Exterior images

The design for our house came together quickly, because it was so simple. In fact, we kept thinking that whatever form it took the house would never be simple enough. Each item that went into the house was going to cost us, so we didn’t want a wall or a door or even an electrical outlet that we didn’t need. It’s one of the reasons we chose A-1, because every plank and screw is subject to our approval, and while the simplicity of our basic idea made it quick and easy to plan, refining the design took a bit more time.

The initial estimate was close to ¥14 million, which is reasonable but more than we originally wanted to pay given what the land had cost us. The basic A-1 design our plan was based on was less than ¥11 million. Most of the difference was taken up by the design fee and some custom add-ons, like the extra toilet. So we scrutinized the plans. Did we really need a door to the office on the first floor? Would a mail slot be cheaper than a mailbox? Could we find less expensive lighting fixtures on our own than the ones that A-1 would purchase through its usual supplier? Note that we weren’t being cheap for the sake of being cheap. Several decisions actually cost us more than if we had let A-1 go its normal route. The bathroom on the second floor did not have a standard vanity unit, which would have been cheaper than the built-in sink and mirror combo we demanded. We hate bathroom vanities, but essentially it was keeping things simple that made us chose the combo. We gave in to the unit bath because on further inspection we didn’t think we could find a reasonably priced tradesman who could build the kind of Western bathroom we preferred. As antiseptic as we found unit baths, they tend to have more structural integrity and are longer-lasting than custom-made bathrooms, at least in Japan. And though we weren’t crazy about the standard system kitchen we felt we’d been forced to choose at Housetec, we didn’t need to buy overhead cabinets since it’s an open-style kitchen. We also opted for sliding doors for the upstairs bathroom and the downstairs toilet, and they are more expensive than conventional hinged doors. Sliding doors take up less room, and at 89 square meters comprising two floors the house doesn’t have any extra room to spare. We had already eliminated the usually requisite “balcony,” which in Japanese homes mainly functions as a clothes-hanging platform, and it saved us a lot. And since our house is essentially a big box there were fewer angles and thus less surface area. With A-1, real wood panel walls are standard, but for a bit extra you can have conventional white sheetrock walls, and for a bit less you can have OSB (oriented strand board), which we chose for the walls of the office, since they would eventually be covered by bookcases, so the look wasn’t going to be important. Originally, we opted to leave out a UHF-BS antenna unit on the roof, thinking we’d get cable or Internet TV, but after calling around to various cable and IPS companies discovered that such services weren’t yet available in our neck of the woods, which is slightly outside the Chiba New Town zone. In fact, they might not be available for some time, so we opted back in for the antenna unit, which may look sort of precarious on that nice, angled roof A-1 is building. In the name of simplicity again we asked them not to tile the genkan (foyer), but just leave it as bare concrete, and not just because it’s less money. We like bare concrete and since we included in the design a small recessed storage area just to the right of the genkan it would all be of a piece. We also wanted a lot of windows, which costs more than having less windows, though due to the usual “modular” Japanese design methodology, which bases all measurements on ikken multiples or portions of the length of a tatami (182 cm), we had to chose window sizes accordingly. Any other sizes would require custom work, which would mean going outside the modular parameters and thus cost a lot more. We’re fine with standard windows. Read More

Last week we were looking at a new house that had recently been completed. The owner allowed the builder to show the property to the public as a model prior to his moving in. The builder represents a new trend in housing that is quickly catching on, and for good reason. They offer a number of standard designs that can be constructed cheaply using kits and materials bought in bulk, and the purchaser can customize the designs in various ways with options and slight floor plan changes. The basic structures range from a mere ¥9 million to about ¥13 million, not including land, of course. The builder also deals in land sales, but only insofar as a means of selling new homes. They look for stray plots for people like us who are looking to build their own home but haven’t found land yet. It’s the reverse of the usual process. Since the house is the main sales point, the company doesn’t charge a fee when brokering a land deal.

For us, however, the visit was purely for research purposes. The house was well-made but the basic design and overall aesthetic was dully conventional: boxy rooms, white walls, nondescript fixtures. Of course, the buyer could pay more and make the improvements he liked, which is the whole point, but given what there was to begin with we weren’t inspired. Moreover, the company seemed to limit its land selection to cramped housing developments, specifically orphan lots that hadn’t been sold after a particular development had been opened for sale.

In fact, the visit wouldn’t be worth mentioning if not for one feature that stood out so prominently it seemed to define the house. The owner, whom the agent told us was a “foreigner,” had exercised his design option by installing a separate shower stall on the second floor, in addition to the usual unit bath on the first floor. Stand-alone showers aren’t very common in Japan, certainly not as common as they are in the U.S. or Europe, but you do occasionally see them. What made this one odd was that it was built off the second floor hallway. It was designed almost like a closet: there was a folding door, beyond which was a capsule-style unit shower. There was no space for changing clothes, you just stepped directly from the hallway into the shower. There was also a toilet on the second floor, but as is the Japanese custom it had its own separate room, and was down the hall from the shower. The second floor also had two bedrooms. Japanese houses usually don’t provide a distinctive “master bedroom” in the sense of a room with its own attached bathroom, but the larger bedroom in this house had a huge walk-in closet that was positioned adjacent to the shower stall but didn’t connect to it.

We asked the agent why the owner didn’t put the shower stall in the bedroom or made an entrance to the shower from the walk-in closet. She said that they had another customer who did just that, but such a design change was very expensive and didn’t fit within the overall budget of the person who ordered this house; which is a reasonable explanation but all we could imagine is family members and weekend guests dripping water everywhere as they walked naked around the house (there was a third bedroom on the first floor) after taking a shower. The agent, noting our bemusement, remarked, “Yes, it is strange, isn’t it?”