the North West - Before

The view to the North West - After

23x 45L bags of greenery!

Plans! - A Starting Point

A few weeks passed from our laundry list meeting and we were both getting quite nervous and excited to see the first actual plans for our house. The day finally came around and we headed off to the house builder to see what they had come up with.

Overall, we were reasonably positive but we quickly discovered several things that would need changing. I don’t want this to be a long post as the plans themselves are to be found underneath so I’ll make a list.

1. The overall house was too small

2. There wasn’t really a laundry room on the ground floor, rather a sink space

3. The kids bedrooms needed to be bigger and the access looked problematic and potentially a bit of a waste of space.

4. There is no need for the kids bedrooms to have access to the wood deck. Better to turn that outside space into inside space.

5. Study too long and narrow to have reasonable desk space and bookshelves

6. Upstairs was rather cramped and no pantry area.

7. We had miscommunicated the tatami room and were in fact looking for something around five or six mats in size, enough to have dinner in. This was only 3 mats.

8. The roof terrace access would have been quite tricky (although they stressed this was a work in progress)

In summary, we evidently needed to increase our budget by quite a lot. We had expected this and were prepared to do so but it did bring us back down to earth a bit. We discussed all the likely amendments and it seemed that, by the end of the meeting, both sides had a much clearer picture of what was needed.

I think we had been a bit naïve up until this point to assume that the process would all be unicorns and rainbows since everything was going so smoothly. It was probably a good thing to be stopped in our tracks and to have to think quite fundamentally about the design and the scale of the project.

We concluded that the meeting had been a bit tricky, not perhaps what we had expected but ultimately a positive and fruitful one and, in the following days, the more we talked about it, the more we saw it for what it was. A starting point.

Anyway, here are the plans...

Downstairs on the left, upstairs on the right

A rough translation of the plan above

Side profile looking from North to South

4 profiles of the house