House Hunting in Japan

Its Sunday in Japan during a business trip and I am taking today to search for houses to live in when we arrive in October. I was supposed to take yesterday to search for houses, but I accidentally slept for 16 hours! Jet lag is rough I guess.

To get a frame of reference, take a look at the next photos…

The train station is where you will arrive via the Shinkansen Train from Tokyo. Once in Utsunomiya, its largely a bus or car town. Its not a big city like Tokyo, Nagoya, or Osaka with a subway system. So we will be learning to drive on the wrong left side of the road. But as you can see in the image above, there are two main places we are considering to live. One is the Bell Mall Neighborhood (ベルモール) and the other is Yuinomori (ゆいの杜).

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Bell Mall (ベルモール)

The advantage of the Bell Mall area is that it is closer to fun things. When I say closer, I mean walking distance. Heather and the kids won’t have to get in the car to go to the movies, go shopping, out to eat, play places, etc. Its convenient if you don’t have to drive anywhere because traffic is always slow. Also its nice to be closer to the train station so we can go to Tokyo easier. And when we get visitors, it’s quicker for them to get to our house. Plus this is where a lot of American families live due to all the points I have listed so it could be nice to meet an American family.
The disadvantage of Bell Mall area is that it’s not very neighborhoody. There are sporadically placed groups of houses in my opinion. And its always busy with people trying to get to the mall. It just didn’t feel home-like and cozy. Another disadvantage is that its about a 40 minute drive to Honda one way. That’s time away from my family everyday. Also there were no grocery stores that I saw around there today. So Heather and the kids would have to drive to the grocery.

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Yuinomori (ゆいの杜)

The advantage of Yuinomori is that it is only 15 minutes from Honda. If I leave work at 7pm, I can be home by 7:15pm. That’s a huge plus for me. Also, during my time walking around today, I saw 3 grocery stores and I even went shopping in one. There is a Home Depot-like store called Cainez Home as well. When walking around the neighborhoods, they were super quiet with little traffic. And I passed at least 3 parks. There were kids everywhere and people walking their dogs. It seemed really cozy. And it is ever so slightly possible that we could get a view of the mountains in the distance. We would have to get pretty lucky though.
The disadvantages are the opposite of the Bell Mall ones above. It would be tough to drive into the Bell Mall area to do shopping. The traffic is denser there and its so bad, they have cops directing traffic through the parking garage. It felt like an Ohio State game where cars were everywhere and nobody knew where to park. Maybe its easier on the weekdays though.

Conclusion

Right now I’m leaning toward the Yuinomori area. But one other thing we still need to research is Kindergartens. I didn’t see one in either of my walks today. Not just a Kindergarten, but one that has at least an English class. So if the closest appropriate Kindergarten is in the Bell Mall area and it would force Heather to drive there everyday, I think that could heavily sway our decision. I would prefer a close drive or even a walk if possible.