Earthquaken & Home Makin'

We had an eventful day today. My relentless propaganda campaign to move the hell out of this apartment has finally (it would seem) paid off, and today Chieko and spent the afternoon with a real estate agent looking at houses, with some promising results.

But first, you've probably seen that Japan experienced yet another powerful earthquake this morning. We spent the morning watching coverage of it on the news. They were broadcasting live, but it was early on so most of the footage was from a helicopter flying around. There was damage, but fortunately it looked like the area where it hit is pretty sparsely populated.

Now that it's been nearly a day and more pictures and information has come out, I'm amazed that only 3 people were killed in this quake. It looks CRAZY. Sides of mountains just collapsed, landslides up the wazoo, huge, high bridges collapsed hundreds of feet, numerous buildings simply toasted. As I said, the saving grace must be that there aren't many people up in northern Japan, where the quake was.

Kicking around on some US news sites, I've noticed that this quake hasn't generated a lot of news, mostly likely because there aren't a bunch of deaths and it's not that gory. But I urge you to hunt around and try and find some pictures of the structural/geographical damage that occurred, because it is truly impressive.

It's also impressive and interesting to see how quickly and efficiently the Japanese government responds to a disaster of this scale, and somewhat remarkable to see how the Japanese people affected by it seem to take it in stride. Not that some folks haven't been upset by the destruction. But I suppose when you live in a place where earthquakes are such a fact of life, and a big one finally get you, it's not exactly the most unexpected thing.

I'm willing to bet the death toll will go up but not substantially. There are a few people missing and some folks trapped inside building, but aside from that it seems by and large like an amazingly dodged bullet.

Here are few shots I pulled off the Mainichi News website.

But let's get back to the house hunting. About a week or so ago I went to the woman who works at our school whose sole task is to help the foreigners with whatever it is they need helping with, be it housing, doctors, hotels, anything. I actually haven't had a lot of contact with her since, my wife being Japanese, I've got a bit of an inside track to getting things done here. I figured that in this case, my wife being vehemently opposed to moving and leaving me to take care of things, the lady at work might have some useful connections. I gave her a list of my dream house that looked something like this:

• maximum price (I'll keep that to myself)
• yard or at least a garden
• as near as possible to as many of the following things as possible: ocean, mountains, river
• quiet street
• within 10-15 minutes of work by car

Our price range meant that most of the stuff we were looking at was pretty old. Old school Japanese houses have their charms and quirks that make them cool, but the key is finding one that has been well maintained. Most of the places we saw today missed the mark in that regard.

The game was pretty much over after the first place we looked at. First of all it was a good decade newer than anything we would see for the rest of they day. It's about a 10 minute bike ride from the mountains, has a decent (though overgrown) little yard, biggish kitchen with a dishwasher (don't see those round here much), huge sun room for drying laundry and baking in the sun, big bedroom with a balcony and walk-in closet, spare room for my guitars and me until the little ones come along, and even a small tatami room. The house abuts one of those community gardens and there's an elementary school at the end of road.

We took a drive back this evening to scope the neighborhood for excessively barking dogs and the place was swarming with kids, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. They could be worse than barking dogs. Speaking of which, the only house with dogs is, of course, directly across the street from the house we're looking at. They were barking a bit when we first looked at the house, but were quiet in the evening despite the pack of youngins making a bunch of noise. So that's something to think about.

One of our bigger concerns is getting to work. Although we work together, Chieko and I generally go to and leave work at different times. I tend to both go to and leave work earlier than she does, which is no problem at all since we're within walking distance at the moment. If we moved to this place, we'd have to coordinate more to an extent. BUT, the train station is less than a ten minute walk from the house, and will drop me off at that little station that's right behind our current apartment. So... Also, we clocked the drive back from the house to work at about 13 minutes. That's with midday traffic and not speeding at all.

Here's a shot of the outside. Nothing special.

The view from the bedroom balcony is nice. We got mountains, people.



We've got some decisions to make quickly here. As gung-ho as I am about moving, it's a pretty big decision. Japan's got a messed up system when it comes to moving into apartments/houses that makes it a lot more expensive than first/last month's rent. While the rent is reasonable, getting into this place will cost us a sizable chunk of change. I could rant until the cows come home about the whole deal with 'key money' here, but it's pointless. It's the way it's done and I'm not going to change it.

That said, we've got the money, and the whole quality of life thing I think would be worth it. So we'll see. Need to decide one way or the other soon though because this place won't be around for long.

Getting on to something different, and doing it quick because I'm tired of writing this post, saw a great concert the other night with Bruce Hughes and Matt the Mechanic. We don't get a lot of live foreign music around these parts, so I generally jump on it when I can. I hadn't heard of either musician before the concert, but will pay attention from now on. Check them out, and enjoy the rest of your weekend.