About a week ago, Sachi and I visited the offices of the firm that built our house. We saw videos showing the engineering technologies to protect against quake damage. The two I recall specifically are wall panels that protect against structure collapse, and structural posts which keep the building from separating from its foundations.

An article from the New York Times says that Japan’s strict building codes probably saved a lot of lives:

In Japan, where earthquakes are far more common than they are in the United States, the building codes have long been much more stringent on specific matters like how much a building may sway during a quake. …

Japan has gone much further than the United States in outfitting new buildings with advanced devices called base isolation pads and energy dissipation units to dampen the ground’s shaking during an earthquake.

The isolation devices are essentially giant rubber-and-steel pads that are installed at the very bottom of the excavation for a building, which then simply sits on top of the pads. The dissipation units are built into a building’s structural skeleton. They are hydraulic cylinders that elongate and contract as the building sways, sapping the motion of energy. …

New apartment and office developments in Japan flaunt their seismic resistance as a marketing technique, a fact that has accelerated the use of the latest technologies, said Ronald O. Hamburger, a structural engineer in the civil engineering society and Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, a San Francisco engineering firm.

Later today, I’ll be driving over to the new house to check it out, but I will be very surprised if it shows any damage.

I would, however, like to make a small political point here. The building codes and other rules that saved so many lives? That’s what you call “government regulation.” The purpose of which is not to stifle or dominate, but to protect and safeguard. In this case, it kept people from dying as much. In other cases, it safeguards against damage done by people and corporations. Regulation, far more often than not, is a good thing.

After the shaking stopped, I tiptoed through the stuff covering the floor, and went through the building, helping the staff tell everyone to get out and collect outside. I quickly grabbed my laptop, bag, and jacket–as well as my bike helmet–and headed downstairs. Everyone was gathered out on the street. Phones were down–and still are, 4 hours later–as was text messaging. 3G Internet was still available, but for 15-20 minutes after the quake, no news services had anything. It took a bit longer than that before I found a Google News story about a 7.9 quake, but no news site would load enough to get other information.

As we waited out on the street, we could see the 40-story high-rise being built to our north, with four giant construction cranes towering over it–and even in the aftershocks, those cranes were swinging around like tree branches in a heavy wind.

I hit an incredibly lucky break of sorts today. As we needed documents from city hall for our upcoming home purchase, I decided this morning, on the spur of the moment, to take my scooter. I hardly ever do that anymore; I drive in maybe only once every two months nowadays. But I did this morning, and it was a fairly major break for me. From what I hear, trains are still not running, and one can only imagine the crowds when they start up again. I have heard that as many as 70 students at my school are still there, and may have to sleep there until trains start up again, maybe not even tonight. (I am Skype texting with one of them as I type this, in fact.)

The first thing I did was to take my scooter to the local gas stand; I didn’t think I had enough fuel to get me all the way home. I actually figured that the gas stations, naturally, would be shut down–but surprisingly, they were not. In fact, far from the long lines I imagined, there was almost no one there. I filled up and scooted over to the school grounds where everyone had gone. People shared stories–being on the subway, having relatives near the epicenter, speculation about the effects, and so forth–and otherwise just tried to recover from the event. Several of my students and I had planned to go to Akihabara tomorrow to buy computer parts of the Computer Making Club; when I suggested we postpone the trip, at least one student–who wants to make her own computer alongside ours–was very disappointed.

After it seemed clear that I would not be of any use, I did what I had been planning to do but was torn over: go home. On the one hand, I felt like a selfish heel, scooting on home while everyone else stood around in a dirt yard in the windy cold with probably no way to get home until the next day. But I also was unable to contact Sachi, and fearing she was even more worried about me than I was about her, well, that won over. By this time, it was about 50 minutes after the quake had struck.

As I started driving home, I noted so many people outside, especially with their dogs. So many had left their buildings and gathered outside. Offices were beginning to shut down, and people in the city were beginning to go home the only way they could–by walking. People were out on the streets in numbers, with crowds at every bus stop. The buses, overcrowded of course, were the only way many people had of getting even close to home. The trains were down, of course, and I certainly would not have wanted to try to flag down a taxi just then.

Interestingly, traffic itself was rather normal. I expected a huge traffic jam, a parking lot from one end to the other–but that wasn’t how it was. Instead, the streets were no more crowded than usual. I drove down Ome Boulevard, and while there was congestion here and there, it was not something I would be surprised at on any day.

As it happened, my brother and his wife live right along the route I was taking, so I stopped by. My sister-in-law was home, but my brother was still at work, and they were communicating by Skype. Just as I left, he indicated he would walk home–a three-and-a-half mile walk, but it was the only way. I got back on my scooter and continued going.

There was really no special damage along the way. Oh, fire trucks were present here and there, and a few old buildings seemed to need some help, but mostly it looked like business as usual. Businesses, in fact, were still open, everything except the trains seemed to be operating as usual. Every red light, I would get out my phone and retry texting Sachi, though it didn’t work all the way home.

Finally, I got home, and Sachi was there, doing fine. Some furniture had moved a few inches, and there was some spilling on the floor, but nothing broke and everything seemed OK. The electricity is still on everywhere I could see, the Internet never went offline, and water is running–but the gas is off, at least in our apartment. There may be an emergency switch somewhere, I’ll have to check that out.

About an hour ago, I got through to someone on my cell phone, but that was the only call that went through–I have not been able to make calls before or since. We had nabe for dinner–a stew you boil right there at the table. We used an IH (induction heating) hotplate, while continuing to watch the nonstop news on TV.

So, we’re just fine here–Tokyo was not hardest hit by far–but we’re still getting hit by aftershocks. A rather big one just hit, the 20th or so quake that, on any other day, would rate its own little blog post. We expect these will keep happening for a while.

Quite a day.

We’re still getting aftershocks every 5-10 minutes. The last one just hit now, and several are recorded as being as strong as 6 on the Richter scale. Another big one could hit, so we have to be careful. The original quake was brought back up to an 8.8.

The images on television are rather shocking; not the quake, but the tsunamis that are rolling in. Buildings along the coast submerged up to the second floor. Fires in places, including Daiba in Tokyo. Right now the death toll is at 19.

As I mentioned before, we were on the 6th floor of LCJ when it hit, and it progressed in stages. Everyone ducked for cover, getting under desks and in doorways, as papers and books and drinks spilled onto the floor. In the library, the bookshelf braces held, more or less, though books littered the floor. Thankfully, the elevator was open on the 1st floor at the time, so no one at the school was trapped nor had to experience the quake while locked in the car.

People moved out to the street, though not as quickly as they should have, perhaps. After milling around on the street for a while, we all went to the local school grounds, where we could wait for things to settle away from overhanging power lines.

Here are some images from the school; click on each for larger versions. The first is what my office looked like afterwards:

Here are a few images of the library:

On the way to the evacuation area, a local school’s sports field, we could see some structural damage from a building or two:

But a little farther north, one street was blocked because a retaining wall for earth in a local temple’s graveyard gave way:

The death toll went up to 20 while I was writing this, but seeing the films of tsunami, I would be amazed if the toll does not go into the hundreds. It’s still just four hours since the quake hit.

I just got home. Luckily, I had driven my scooter in to work this morning, a rarity for me–and it allowed me to get home and see if Sachi was OK, and to let her know I was.

I was in the office on the 6th floor. It started small, like “Oh, do you feel that tremor?” Then it got stronger, in stages, each new level greater than the last, until we finally got to the stage where you knew this was a big one. Books flying off of desks, everyone diving for cover. It lasted long, too. Right away, you could tell it wasn’t local–the slow start, the sideways-rolling motion. But for that minute or two when we were experiencing it, there was the question of whether or not the building would collapse in some way.

Of course, it didn’t. Here in Tokyo, it felt huge, but not so terrible we couldn’t stand and walk unsteadily. Not as bad as being on the ground in Loma Prieta, I’m told. But big. Pictures to come, but our office floor was covered with papers and books.

Everyone was OK. No one around us was hurt. All the students were OK, but everyone was outside, and it was cold and windy today. I imagine they are still trying to get back home–but everyone was OK.

They are now reporting that it was an 8.4 on the Richter scale, hitting at 2:46, followed by offshore aftershocks of 7.0, 7.4, and 6.6. We certainly felt those as well.

For a quake that big in Tokyo, it was about 230 miles distant from Tokyo, about 70 miles off the northern Japan coast.

We just felt a big aftershock right now, the second big one we’ve felt since I got home.

More soon.

We’re not quite there yet, but we’re appreciably on the way, and might be 90% of the way should nothing untoward happen. We’ve been looking to buy a home for either a few months or a year now, depending on how you count it. We started about a year ago, looking in Kanagawa, when the bank told us that I didn’t have much of a chance of getting a loan until I got my permanent residency. So I got that, and we started looking again late last year.

We’ve been going around to properties in the area since December, looking at several properties each weekend. We’re using a real estate agency known as “Suumo,” a Seibu firm. We tried looking at some properties in neighboring towns, but they just didn’t work out for us. The area we live in now, Hibarigaoka, is nice: two large department stores, lots of supermarkets, restaurants, and other shops. The train station is an express stop, and connects up with two subway lines, connecting to almost any other lines you could think of. It’s not too close to Tokyo, but not too far, either–about the right balance. Sachi didn’t want to live any farther out, and any farther in would be too expensive. The next station in, Hoya, had some possible properties, but the area was just too plain–not much there at all, just houses for a long way.

There was a place we looked at a few months back which had a nice location, but it was just a foundation under construction, and was out of our price range anyway. However, our agent called up and said that the property’s owner–a developer who bought a larger property from the prior owner and split the land into two lots (a very common thing in Tokyo)–was cutting the price by about $25,000. It was still a bit high for us, but the agent talked him down another $15,000, and it came in to our price range.

The land parcel is 102 m² (31 tsubo), which is fairly average for this area. The location, however, is very good, and you know what they say about location. It’s a 7 or 8-minute walk from Hibarigaoka station, along a road that almost hits the station. There are tons of restaurants and small shops in the area. There are a few small grocery shops along the way, but 5 minutes in the other direction is a cluster of shops which includes a large, nice supermarket/store, a few video rental shops, and a few more nice restaurants.

The house we’re looking at is just off the roads that lead places, but it’s pretty quiet, so far as we can tell. The back of the house looks over a parking lot for a fitness canter, but it’s on the opposite side from the bedroom (which overlooks a small, quiet street), and the parking lot doesn’t seem to be very noisy at all–though we’ll have to check that. (The agent says he’ll take us for looks over the next few weeks at different times of the day, opportunities we’ll take to inspect the house very closely as well. I’ll also be camping out by the house at other times to check noise levels.)

In short, the location, while not perfect, is excellent. The main down side we can see is that there are no parks nearby–a bit of a disappointment, as we plan on getting a dog very soon. We can still visit parks, just not on an everyday basis.

Now, the house design is nothing special. No high ceilings, no stylish frills. Not even a dishwashing machine, something a lot of new places seem to have. It has a very standard look, nothing that would turn your head. The layout didn’t knock our socks off, but looking at a floor plan doesn’t always tell the whole story.

In fact, I thought that the floor plans were rather dull. One thing I do when I move in to a new place, though, is to plan out how the furniture will go. It helps me understand how the space can be utilized, and really helps with the moving. So I took the layout of this place into InDesign, made sure I had drawings of all our furniture to scale, and then started arranging things. I found that they fit quite nicely. We would utilize the upstairs most of all, and that would be the bedroom–big enough for our bed and furniture plus room to move around–a room for me, like a home office, about 10′ square, quite nice–and another room, about 9′ x 12′, very open and sunny, which we would make into a kind of second-floor living room, with a sofa, table, and the big TV.

Still, the design wasn’t knocking my socks off. So to compare, I took the floor plans for an “ideal” house that had been drawn up just for us. When we were looking at a plot of land in Hoya, a housebuilding firm drew up plans for us based on what we said we wanted. It looked really nice, and we were very interested in building it on some plot of land we might find in the future. Just for comparison, I also put it into InDesign, and started arranging the furniture.

It was terrible. Nothing fit, the living room had no way to comfortably set a sofa and television, and a dogleg between the living and dining areas completely wasted a large amount of space. The rooms for Sachi and I were just too small, and didn’t work for us very well.

Despite being sexier, the “ideal” layout didn’t live up to expectations–and the “dull” layout suddenly started showing promise. That, along with the location being as good as it is, started making the property look a lot more attractive.

Then there was the price; there was nothing wrong with the property (nothing we’ve been able to detect so far, at least), but the price was very good for that area. Just a block or so to the south, about the same distance from the station, were properties opening up–plots of land without houses yet–which were going for about the same as the housed property we’re looking at. Yes, they are about 10% larger, but the prices ranged from 25% to 45% more than our estimate of the land we were purchasing. That seemed to set the local land values such that our land seemed nicely priced, even if you allow for the close-by land plots to also be discounted.

One possible snag–or fringe benefit, depending on how it plays–is that the city of West Tokyo has plans for creating new roads through the town, and one of the planned roads goes through the property we’re looking at. However, the plan will probably not be realized for a few decades at least, if even ever. If it does materialize, it might come at just about at the time we could be looking to sell the house and retire elsewhere. Our agent told us that such eminent domain purchases were usually for good prices, better than market value, and that some people even speculated on such land. However, I’m still a bit suspicious–that the property should be offered to us for a lower price than most in the neighborhood already, plus there being this possible “benefit” way in the future… it’s something I want to look into, though I have to admit I am not sure how I would do it. But I have to wonder if the easier answer might be true–that we’re being sold a plot of land that others may not want because of possible future development in the area.

In any case, there are many steps along the way to buying a house, and we didn’t want to just sit by and possibly watch this one go by, should it be what we want. So we agreed to start the process of purchasing, comfortable that we could back out at any time over the next month. That involved putting up a million yen on the down payment, though it is fully refundable (the process does include signing contracts requiring 15,000 yen in revenue stamps, non-refundable of course). But in doing so, we have dibs on the property, and can still back out anytime up until March 14.

So we went in to the real estate office and spent much of the day there, as the agent walked us through 12 pages of legal and technical details, telling us the history and quality of the property, how the road in front is not city property so we will have to work with neighbors if it needs work, as well as a host of zoning details and contractual obligations.

Then we signed the forms, handed over the deposit, and arranged to see the house again later this week.

Either we could discover that the place is not what we want, or the bank might fail to give us the loan, or we could be moving into our new house by early April.

It’s a national holiday in Japan today (National Foundation Day), and the first snow day in Tokyo this winter (late again). I’ve commented before about how even a little snow will shut things down in Tokyo. Back in Toyama, where it really snows, where we’d get a meter or two on the ground sometimes, we’d laugh at news footage of Tokyo being paralyzed by a few centimeters, watching video of people on the street struggling to walk straight on icy patches, and train lines being shut down right and left. In fact, this nearly nixed a flight back to America for me once, as it snowed earlier than usual (in the first or second week of December) about a decade ago, dropping several centimeters just on the morning I was to leave. Half the train lines in Tokyo shut down.

Today, it doesn’t seem too bad. Frankly, I like snow. A lot better than winter rain, that’s for sure.

Sachi and I went to the nearby Tanashi Shrine today, hoping to do our hatsumode, or new year’s shrine visit for the season. When we got there, however, we saw this:

Yep. A huge, long line. And what you see above is just the start of it. We have been going to Hie Shrine in mid-town the past couple years, but decided to go local–little did we know that the lines would be longer here. The line went way down the path to the rear entrance, then went down the block and around the corner and snaked back up almost to the side entrance of the shrine. Here’ a video of less than half that line:

The movie above ends about halfway through the entire line. So, instead, we just went to a small side shrine (actually, nicer than the main one) where almost no one was going, with the idea that we’ll go back again tomorrow or the next day for our “official” visit.

Of course, we chowed down on matsuri food; Sachi had okonomiyaki while I had yakitori and a frank. We returned last year’s charms for burning, and bought a few new ones, as usual.

A nice shrine visit, despite the line thing.