The Neighborhood Thug - A True Story of Building a House in Tokyo

In 2003 I thought I could save money if I took the cash that I was paying as rent and used it to pay down a mortgage instead. So I started looking for a place to buy. Eventually I found a 30 year old wooden house in a good location (i.e., near a major subway and train station in Tokyo, but yet in a quiet neighborhood and near a large public park). I initially thought to move into the old house and renovate it, but after touring the house a second time, I decided to have it demolished and rebuilt. In this process I learned quite a bit about Japanese society and also about myself. This is a serialized story of my experience in demolishing that old house and building a new one. The text is taken from e-mails sent to my sisters soon after events described therein had taken place. Names have been changed.

September 2003 - Meeting Three of my New Neighbors

Yesterday myself, my architect and the representative of a demolition company visited the people who live in the five homes immediately adjacent to our property, in other words, the neighbors. Only three of the five were at home, and, of those, only the matron of the house was available.

At the first place, which is a relatively new reinforced concrete two story structure with the Mercedes Benz in the driveway (which also serves as the front walk-- all these houses are tightly packed), after we the words "reconstruction" were out of our mouths, Ms. Suzuki said "I have something to say to you about that" and disappeared into the house again. We waited patiently. She reappeared about 45 seconds later, and I cannot fathom what had required her brief disappearance, because she had not changed her wardrobe or footwear. She walked out to the front with us and pointed out that the previous owner had built a fake plastic bamboo fence on her side of the property line. He had put up the fence because the Suzukis had a fence that was just unfinished concrete slabs on the side facing our property, and Mr. Yoshikawa, the man who sold to us, had decided he would prefer to look at fake plastic bamboo rather than real concrete blocks. Moreover, at the time Mr. Y put the fence up, the property line was unclear, and it was only later that Mr. Yoshikawa and Mr. Suzuki agreed to have the line re-surveyed, and discovered that Mr. Yoshikawa's "fence" was on the Suzuki property. The guy that is helping us with our architect was with us for the neighborhood visit and he and Mrs. Suzuki got into this five minute discussion which, as far as my ears were able to follow the conversation over my rapidly fading interest, consisted of her repeating several times that Mr. Yoshikawa, the previous owner, had promised that if there was ever new construction, he would take down his plastic fence so that the Suzukis could move their 10 meter concrete wall over an additional three to five centimeters; and our guy telling her that our plan was in fact to remove the plastic bamboo fence. Five minutes. That is about one minute per centimeter. Of course, in this country, where they measure land in 3 meter square units, five centimeters times 10 meters adds up to considerably more than anywhere else.

The second house we visited is directly across the public street (which, being only 4 meters wide, and paved in brick, is actually more like a wide sidewalk) from our place. There we were met by an elderly woman of considerable energy and girth, clothed in a housecoat, who volunteered certain information on how "Mr. Yoshikawa's wife" hated gardening and never made any effort to prune or weed the trees and bushes growing on the property, and always slept in late, and the only thing Mr. Yoshikawa did in the garden was to water the rambling overgrowth. This sounded like the previous owner was not well liked, but then she told us that the neighbors used to pitch in during the year to trim the shrubs and clean up the leaves and weed the garden for this slothful couple. So it was a very confusing picture of the state of love and hate between these former neighbors. She also warned us (and the representative of the construction company who we are employing to take the house down) at least three times against creating too much dust during the demolition work, and that her husband was an architect who knew the labor laws and who would "be watching".

After these two neighbor visits, I was feeling rather lukewarm about the neighborhood. The last household who was at home was the owner of a large white German shepherdish dog. As soon as we explained we were going to be taking the old house down she said, "We have a dog who we keep out on the rear balcony [the one facing the house that is going to be demolished], and he barks." I thought this was going to be the start of another complaint, but instead she continued, "He might bark during the work, but please don't mind his barking. He will quiet down shortly, so long as you don't look him in the eye."

After we tried the next house, and found no one home, the woman with the dog came running out of her house with her large white dog. We thought she was taking her for a walk, but she just brought her (the dog) out to introduce us. How thoughtful!

So those are the neighbors so far. Two more to go, probably see them next weekend.