Part 2:
My House in Minato Ward

The skinny building in which my new home occupies a part of its 6th floor is more than forty years old, so old that most Japanese would have torn it down a decade earlier. A large red-and-white Coca Cola billboard is on the roof top, serving as a useful indicator for my first-time visitors. The building also accommodates commercial spaces-an automotive body ship, a newspaper dispatch station and a snuakku, or snack bar, where the sign of prolonging economic distress is visible. No stand alone houses can be found around here, and like many others my new home is very small, about 450 sq feet including genkan, an entry space where you leave your shoes. No one knows how it got started but these condominium units are commonly referred to a man'shon, mansion. My building sits on the intersection of two busy streets, one runs straight to Sakurada Gate of the Imperial Palace, the other to Roppongi district, which sometime is referred to as "gaijin ghetto" because of the high concentration of foreigners living and working there, mainly in the entertainment industry. I am also not far from Ginza district, where the assessed land value at the height of Japan's real estate bubble is said to have been comparable to the same size of gold, a bit of an exaggeration but not too much. My room has an expansive view rare in Tokyo and at night the streams of car's tail lights float in the darkness, creating a dream-like effect.

Traffic is heavy on both streets and the noise level is quite high. Even on relatively quiet Sunday afternoons, I sometime hear old military songs of Imperial Japan blaring out from a loud speaker installed on a truck whose body is painted black: fanatics with their ultra-rightist ideology are campaigning. When a local election is near, I hear such words as "I trust your kind support" over and over, also that ubiquitous "onegaishimasu!" Instead of political beliefs and policies, what I hear is emotional appeal. This is Japanese style democracy in action, I mumble to myself, annoyed. A recent returnee, I've forgotten all about Japanese style of election campaign.

I am now a resident of Minato Ward of Tokyo. As the name suggests, the water of Tokyo Bay outlined this neighborhood when fishermen and fishmongers lived a hundred and some years ago. It is a highly vibrant commercial and business center now, and its density and expansiveness seen from the top of near-by Tokyo Tower is quite impressive. Far in the distance, however, you can still see the water, which has been pushed over the years further and further away. The newest landfill, which is connected by the Rainbow Bridge, is a popular destination for the young and trendy. Shintaro Ishihara, the controversial governor of Tokyo, is proposing to open a casino there to raise desperately needed revenue.

How I got my mansh'on condominium in this expensive district of Tokyo is a rather long story. First of all, real estate price had gone down considerably by the time I started my search, and secondly, it was a foreclosed property that had been sitting for a few years. Busting of the real estate bubble has produced many foreclosures, and I learned about mine from the list frequently published in the daily news paper. My friends told me afterwards that no one with a sane mind, not a single woman particularly, would deal with foreclosed real estate property. I, too, have heard about complications of the cases in which a yakuza organization is involved. If so, it is likely that a squatter who is sent from the organization would claim that he's renting it from now defunct owner. It is a clever ploy to exploit the law written by the US Occupational Force a group of staff who were New Dealers in order to protect the rights of renters over those of property owners. Such laws were needed in the post-war era, but to my surprise, still exist. Some things change very slowly in Japan.

In pursuing a foreclosed real estate property I was not without some trepidation, but I wanted a place of my own in central Tokyo badly and I didn't have funds to buy in a more conventional way. I am an experienced buyer of real estate properties in America and I believe one should go after what one wants, I said to myself. Besides, I was unwilling to retreat on hearsays or to bend to an unreasonable practice such as yakuza's scare tactics. As I would later realize, I must have acquired an inclination of putting importance on legitimacy as well as on self-interest during the years I lived in the US; I even internalized the view and concluded that self interest is a crucial key to one's worldly success and it is not to be shunned as selfish. I pursued, in other words, my desire for property ownership.

No yakuza was involved in the foreclosure sale of my condo, it turned out. I was lucky, my friends who'd been appalled at the risk I took told me, and they were now envious at my becoming the owner of a choice property with so little money. But it wasn't over. Going through the rather complex process I had to take, of which I will tell gladly, till finally I occupied the condo was a lesson not only in real estate but in bureaucratic and legal practices as well.

My American Series