OMG! OMG! OMG! We're buying a house

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Oh my god, we’re buying a house, as in a thing made from wood, on its own plot of land.

This, being Tokyo, means that the real estate agents give you complementary magnifying glasses so that you can see your land, but it’s still land!

We had been set last year to buy a place, but then all that stuff happened, and we postponed it. In the meanwhile, land prices are shooting up, so we decided we better get moving, (as it were).

We looked around for a while. We live in Yokohama, but work in Tokyo and the commute is a killer. It’s 70 minutes door-to-door, including 30 minutes of a soul-sucking, mind-draining, physically exhausting, cram-packed train, operating at 8500% of capacity. Concrete is poured less dense than they jam people into Tokyo’s mass transit.

Average commute is 60 minutes, so no sympathy from the natives. How the hell do they do this day after day after day? For years?

Electing to move in closer, we knew that pricing was going to be an issue. In our price range, we had a choice of a shoe box or a bread box, three oases away from the train station.

Last Sunday an agent called with the info. Monday we looked at the property (and tried not to step on it, lest we crush it), Tuesday we talked to the builder and Wednesday I talked to the bank and we signed the contract.

You’d have more lucking spotting a Bengal tiger in Central Park than getting this house. It’s within our budget in a nice neighborhood, about 16 minutes walk from the station and 35 minutes total from my office.

The area is called Sangenjaya, a residential area near a couple of trendy areas with good restaurants. You can see the area at Google Maps. Close coordinates are close to 35.65, 139.67.

A reasonable sized house on a livable lot was divided into three miniscule lots to reduce the price to below the GDP of medium-sized countries. They’ll take three orange crates and stack them on top of each other, so it seems, but we’ll have about 835 square feet (77.6 sq. m) house on top of 480 sq feet (44.5 sq. m) of land. They’ll carve out a parking space by chipping out some of the first floor.

They have preliminary plans, which we’re looking at now. They should be able to start the house in February and finish in June.

We’re excited!

We may have to rob a bank to fund this, but we’re really happy to be able to get into this.

2

How exciting and wonderful! Congratulations! :cool:

3

Yay! Very exciting! Congrats!

4

Congratulations! I’m happy to hear the news.

…and here’s my mandatory geek-out: one of the things that bugs me about the Ranma 1/2 fandom is that a lot of people think Nabiki’s various highschooler “businesses” (selling candid pictures of other girls to boys, taking bets on fights, selling information, etc) somehow are able to be the sole income for the Tendo family (since Soun is never shown actually teaching classes in the dojo). It bugs me because the Tendo house is huge, with their own dojo, a yard big enough to have a koi pond with ample room around it, a stone wall around the property with two doors, and it’s in a ward of Tokyo. No f-ing way!

Sorry, I have to geek out in any thread I participate in.

5

H3Knuckles, the house probably have belonged to Tendo-san’s father. If I remember correctly (I read the comic when I was in high school in the late 80’s) they lived in Nerima Ward, Tokyo, a pleasant mainly residential area outside of the Yamanote Central District.

Back to TokyoPlayer, congrats on your new place, and a good location near Shibuya too. My wife and I are going to build our new house next year at one of her parent’s properties in Saitama. It’s up in the suburbs, but it’s only a 25-minute train ride to Shinjuku where I work. Good luck to you and Mrs. TokyoPlayer.

6

Congrats!

Mr. Neville and I bought our first house earlier this year. I feel more grown-up now, somehow.

7

Congrats, however, when I plug those coordinates into google maps, it tosses me out in the Pacific Ocean, west of the Federated States of Micronesia.

I guess a good housewarming present would be a bread box, so you can go up a floor. :stuck_out_tongue:

8

I had no idea that there was actual land available to build on still in the city.
Did Godzilla attack recently and it didn’t make the news?

How awesomely exciting for you!

So…When are you hosting the first Tokyo Dopefest…September 2008? :slight_smile:

9

“I bought a house…it’s around here somewhere…did the cat eat it?” :smiley:
Congratulations!

10

I’m not really all that familiar with Setagaya, but I’ve heard good things about it. Congratulations! Does that mean we can count on you staying past last train next time we hook up? :wink:

11

Congratulations, TokyoPlayer and family! :slight_smile:

[sub]I think your land may be smaller than my apartment… I may be wrong on that, but I’m not certain, and that’s scary.[/sub]

12

Wishing you a lifetime of luck and joy in your new home.

13

Omedetou gozaimasu! Congratulations! I look forward to the Dopefest in it next year :slight_smile:

14

Tokyo Dopefest! I’ll bring the guacamole!
[sub]Anybody want to carpool from California?[/sub]

15

Ah, so you have one of these. Cool. :slight_smile: Can you pick me up in Victoria?

16

It works for me. Try plugging in 0, 180 and confirm that you are in the Pacific on the equator. Then go up to 35, 180, then 35, 139, etc. and you should be getting closer and closer to my house.

I’ll tell you when to stop.

Like I say, it’s small, but we’re excited to own land instead of buying a condo. That way, when the Big One hits, we’ll have timber for a fire to cook with, and a space for our tent.