A place to park

It’s been a busy couple of weeks with the start of April representing perhaps the busiest time in the Japanese calendar. For some bizarre reason, almost all contracts in Japan begin on the 1^st April, the official start of the Japanese working year, which means everyone starting new jobs does so at the same time. Moving companies increase their prices two or three times, the rental property market goes crazy and even those staying on in the same jobs are not immune from the chaos, with preparations being frantically made for the start of the year to come.

As such, we’ve both been very busy with work so haven’t had much chance to get to the land lately but we did manage to sneak in a visit last Saturday on our way to do hanami (cherry blossom viewing) in Nara. Progress has been pretty immense, with the retaining wall supports now completed and work starting on the modified parking space.

Just as a reminder, below is what the parking space looked like before the old house was torn down – a pretty narrow space with the red monstrosity looming ominously above it, no doubt ready to buckle and crush the car waiting underneath.

And here it is, post-demolition, with a typical Japanese mama-chari bicycle for scale. Much better but still rather a tricky angle and only enough room for a small car.

As you may recall, we opted to make significant modifications to the land to accommodate two cars (one full size regular car and one smaller kei car, which are considerably cheaper to run and more suited for short trips). We felt that this was a good investment in the land and would make our lives living in the house significantly easier.

What we hadn’t realized until we actually started building was what a colossal task this actually is. The hole we talked about a couple of posts back just kept getting bigger and bigger.

Eventually, when we had finally reached the correct size, stepped concrete bases were filled. You will notice that the base on the left-hand side is higher than on the right. This is to allow the builders to contour the parking space to take into account the slope of the hill on which the land sits, which should make parking easier and allow for better drainage.

The wooden sheeting (not sure what this is called) was soon erected and attached to the metal rebar structure which will eventually support the concrete. The first thing we noticed is how high this is! We knew the wall was high but it was something else to see it with our own eyes. Eventually the wall will come up to the top horizontal metal beam.

It’s a pretty impressive structure from the road and really does make the whole plot look like the base for a castle (every Englishman is supposed to have a castle, right?). Equally impressive is the view from the top, kindly provided by our builders, since neither of us had our mountaineering gear ready. It gives some idea as to the elevation that we are talking from the road. Considering that the top of the house will be about 7 metres above that, we should have pretty good views of the surrounding landscape.

That about brings us up to where we are now. Concrete is being poured this week and will need some time to cure before they start work on backfilling the stairs which will go to the left of the parking space. That should begin early next week but we will be outside Japan for a wedding, so expect a fresh update in about a fortnight.

A final quick note to those reading, following and commenting on the various Facebook groups and webpages where this blog has been discussed. Thank you all for engaging and sharing this experience with us. It’s been a great ride so far and we’re looking forward to the next few months.