My Japanese wife, Mioko, and I have long wanted to own a home in both her country and mine. We married in Akita, a mountainous rural area in north-east Japan, 15 years ago, just as I was ending a three-year stint as an analyst in Tokyo. When I returned to Britain, she came with me; we later had two children and bought a five-bedroom home in Forest Hill, south-east London.
But our dream of having a second base in Japan never died.
In April 2003 we returned to Akita for a year's sabbatical - partly so our children could attend Japanese elementary school and become fluent in the language but also to look for property.
While we were away, our London home would be recreated, with contractors demolishing the run-down bungalow next door to make way for a two-storey building. New walls, windows, a porch, kitchen and toilet were planned to modernise our existing house and link the two. "It's good for you to be out of the way," our British architect and builder agreed. So, before departing, we signed off on all the plans, down to the light switches and tiles.
Once in Japan we began visiting developments around the city of Akita, where rice fields were being carved into lots to create "new towns" with double parking bays and modern utilities. We viewed model house after model house in the same way you might test drive cars but did not like the cheap construction.
Perhaps the idea of houses as ephemeral wooden structures stems from the country's history of earthquakes and climatic extremes. (As the 12th-century poet Kamo no Chomei wrote: "The bubbles that float in the pools, now vanishing, now forming, are not of long duration; so in the world are men and their dwellings.") But it was clear that buying property in Japan meant buying land, and eventually Mioko and I did just that, securing a countryside plot surrounded by rice fields with views of the sea and mountains. We commissioned a log house to go on it. And so began my tale of two building projects.
As in the UK, all decisions were made in advance, before we left Japan in April 2004. The house, our builder assured us, would be ready to use on August 3 - only six months after we had initiated the project, including the time it took to ship Canadian spruce. Planning permission was not an issue; lawyers were not consulted. After we bought the land, documents were produced and we simply put lots of stamps in the right boxes. People debated whether my surname should go first or last, or whether the name should be written in Japanese script, the result being a number of variations. But the process was extraordinarily efficient.
Meanwhile, our London project started to encounter delays. First, the hearing of our planning application was held up in a council pipeline. Then the tender resulted in costs being much higher than anticipated. We needed to abandon some elements of our original plan and allocate parts to cheaper sub-contractors.
The planning officer wanted a redesign of our veranda, which became a conservatory. More worrying still, work on the existing building was proceeding slowly. I was given a list of causes for delay. Would we have anywhere to live when we got back?
In Japan, the process continued to impress us. Minutes were taken for each meeting and we signed an agreement on all decisions. Each step was impeccably chronicled. The soil survey report, for example, was a work of beauty, with lovely charts, photography and insurance-backed recommendations. Scaled rulers were used to measure where things would fit, and each centimetre was accounted for. Every phone call was immediately returned; all potential costs itemised in advance.
At the building site, a group of neatly dressed workers laboured in silence, putting down their tools only at midday, when they would eat quietly from beautifully prepared lunch boxes. They smoked outside using ashtrays, left no litter and slept for half an hour to regain energy for the afternoon.
We were not expected to offer cups of tea, but cakes or rice crackers were quietly appreciated. Deliveries came not just on a particular day but at a particular hour. It seemed to me a microcosm of the wider Japanese economy. When we had a question that needed research, Mioko was delighted with the response: "Thank you for the homework you have given us".
When our time in Akita ended and we returned to London, we found a startling contrast. Our home was still a building site, where bare-backed men with tattoos worked to the blare of a radio surrounded by discarded crisp packets and sandwich bags. Occasionally, they issued instructions such as "White with two sugars, please, mate!"
Any question we asked needed chasing, hindering productivity. Our builders eschewed precise measurements, so windows were ordered only once the openings were formed. "You never know quite what size they are going to be," they explained.
I was reminded of what I was once told by a car industry executive. "We replicated the machinery of our Japanese factory in England but it was only fractionally as efficient."
The next few weeks were spent going through cost overruns. There had been mistakes on the drawings and improvisations. There were extra claims from subcontractors. One of the most absurd bills was hundreds of pounds for gas disconnection, representing the hours someone had spent phoning and waiting on site for utility company representatives who invariably missed appointments. We were paying for nothingness.
It was only when we turned back to the Akita project - thousands of miles away - that we felt in control. We happily wired millions of yen there, confident that everything was progressing on time and to specification. At one point the head carpenter told us he was two weeks behind, which could have caused problems with our furniture delivery, but the project manager assured us it would be fine. "A promise is a promise," he said. And, indeed, in spite of record-breaking heat and humidity that summer, the log house was finished on August 3. Before it was turned over to us, a band of cleaners meticulously wiped down the windows, taking religious care to avoid treading on the floor with shoes.
In London, our house has only just reached the final stages of completion, with some garden landscaping, last coats of paint and wooden floors to go. We hit delays when more detailed drawings of changes in level in the garden were needed, which led to workers leaving the site for a while. Several of the fixtures we had chosen, such as shower heads, door knobs and sanitary ware, couldn't be used. The glazing company pointed out a structural problem with our glass door design. And a problem with locking mechanisms for doors with an aluminium frame also required a new solution. All these changes came at significant extra cost.
We are still picking up litter and warning the builders not to smoke inside. The temporary toilet remains on site and will stay until the last man has left. It will be three full years between buying the plot next door and finishing our development.
Still, we are pleased with the results of both projects. Across the two buildings of our new London home, now linked by a passage, we have a luxury of living space: nine bedrooms, two kitchens and several bathrooms. And in Akita our simple log house has already proven its worth. When the typhoons hit last August, bringing down trees, wrecking boats and cutting power, our worst casualty was the shed, which got blown into a rice field. We have since commissioned a proper wooden building with deep foundations - again happy for it to be built in our absence.
Most westerners with a keen interest in Japan stop short of buying a second home there. But many do indulge their passion outdoors, creating Japanese landscape gardens.
Traditionally, Japanese gardens come in three types: Chaniwa (tea gardens), Tsukiyama (hill gardens) and Karesansui (dry gardens). The first are built for the tea ceremony and include a simple tea house with stepping stones, stone lanterns and a stone basin with water for guests to purify themselves.
Tsukiyama gardens are designed as miniature reproductions of natural landscapes, and incorporate ponds,
streams, hills, stones, trees, flowers and bridges. Some have circular paths so visitors can stroll around them, others are viewed from a single spot, such as a veranda or temple. Karesansui gardens use stones, gravel, sand and sometimes moss to represent landscapes in a more abstract way and are strongly influenced by Zen Buddhism.
Japanese gardens found in the UK, Europe or the US often veer from these traditional styles, combining many features into one space. Below are a few examples of western homes for sale that offer a bit of Asia in the backyard.
Perhaps the most impressive is the seven-bedroom California estate of Oracle founder Larry Ellison. It incorporates Japanese elements inside (sliding glass doors and shoji screens) and out, with 2.8 acres including a tea house, gardens with waterfalls, a koi pond and a swimming pool rimmed with boulders. ($25m, Alain Pinel Realtors).
In Costa Rica, a Balinese-style mansion with guest houses on grounds from 18 to 62 acres offers a wooden entry bridge over a Japanese garden river and a Zen garden ($5.95m, Sotheby's International Realty).
In the UK, properties with Japanese gardens range from The Ridges, a four-bedroom home on two acres in Hertfordshire (£2.15m, Lane Fox) to a woodland home in Plockton, Scotland, (£275,000, Strutt & Parker).
Goats Hill House in Devon, in south-west England, is a five-bedroom arts and crafts-style home with five acres including terraced garden "rooms", with a Japanese river garden, a bamboo garden and a thinking stone (£950,000, Knight Frank).
Another arts and crafts house in Hampstead, northwest London, offers a more compact Japanese garden with stones, bamboo siding and a tea hut (primelocation.com, £1.4m).
