Our House!

Well it was a lovely sunny Wednesday afternoon and we were watching the elections on CNN when a full camera crew came cruising past my front door. I am not shy by any means and was curious to know what they were doing so I popped my head out and in my best Japanese said "Excuse me ,What are you doing?". The young guy turned to me and said he was going a couple of doors down to talk with a man who has been living in our building for the last 48 years. Thats the full lifetime of this brick and mortar.Apparently our building is of great cultural importance as it is the oldest in Tokyo, I say the oldest but don't mean the oldest building but it was the first mansion of its kind to be built in Tokyo. This tweaked my interest muchly! It was only a few days previously that my boss in an effort to make polite conversation had said, "I wonder why they haven't knocked down your building?? Its so old" Hmmmmmmmm........Comforting type of chat but all the same it left me thinking why.
So here was the answer. I managed to get my house mate (thank you) to do some research for me in Japanese as little was coming up in my search in English,and this is what we found out.


"Yotsuya condominium" (Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo) in Yotsuya, Tokyo, was the first condominium by a private sector in 1956 (Showa 31). Nihon Kaihatsu (literally translated as “Japan Development”), which dissociated and became an independent company from the real estate section of Nippon Shinpan (known for NICOS), handled the development and sales as a proprietor. In Showa 30s, the request from the members of Nippon Shinpan to have some benefits to get a residence became strong and that ignited Nippon Shinpan to progress the development and the subdivision for sale of their own property. As the land price in city area was rising in those days and the advanced use of land was a pressing need, the construction of a multistory apartment met the time.
Although it was small-scale apartment only with 28 houses in total in 5 stories, the sale-in-lots price of those days was about 2,300,000 yen for a 3LDK. That must be very luxuriant apartment, compared with the first public apartment in Miyamasu-zaka, having 60,000,000 to 1,000,000 for 2DK.
Both apartments are almost 50-year-old, existing, and people still living in there. Now the environment around the apartment is changing and people think much of stock (I do not understand what stock means here). It is glad that these apartments which can leave their name in history still exist in plain form. They are precious cultural property who teach us again that "the life of an apartment" is not depend on an advanced construction technology or the durability of concrete, but how to manage them."

I quoted this directly from the article she found and have kept the strange grammar and choice of wording as I thought it was fun!
It really tangled my brain to think that our apartment that looks like a run down 50's mess from the outside is actually an antique! In my country the houses that afford this kind of status are 150 years or older and certainly look a little finer!
I have been assured that even though it is an old apartment because of its high end status all those years ago that the materials used to build it would have been the most advanced and of the premiere quality. Its withstood 50 years of earthquakes! Will it stand another???