By the looks of what’s left of the inside I estimate this house to be about 35 yrs old or more. That’s about as long as a full mortgage. Many Japanese houses are not meant to last forever and 35 yrs seems to be the benchmark. In other words, by the time you’ve paid off your mortgage the house will be ripe for demolition. That is, if you’re still alive after 35 yrs. As you can see the outer walls are pretty flimsy thus living up to the stereotype of Japanese houses being made of paper. Even some modern houses are built with thin walls like this although the materials and interior structures are more contemporary. The walls of my house are pretty thin and I’m sure I can kick a hole through it if I tried hard enough. A strong wind will shake my house to the point where stuff on my shelf fall over. I’m not kidding. The foundation of my house is made of concrete which is the norm these days. The house in this photo appears to be completely wood. Double brick walls like the kind you see in houses in Canada are rare in Tokyo but I’m told that this is standard in colder parts like in Hokkaido. Some of the more expensive houses seemed to have thicker walls but these houses tend to be custom built and cost more than a couple million dollars. Truth is, the thin walls make the structure more flexible during an earthquake and supposedly safer. We’ll see about that. But some people still prefer to buy a modern condominium because they just feel more solid. Condos (called “Mansions” in Japan) are usually made of steel and concrete rather than wood and paper.
You’d be surprised at how flimsy new Western houses are these days, actually not much better than this! A lot of the newer rendered type places are really just polystyrene foam sheets under that thin layer of aesthetic cement.
Looks solid, but you can easily put your fist through it. If anything heavy were to fall over against it, or a ball was to hit it with a bit of force it would smash straight through. It’s not recommended for ground floors or where vehicles may pass close by, like a driveway, and protective barriers should be in place. But builders usually do not pay attention to these recommendations.
If not carefully constructed, these cladded walls also don’t ‘breath’ and cause problems with water getting in the walls and not drying out. Cheap and quick to put up, it’s caused problems in New Zealand with around 15,000 recently built homes may have problems and not last much longer than 15 years.
The inside of this place (the wood trim and wall covering style) looks a lot like the inside of my apartment building! It makes me wonder if this place is actually older than we were originally told.
Does it bother you that your walls are so thin considering how much you paid for the place?
Dylan, I’m worried about moisture build up in my walls too. Japan is a super humid country.
Shari, anything that’s an Apartment is kind of like this. Only mansions are made of concrete. At first I was bothered by spending so much money on a thinned walled house but they are all like this so much I could do about it besides buying a mansion instead.
Houses made of paper are like… houses made of paper! What do you expect? We must not even build houses made of paper, because thermal insulation’s values are so bad in these. On the one hand I can imagine that there are more earthquakes in your world’s region than in Germany, but on the other hand houses made of at least bricks can withstand even heavy weather conditions like tornadoes and so forth (not like those inferior plywood “houses” in the US). You simply have to pay for what you think is the most important to you: Price or Quality.
(Written in a house made of brick stones — where a flash hit into last week and no one even noticed)