Wednesday, February 22, 2006

First plot found


Retaining wall. This will need checking for strength

10,000,000 yen's worth of land

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Land ho!

We searched everywhere for the right piece of land, for nearly 2 years.

It had to have the following characteristics;
  • On solid ground
  • Not close to the sea, but with sea views if possible (a tsunami is expected to hit Matsuyama at some time)
  • Enough space for a garden
  • Not within earshot of a road
  • In the school district of our son, or at least, the district of some decent schools
  • Not so expensive that we couldn't afford to build a house (within 10,000,000 yen)
  • Land that is not protected for agriculture or that is best suited to agriculture
We had nearly given up. But some land next to our architect's house is available, at a very good price. We need to check that the walls around it can be adjusted to fit the legal requirements, at a reasonable price.

The land meets all our requirements. Our son will have to change schools, and he is not very pleased about it at the moment.

Prologue

I'm Rod.

I'm a freelance translator.

I live in a rented house in Matsuyama, Ehime, Japan with my wife and son.

We want to move out of our rented house and into a house that we have designed and built for us .

We want our house to be earthquake-proof, comfortable to live in, non-polluting, and self-sufficient in terms of energy.

This is actually quite a big challenge, and it has taken a lot of time and energy to research.

I want to share what we have learned, so that anybody else who wants a similar house can benefit from our experience.

I will try to post in simple sentences that can be translated easily into Japanese by Google