Building a House in Japan

One of the joys of being a long-term gaijin in Japan is eventually building a house here. Houses in Japan are almost never pre-built by a developer as part of a community of homes as is often the case in California, or bought “used” from people who have lived in them previously. Instead, at least outside large cities like Tokyo where people tend to live in “mansions” (an apartment that’s owned rather than rented), houses are generally built from scratch, starting with an architect who will create a design based on your specifications and budget. For a foreigner, this is a great opportunity to go crazy designing the Japanese home of your dreams, adding tatami rooms, shoji paper doors, and perhaps a toko-no-ma recessed area for displaying some ikebana flowers. For the record, buying a plot of land in our prefecture, about 100 km north of Tokyo, will set you back about $100,000. For a custom-built house, budget around $300,000, although you can cut that down a bit by considering one of those “import homes” where all the materials, from wood to concrete to nails, are boxed up in Canada and shipped over by container. If I could, I’d build an awesome house like the one in Summer Wars.