Our new house update

Here are a coupla more pics. Jeez these Japanese can work fast! No picture from today because it's been raining too much. In fact I dont think they even worked today. You can see that they've got the second floor finished and are working on the second floor walls. When I came back from work last night the second floor walls were up and so was the frame of the roof and then had put a blue tarping all around the metal structure you see up around the house. The when I took those first pictures they had stopped by lunch time and didn't work on it in the afternoon. So they basically framed an entire house in a day and a half.




Here's a cellphone update from Fumiko. Apparently we've found a driver who can take us to Kyoto in November:

Fumiko: p-chan passed! ('-^*)
ok p-chan can drive a car !

Further adventures of P-chan

P-chan is popping up again. I got it for Fumiko on her birthday (yes it was on time) but only recently has P-chan been doing anything remotely postworthy. Let me give you a little background. P-chan is a stuffed penguin. So of course, to any normal Japanese girl, it is a cute, living creature whose opinion is requested and respected more often than my own. If I'm in a competition with P-chan, I am likely going to be the loser. Anyways P-chan has been doing some cute things lately which have been caught on camera-cellphone camera anyways. About a month ago I received an email from Fumiko:

Fumiko: ハローハニー (Hello honey)
Brendan: hello!
Fumiko: only it!? p-chan angry!



This is followed by an attachment for the following picture. Just the thought of P-chan glaring into the phone at me was too much! I'd never seen a stuffed penguin glare before.

Then tonight P-chan was caught on camera again. Fumiko has her final driving test tomorrow-a written test only and she was supposed to study for it:

Brendan: finished studying?
Fumiko: p-chan is studying!


Brendan: かわいい!! あした p-chanは テストを かきますか? (cute!! Is p-chan going to write the test tomorrow?)
Fumiko: of course! p-chan is smart!

I apologize for anybody who vomited on their keyboard.

Housing in Japan

A house is being built right next to us so I thought I'd use the opportunity to show how the housing is in Japan. Unfortunatley I've started a little bit late and I missed some of the earlier stages. Anyways the first stage is to tear down the previous house. A high-hoe (sp?) comes in with a claw instrument and tears the house down. It takes more than one day and free space is at a premium so what do they do? Well they just drive it right up and park it inside the house of course! I wish I had have taken a picture of that! All the debris is taken away in these miniature dumptrucks. The roads are quite small here so you can't have any big dumptrucks in Japan. Everything is carted away right down to the bare earth and then they start building again. First some foundations are poured. And this is where my pictures start (pretty much).

Not sure if you can tell from the pictures but the foundation is about two or three feet tall and they build the floor on top. So there's lots of airspace between the ground and the first floor. I'm pretty sure that basements are illegal in Japan. Something to do with the humidity and mould and whatnot.

Japanese always seem to throw the buildings up so darn fast and I think I've finally figured out why. If you look at all the wood, you can see that it's been pre-cut and formed so that the whole house goes together like one big Lego project. Of course there's not exactly a lot of room in which to work so you pretty much need to build from within the house!