Straight enough for you?

Some friends of ours recently built a house and invited us to go and see it just before they moved in. They told us that when they laid the foundations, they made sure to go along and see that the steel was straight (apparently this makes a big difference, especially in Japan, the land of earthquakes!). We happened to pop along this morning to check out progress, and were just in time to check out the straightness of the steel that will be inside the concrete of our foundation. We were pretty happy!

Also, just a note that might be interesting for some of you, in Japan, it is a very wise idea to regularly take your builders treats. As summer has now fully hit us here in the last few days, and we have two different constructors working away (one on the foundation, the other on the water pipes) we thought we'd better pop up with some cold drinks and snacks. As a result, we also got to have a little chat, which was nice. Here are today's pics!

We'll just ignore the fact that this is for a professional tool.

Kaoru, having a chat under the brolly with one of the builders.

Laying out the steel.

Looking up to the Ogura area.

Looking up to Ogura.

The rainy season!

Before the humidity of Japan's sweltering summers takes hold, the rainy season always makes itself known. I admit, I'm not a fan. My lovely rosemary bush hates it, you can't get the washing dry (and why I'm forever grateful to coin laundry dryers!) and everything starts to go mouldy in the house. This year we have the additional frustration of knowing that while the rain pours down, our house building comes to a virtual stand still. BUT! After 2 weeks of almost constant rain, we did have a few beautiful  (and hot) days this week, so there has been a little construction going on.

Now, before I forget, I have realised that I haven't actually put up any scans of the plans - how remiss of me! So, here they are:

1st Floor - sizes are in Japanese "Jo", which is 1 tatami mat. 1 Jo is normally 1.53 Sq m. This would make the open space of the kitchen, dining and living room (25 Jo) 38.26 sq. metres, but as you can see in the plan, though, our measurements are slightly different. This is because our builder uses the older Jo measurements, so instead of 38.26 sq. metres, our LDK is 46.48 sq. metres. Awesome!

2nd Floor

Garden layout

House front and back (front garden facing)

Top - ocean/road facing, bottom - mountain/back facing

Back to the work in hand - the water company has started laying all the pipes to connect the water (all financial hoos haas have been settled!). The pre-concrete stage of the foundations is also done - here are some pics:

What will be the view from the living room and deck.

Tidy!

We have plumbing.

The pre-concrete stage

Finally, a beautiful, clear day! A view of Ogiyama at the back.

Lately we have also been deciding on interior and exterior materials. We've made a lighting plan (included in the plans above) after scouring lighting books for a few weeks. Now we're in the middle of choosing wallpaper (big in Japan rather than painting!) and the exterior materials. By far this last choice is the hardest. Wall paper and lights we can always change in the years to come, but the exterior is a keeper. If we choose wrong, we're stuck with it.

Also dictating our choice of exterior materials is 1. the fact that we're lazy and don't want to paint every five years, 2. that our house will be in an area that has the strongest hot spring (onsen) water in Beppu, and the steam eats things like wood and galvanized steel, and 3. that so many houses in Japan have dirty drip lines down them after a few years, especially in Beppu (again because of the onsen steam - rainy season doesn't help...bloody rainy season...grrrr....).

So, this leaves us with siding. Luckily for us, siding is pretty amazing in Japan. I admit to being a little judgmental of it because of all those aluminium home cladding ads on Australian TV as a kid, but siding in Japan is completely different.We have chosen a range that is a bit more expensive because it is guaranteed for 15 years and is self cleaning (score!). The real dilemma, though, is which one to choose? Why don't you take a little look for yourself?!

Scroll down to the AT WALL sections that say AT WALLガーデイーナル、and AT WALL 15 - these are the two highest grade groups we'll be choosing from. If you click on one, you can then click to mix and match them with others. Only discovered this website today, and realise it's so much cooler than looking through the catalogue!

The top half was an easy choice. Around two years ago, when we started looking at houses, we saw one that had a dark wood exterior. It looked very nice, and to our surprise, as we got closer (as in reeeeeally close), we realised it wasn't actually wood, but siding. We loved it for the fact that it looked good, but at the same time you don't need to paint it. The wood you're having when you're not having any wood! There are two types:

18mm high grade self cleaning

15mm self cleaning

The toughest decision has been what to put on the lower half of the house. At first I thought a kind of light cream coloured siding that looks like render, but we're worried about it looking dirty after a few years.

15mm wood with cream render. Wood would be vertical.

We drove around a relatively new area of Oita City (the next city from us) that has a mix of very new houses and houses that are 3-7 years old, so we could see not only what the siding looks like once it's on the walls, but also how it weathers once exposed Japan's extreme elements for a few years. It was eye opening - lots of houses looked like complete crap after a few years, with algae growing up the walls that don't get much sun, and black drip lines from windows (obviously inferior quality siding!).

There were some that still looked great, though, and those were the ones that had larger looking stones and didn't have just one flat colour. We walked (or drove) away with the vague decision that we wanted siding that looks like a big stone wall. Here's some photos I took on the day. These are real people's houses, so we couldn't take very good pics from the car, and in one case I had to pretend I was taking a picture of Kaoru. Very naughty.

I love the stone of this house! Unfortunately, we won't be able to do this, but it's our yard stick.

This as an AT-WALL siding (15mm) doing its job. We quite liked this one, but like bigger stones better. That's Kaoru pretending to be photographed.What a pair of spies!

This house looked really good. Sorry about the crappy pic!

We liked the size of these stones and the variety of colours - a generally lighter colour would be better for us, though.

Below is an example of some stone-look siding choices - these are not the ones we're thinking of because we've seen these on houses and don't really like them once they're on the wall, but at least it just gives you an idea of what we mean. We have found others that have much bigger stones, and will choose from those (gotta have some realism in your faux afterall!). These are some of the AT WALL siding choices when placed together online:

18mm dark wood with 15mm terracotta-coloured stone

18 mm dark wood with sand stone-coloured stone

15mm vertical dark wood with dark sandstone-coloured stone

18mm dark wood with 15mm gray stone

Your task, if you choose to accept it - go look through their website, have some fun mixing and matching and let me know what you come up with!
So, until next time!
Willie

Water...it's all about water!

We've had an interesting couple of weeks with the house, but before I tell you the tale of...not 'woe'...more like 'being poked in the eye with a blunt stick', I'll have to give you some background. At any rate, I did actually promise some of you this background story anyway, so here goes...

The land that we bought is in an area that is a little different from the rest of Beppu City. To cut a long story short, the family company that originally developed it is not...how do I put it...a fully adherent body to policies outside of their own. If you know what I mean. As a result, Beppu City - the bureaucratic beast - will not have anything to do with the area (despite still loving our tax dollars). Sure, they pick up the garbage, this is true, but the roads, street lights, all of that stuff? Nope. The upside is that we bought the land waaaaay cheaper than we would have in other parts of the city. The downside? Well, the roads are the big issue. And what's under them. 

Technically, a third of the road in front of our house is owned by us. Another third is owned by the land opposite, and the bit in the middle is owned by the family developer company. As well as all of the water pipes that run underneath it. Residents in the area have tried to give their parcel of road back to Beppu City many time, but it's impossible because 1. Beppu City won't take them (apparently) and 2. all of the water being supplied to the houses in the area comes from the developers, not Beppu City. If the roads went back the the City, then so would the water, and their income.

We didn't walk into this situation blind or anything - we knew that we would have to pay them for water connection, and also get our water supply from them. But! Just before we bought the land, they asked us to pay 800,000 yen (around AUD9,300), telling us that if we paid before April of that year (the end of the financial year in Japan), it would stay at that price, but if not it would go up to 1 million yen (AU$11,730)! Well, as we hadn't actually bought the land yet, we refused to pay, so the kind real estate agent paid them a portion of the sum, and when we bought the land, we paid them as part of the land deal, with the rest to follow when we started building. This was all good and well until last week.

Now, we have a delicate situation on our hands here: on the one hand, we don't want to be pushovers, and on the other, we don't want to ever get on the bad side of this family company, so when they told us we would have to pay almost 1 million yen to get the water connected, we had to tread carefully. They quite like Kaoru, which is great, and he is very good at being diplomatic (so I hear...ha ha), so in the end we managed to get them to shave off some of the extra they were charging. We still have to pay a bit more, but it's not as bad as we thought it might be. Kaoru (weeping) paid them the money last Friday, so now we're good to go with water connection.

And then came water of a different kind. The rainy season.

The rainy season in Japan lasts for around 2-3 weeks, and when it's over, the heat of summer usually kicks in. We had a day or two of almost sunny weather earlier this week, and some more work was done on the foundations, preparing it for the concrete that will be laid as soon as the rain buggers off. Below are the latest photos.

On the 15th July we are hopefully having our next ceremony, which is throwing mochi (sticky rice cakes) into the frame of the house. I'll make sure there's loads of pics of that! In the meantime, I hope that this little tale has enlightened you to some of the delicate diplomatic intricacies needed when building in Japan!

The Portaloo. When you officially know building is underway.

Good to know they're keeping their strength up.

Temporary electricals. I hope.

The Azaleas on the neighbouring wall.

I might have to keep this green fluffy stuff. Hmmm...fluffy...

The foundations begin!

What a great surprise to find the foundations have started. Also nice to see that they have built up the land, rather than dug down into it, so our house will actually sit a lot higher than I thought. Nice! Here are the photos from this morning. The man in some of them is a nice guy who (I think) was there to estimate the concrete needed. He looked around the land, turned to me and said "hmmm, hiroi, neh" (hmmm, spacious, eh!). I told him, being Australian, I love my space! He has been to Australia once, as it turned out. There's a little story for you. Not exciting, but a story nonetheless!

This is the spot I will take a photo from at least once a week from now on. Unless it's a fast week, then maybe every day.

What will be the view. Was a bit overcast today, but yesterday you could see for miles!

Mr Concrete. "Hiroi, neh!"

Looking up at the house location from the parking.

This is where my study will be. When I say "study" I mean the room in which to listen to music loud and do fun things.

The living room and deck will be that corner.

And now, just in case you all forgot what it looked like a short time ago...

It's a bit of a shock, actually! But good to know the greenery will return, and then some!

Until next time!