Ma Tasse de Thé

Maison japonaise

Damned, we were so close…

Last Sunday, we found a house which we liked very much: a little far away from the station, but on a land of more than 70 tsubo (about 233 sq m) with a two-story building of about 165 sq m, which is really huge for a Japanese house. Nice garden, underground car park, a large terrace, quiet neighborhood, with a park and a school close by. Moreover, the style is very special for a Japanese house: besides the dining room and bedrooms with wooden floor, the living room floor is made of marble! Doors and window frames are made of imported materials, not Japanese at all. There is a washitsu, but even this one doesn’t look very Japanese, more kind of a western-style tatami room. Needless to say we were really excited, but…

Maison japonaise

The real-estate agent told us there was already a potential buyer, and that the contract would be signed on Tuesday, which is… two days later. Not much we can do, they said, except make an offer for the whole price and hope the first buyer was offering less (seen the number of parties involved, it is often difficult to know who offers what). And this is what we did, without much hope. But…

On Tuesday, our real-estate agent calls us to let us know that the contract has not been signed, and asks us when we’d be available in the following days… Well you can imagine how we were: we really thought this was our chance. For two days, at least. Because on Thursday, we get another call telling us the contract has been signed. The house is sold… What happened? We’ll probably never know, but it is likely that the law of supply and demand has been applied. The first buyer probably offered less than the proposed price, and had to revise his offer (which he did because he really wanted the house).

That’s is. I’m sure we’ll never find again a house like this one. But I’m also confident that we will find a nice house for use, when the time comes. But one thing is sure now: we saw a really nice deal, and the way we look at houses from now on will likely never be the same again.

Just came along a conversation started by my friend Ledretch (Nutritionist 2.0) on Seesmic and I decided to share my favorite food: you guessed it, I’m talking about nattô (納豆)! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here it is. Enjoy!

I recently wrote about my research on the real estate market in Japan (here and here).

However, as I read this post on Seth Godin’s blog, I thought it might not be a very good idea. Seth says: “Only borrow money to pay for things that increase in value.”

So if I were to buy a house in Japan, either:

• I’d need to be rich, or
• Japanese houses should increase in value.

Better think some more about it…

A while ago, I wrote about the real estate market in Japan. Discouraging? Maybe so, but I don’t want to give up, I want to see whether a deal is possible.

The two houses we visited last week are quite different, but they do share some common features. We are looking for a rather spacious house (according to Japanese standard at least), that is more than 100m2, while the average is around (max) 80m2 in Tokyo, but not necessarily close to the station.

The first house we saw was a “light steel frame construction” (軽量鉄骨象 keiryô tekkotsu zô), built following “Hebel” (へーベルハウス = “Hebel haus”). It is 104.95m2 (land: 121m2), located at about 19 min on foot from H. station (uphill). The house is not more than 6 years old, with a ten-year warranty, and is said to be “a 60-year housing”. The company who built it (Asahi-Kasei) offers a maintenance program with regular check-up (every 5 or 10 years). The real estate agent told us that the land should be worth not less than 700,000 yen / tsubo (坪) i.e. about 212,121 yen / m2. And the house should be worth around 13,000,000 yen, which gives us 120 m2 x 212,121 yen / m2 + 13,000,000 yen = 38,000,000 yen. According to the agent, this is a really interesting price, given the fact that a new house in the area is about 40,000,000 yen. The house is “high-tech” equipped, with code-locking, whole electric kitchen, halogen lighting, etc. and (except the walls that need to be refreshed) it is available right away.

Japanese house

The second house we saw (see picture) is located about 17 min walk from T. station (next to H. station), with a living surface of 115.82m2 on a 132m2 land (somewhat bigger than the previous one). The big difference: it is a wooden construction (木造) and it’s 17 years old. The real estate agent says the land is worth about 800,000 yen / tsubo, i.e. 242,424 yen / m2 and the house worth 0! In Japan, a wooden house is completely looses its value in about one generation. This gives us 132 m2 x 242,424 yen / m2 + 0 = 32,000,000 yen. The house is sold at 31,000,000 yen with a possible 1,000,000 yen discount. The inside is however in bad shape: everything needs to be refreshed: walls, floor, plumbing, etc. … all this would cost about 4,000,000 yen. Also note that T. station is a bit more valued than H., because of the facilities and shops nearby. And the way to the house is flat.

My first impression: both houses cost about the same price, 35,000,000 yen (if you include renovation fees for the 2nd one). The big difference is that the T. house is considered as 0 yen worth, and the deal is therefore mainly about the land. The real estate agent also told us that a wooden house costs more in maintenance than a concrete building (about 10,000 yen a month for a wooden house). I am however tempted to think that the wooden house is more interesting, based on the fact that the land will (probably) not loose much of its value, and that the house can be inhabited although it is considered worth nothing.

Later, we went to see the second house again, and we met a neighbour, who told us the land was probably not worth more than 700,000 yen / tsubo (rather than 800,000 yen / tsubo). He also told us: “Many people came to see the house but it is still not sold yet; (I probably shouldn’t tell you that, but) this house is not worth much… Take your time to choose.” –1st lesson: don’t believe everything real-estate agents tell you!

The agent told us the house was now the property of a bank (it was taken away because the owner couldn’t pay back the mortgage), and if this house wasn’t sold 2 weeks later, they would sell it on auction (much less than the current price), most likely to a real estate agent who would renew it and sell it for a better price… (I told you: Japanese like stuff that look new)

Since I haven’t seen many houses yet, I can’t tell you whether this one would have been a good pick, but I still think if I had to choose, I’d opt for the wooden house. And you, based on these data, what’d be your take?

I was giving a try to twitter4r, a library for accessing Twitter’s API in Ruby, with Ruby installed on a Windows (Vista) box, and I was facing a the following problem:

My RoR server was crashing with “Segmentation Fault” somewhere in json/common.rb.

More specifically, it is when calling the timeline_for method that my server was blowing up.

I found the solution to this problem here, but since it is in Japanese, I thought some of you might be happy if I’d translate it in English.

In fact, it’s quite simple: the problem comes form the json library, on which twitter4r depends. If you install twitter4r with gem, as mentioned in their website, the json library is also installed, but the Win32 binaries seem buggy. The good news is there also exists a “pure ruby” implementation of json, and this one works fine. The problem is, if you install it with gem, it won’t be recognized. The solution is therefore to install both json and twitter4r manually.

How do I do that?

• For json, download json_pure package on RubyForge, uncompress it somewhere, move to the json_pure-x.y.z directory and type the following command in a console: ruby install.rb.
• As for twitter4r, download the twitter4r package also on RubyForge, uncompress it somewhere, go to the twitter4r-x.y.z\lib directory and copy both the twitter directory and twitter.rb file in Ruby’s library directory (type this ruby -e 'puts $:' to get the list).

Voilà!

I am happy because I solved a problem with one of my WP plugins, which I could not get working (now-reading). The problem was not especially related to this plugin, but it took me hours to understand the cause.

Problem:

When trying to directly load a .php file in the plugin directory, it would redirect me to index.php and WP would show the 404 error page. No problem for .php files included by others.

Concrete example:

When trying to save the options of “Now Reading”, the form would be sent to the following file:
/wp-content/plugins/now-reading/admin/options.php
but instead of loading this file, it would load index.php and display a 404 error.

Same thing when trying to add a book, for the following file:
/wp-content/plugins/now-reading/admin/add.php

Explanation:

So what was happening?

I tried to look at my rewrite rules, suspecting a problem with WP rewrite rules, in vain.

It appears that the solution is much simpler: my web host apache server settings are such that you cannot directly load a .php script which has write permission for group members. Same restriction for scripts located in a directory that has write permission for group members.

By comparing the now-reading directory (and subdirectories) with my other plugins’, I found that the permission was 775 instead of 755. And the file permissions were 664 instead of 644.

Solution:

I changed my directory permissions to 755 and file permissions to 644, and… it worked!

Que d’émotions

Second video post, in which I discuss (in French) the pros and cons of 12seconds.tv versus seesmic.com.

See also:
– What is 12seconds?
– Loic Le Meur’s New Startup Launches: Seesmic

Et comme toujours, n’hésitez pas à me faire connaitre VOTRE avis, en postant une p’tite vidéo, ou par un commentaire.

Pourquoi pas? Voici donc un petit essai…

Et pour que ce soit fun, n’hésitez pas à poster vos commentaires en vidéo!

Remis du jet lag, après un agréable séjour en Belgique.

C’est d’ailleurs au sujet d’un restaurant belge que j’écris aujourd’hui: le TAN. C’est finalement dans ce petit resto sympa que j’ai invité mon épouse pour son anniversaire, et nous n’avons pas été déçus.

Le TAN sert essentiellement des plats faits d’aliments biologiques, souvent crus ou légèrement cuits, et dont le menu s’inspire de cuisines du monde entier. C’était le souhait de mon épouse de nous rendre dans un restaurant bio, et il faut bien admettre que ça ne court pas les rues. J’étais donc un peu méfiant, car quand il y a peu de concurrence, on trouve parfois de tout. Mais j’ai eu tord, car la cuisine du TAN m’a vraiment séduit.

Nous avons tous les deux dégusté le lunch carné, avec en entrée:

Taboulé de quinoa aux champignons et céleri blanc, olives noires de Kalamata et
romarin, graines germées d’alfalfa et daikon , huile d’olive calabraise

et pour plat principal:

Tranchettes d’agneau mariné à la teriyaki, vapeur de céleri blanc, poireau et carotte,
sauce crue aux huiles de pépins de raisin et sésame (35’)

Succulent! J’ai particulièrement apprécié les graines et épices qui donnaient aux plats une saveur exotique un peu mystérieuse.

“Et pour le dessert?” me direz-vous. Eh bien figurez-vous qu’il n’y en a pas. Dommage? Non, car le TAN propose une carte de tisanes variées et de chocolats… tout en rappelant que, d’un point de vue diététique, la consommation d’aliments sucrés est préférable avant le repas, et non à la fin; et que le café est une boisson toxique (je ne leur donne pas tord, mais je dois bien avouer que j’aurais bien du mal à me passer de ce petit “poison”). Quoi qu’il en soit, les tisanes étaient délicieuses!

Et puis, comme l’explique le patron du TAN, Jo Van der Stichelen, le TAN est plus qu’un restaurant: il y a aussi un magasin d’aliments biologiques et de graines (à faire germer chez soi, ou a consommer!), et un petit bar pour prendre l’apéro.

Jugez par vous-même, et dites-moi si vous avez aimé: http://www.tanclub.org/

Note: Les photos sont extraites de la vidéo de présentation du TAN.

Earth Day Tokyo 2008

Le week-end passé à Tôkyô, comme dans beaucoup d’autres pays, on célébrait le Earth Day (アースデー). Pour l’occasion, un événement a eu lieu au Parc de Yoyogi (代々木公園 yoyogi kôen) près de Shibuya.

http://earthday-tokyo.org/

Plutôt intéressé par ce genre de rassemblement sur le thème de l’environnement, c’est avec certaines attentes que je me suis rendu sur place avec mon épouse et ma fille. Le bilan? Mitigé.

Ce que j’ai aimé

La logistique de l’événement était plutôt bonne. Et vu le monde qu’il y avait dimanche, le bon côté, c’est que beaucoup de gens ont pu être en contact avec toutes sortes de magasins, d’associations ou de compagnies portées sur la question de l’environnement. Très accessible au grand public.

Le rôle de la sensibilisation était tangible. Par exemple:

• Plutôt que de servir la nourriture dans des assiettes jetables, l’association (ONG) A SEED JAPAN distribuait des assiettes et baguettes réutilisables (objectif “gomi zero” càd “zéro déchet”)
• Toute l’énergie consommée était produite à 100% à partir de sources d’énergies naturelles: Fuel Biodiesel (voir aussi ici), Hydrogène et Energie Solaire. Excellent.

Quelques photos:

Quelques photos de Earth Day Tokyo 2008

Ce que j’ai moins aimé (ou: peu mieux faire)

J’ai cependant été un peu déçu par le fond. Je veux dire: la plupart des exposants semblaient être de petit magasins bio, ou fermiers bio, qui vendent chacun leur petit produit, ou bien des entreprises qui veulent montrer qu’elles sont “vertes” (beaucoup trop de “green washing” à mon goût). Pas vraiment de “vue globale”. C’est vrai que l’écologie, c’est comme tout, ça commence petit, par des petits gestes du quotidien. Mais j’aurais espéré davantage de stands d’information, d’éducation à différents aspects de l’écologie.

Et après?

Ceci dit, je vais plutôt considérer cet événement comme un stimulant, un incitant à aller plus loin, à me former et à m’informer. Par exemple: je suis allé calculer la quantité de CO2 que j’émets par an, sur http://myco2.net/. Ce qui est bien, c’est que le calcul est adapté au style de vie japonais (revers de la médaille: le site n’est qu’en Japonais).

MyCO2: ma consommation annuelle de CO2

Résultat: 8.37 tonne / an, soit moins que la moyenne japonaise. Et c’est sensé prendre en compte notre voyage annuel en Belgique et autres déplacements. L’étape suivante serait de trouver des pistes concrètes pour améliorer son score. (makemesustainable.com est une tentative, mais qui n’est pas adaptée au style de vie japonais).

Voilà donc. Earth Day Tokyo 2008, bien que n’ayant pas comblé toutes mes attentes, aura néanmoins été un stimulant pour “passer au vert” — SHIFT GREEN, comme le dit le slogan.

Et vous, qu’avez vous fait pour le Earth Day 2008? Si vous avez des informations ou pistes d’actions concrètes, n’hésitez pas à les partager.