Just a question about price...

[marknewton]

Interesting thread, this. I have a slightly different perspective as an HO modeller, as the range of models available to me is obviously smaller, and in many cases they're things that I have no real interest in, or need for. As impressive as a 16-car Shinkansen train is, it's something I'll never have. Another aspect where I think I have a slight advantage is track, since I'm not tied-in to using proprietary track systems from the major manufacturers.

 

In general I think the price of Japanese HO models compares very well to those in other markets. Having said that, there are no real equivalents to things like the Tomix Meitetsu and Kotoden interurban cars, so comparisons are hard to make. But the comparison between locos, rollingstock and trams from Japan and elsewhere is very favourable on cost. In terms of detail, running quality and overall finish, I find the Japanese products well ahead of the competition.

 

As others have said, it's a hobby, and it can be as cheap or as expensive as you want it to be.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[Samurai_Chris]

Which is why those surveys stating Tokyo as the most expensive city in the world are so ridiculous.  Yes, it is expensive for the executive expat crowd with extravagant expense accounts, but for normal people, it can be well..., downright normal.  Most people have enough sense to buy their cup of coffee not at the hotel lobby lounge (for 800 yen) but rather for 190 yen at the Doutor Coffee shop just around the corner.

 

Well, "expensive" is relative.  People think New York is expensive too, if they're from Des Moines.  I don't think Tokyo is any more expensive than New York (as someone who doesn't live there), but if I was used to paying 75 cents for coffee instead of $2.50, I'd probably feel otherwise.

 

Also, there are apparently a lot of things that tourists never see... car inspections, for example, which can be thousands of dollars every few years.  One reason why so many cars in Japan are so new compared to ours... it's not worth keeping an older car there.  You can be better off financially just getting a new one every three years.  This is probably something even a lot of expats don't see; none of the people I know who have moved there from the US own cars.

 

Insurance of all kinds is also supposedly really expensive.

 

Also unlike here, they've never really had an appreciation market for real estate.  So a lot of stuff that (until recently) you'd sort of balance out here with your rising home value would be compounded there because their houses typically depreciate over time, not the opposite.  That's always made me worried about our own market, because maybe it's *never* going to come back... maybe that's the natural way of things.  But you always have to be saving up for a new house there if you want to move, whereas here you could count on selling your old house and getting money for a new house that way.  That can make a place really expensive to live.

 

That's why I live outside of a major city (Fukuoka) and only pay roughly $400 a month for a two story, 4 bedroom home with mountain and rice field views. I was paying $800 a month 10 years ago in Atlanta for a small 2 bedroom apartment in Vinings...

 

I don't pay so much for my car every 2 years in registration, because I look after it, and my brother-in-law is the mechanic that does my inspections. It is 5y.o, and smells like the day I bought it inside.

[Mudkip Orange]

That's always made me worried about our own market, because maybe it's *never* going to come back... maybe that's the natural way of things.

 

It kind of is and it kind of isn't. There's two factors that drive the price deflation:

 

The first is that Japan generally has no zoning. The price appreciation you see in the US and Britain is a direct result of restrictive American/European zoning policy which limits the housing supply. The one American exception is Houston, which also has no zoning... and house prices here tend to grow at about the rate of inflation, excluding the "hip" areas that the Californians have invaded. You can get a starter home in a nice new neighborhood for under $100k.

 

The second reason Japanese houses depreciate is the property tax structure, and that's entirely a Japanese thing. In the US, property tax is an ongoing payment that you have to make every year. In Japan, it's a lump sum you pay on purchase/sale. This is good for old family dynasties that own lots of land, especially in areas that are urbanizing. But it makes it impossible to "flip" property, and it makes it very difficult to aggregate parcels. It's the reason why Tokyo has so many tiny, narrow skyscrapers, as opposed to fewer larger skyscrapers.

 

Since buying a house in Japan doesn't offer any short-term financial gains, there's no flippers to drive up prices, and the people who do buy a house value property based less on investment potential and based more on adequacy for living. And all else being equal, wouldn't you prefer a new house to a 30-year-old one?

[spacecadet]

And all else being equal, wouldn't you prefer a new house to a 30-year-old one?

 

The problem with this mentality there is that it leads to really poor quality construction.  My own house in the US was built in 1923 and while it's definitely settled over the years and has some non-square angles in a few spots, it's basically a rock.  Been through many a hurricane with no ill effects.  Can't hear anything from outside when you're inside and vice versa.

 

My in-laws' house in Ibaraki is about 25 years old and while it's in okay condition, it's got way more little niggling issues than our own house does.  Doors that don't close properly anymore (and the doors are those cheap air-filled doors that weigh about six ounces and feel like they're made of balsa wood), floors that feel like you're going to punch right through them, etc.  It basically just feels like a cheap house that's beyond its useful lifespan.  And I'm sure this is because the average lifespan of a house there (according to what I've read) is right around 25 years, at which time most houses are torn down and something new built in their place.  So there's no incentive to build to last.

 

(I've been to new houses that my wife's friends live in too, and they're even worse... but at least they're new, so they don't feel worn out yet.)

 

So, I guess my point is, yeah if all else was really equal, I'd like a new house.  But all else is never equal.  Between a new Japanese house and an old American house, I'd pick an old American house.  It'll probably last longer.  (This is not how I feel about many things, but I do about houses.)

 

I have often wondered if the fact that houses wear out so quickly there actually contributes to depreciation, I mean which came first, the depreciation mentality or the poor construction that forces a rebuild every 25-30 years?  Anyway, it has to contribute to the expense of living there; either you stay in one spot forever and rebuild your house several times, or you are constantly saving up to be able to make up the difference in the depreciated price of your own home vs. the cost of a new one.  (Even if you live in an apartment, rents are always roughly tied to ownership costs... otherwise there'd be too much of one or the other.)  And it's a hidden expense that those on the outside or that are just visiting don't see.

[westfalen]

I wonder if the Japanese mentality of building houses that only last around 20-30 years goes all the way back to the days when you could expect your house to be periodically destroyed by fire, earthquake or the occasional rampaging warlord from the neighboring valley and it wasn't worth building something that would last a hundred years.

 

In any case this thread on the price of trains has turned into an interesting insight on living in Japan.

[bigford]

my house on Long Island  New York is 35 years old  I'm the second owner

the first people did nothing BUT live here... no upgrades no maintance

I now have a new roof,siding,sheetrock,bedroom lighting and floor tile

Now i have a $265,000 money pit BUT a new house with the same

size everything would cost me $400,000.

[bill937ca]

I wonder if the Japanese mentality of building houses that only last around 20-30 years goes all the way back to the days when you could expect your house to be periodically destroyed by fire, earthquake or the occasional rampaging warlord from the neighboring valley and it wasn't worth building something that would last a hundred years.

 

I understand the chances of loosing a home to fire, earthquake or typhoons or land slides to be higher in Japan than in other countries. But this is not something new or necessarily controllable.  With regard to earthquakes, some structures that were deemed acceptable in the 1960s are now considered risky.

[Guest ___]

Same with DC, but I didn't think Tokyo was too bad, well not until I got raped by Forex and the overinflated yen this year.

[Mudkip Orange]

IIRC many of the major temples in Japan are in essentially a continuous state of reconstruction, which keeps everything new and also passes on the timeless building methods and traditions that have existed through thousands of years. So it seems like the "build to replace" mentality has some deep roots that predate the current economic climate.

 

Whatever the merits of 85-year-old American architecture, modern US houses are also built to be uber cheap. Hollow-core doors were mentioned... the doors at my parents' relatively new suburban house have the appearance of six-panel wood doors, but are actually some sort of plastic/vinyl molding.

 

Between the two I'd rather just have a cheap door that looks like a cheap door, then have a cheap door that's fronting like an expensive one. You see that everywhere in Japanese houses... single-pane aluminum windows that look like single-pane aluminum windows, versus the American standard of wood-grain vinyl and glue-on fake mullions. Plain exterior wall paneling, versus the loads of non-structural brick you're apt to find in any Midwestern or Southern housing development.

 

If I was given a loan to custom-build a house tomorrow, the result would probably be less Savannah, more Saitama.

[Guest ___]

In retrospect, I can see one angle where it can be expensive, and that's conversion rate. Today I ordered two rice fields from HS, and they were only about ¥650 each, but Paypal quoted the exchange rate as 1:81 (where as XE and FOREX quoted me 1:83). With EMS added in, it came to $34 USD for a pair of A4 rice field mats. Not m,ch more than one might pay for a Noch mat of the same size in a store, but still a bit steep. ( won't use SAL due to way too many problems I've had with them in the past, combined with the fact that I don't want the mats trashed by the time they'd arrive via SAL) So, yeah, in that sense when it comes to conversion rate I can see it, but then again I got a new Walther's flier yesterday and they're selling an N-scale run of the Broadway Limited, 9 cars and two engines for like $800.oo so I see the KATO to be a bargain...

[spacecadet]

Between the two I'd rather just have a cheap door that looks like a cheap door, then have a cheap door that's fronting like an expensive one. You see that everywhere in Japanese houses... single-pane aluminum windows that look like single-pane aluminum windows, versus the American standard of wood-grain vinyl and glue-on fake mullions. Plain exterior wall paneling, versus the loads of non-structural brick you're apt to find in any Midwestern or Southern housing development.

 

But you *can* still build or remodel a house in the US with more expensive stuff, and that will increase its value.  That's not really the case in Japan (actually I'm not sure you can't do it, but I'm pretty sure it won't increase the value long-term).  So you just never see a regular house with anything *but* those cheap windows and doors and other things, whereas in the US you do still see regular houses with real wood windows, solid core doors, etc.  It may not be the norm, but you do see it; it's still an option that some people go for, partly because of appreciation predictions.

 

My house has all wood windows, even the replacement ones that we just installed.  I still say it's a different mentality.

[cteno4]

Arron,

 

the poor paypal exchange rate is that they are throwing in the 3% international charge fee that the ccs do (i think they do this even if you use a bank transfer, but have not tried that). a few credit card companies (like capital one) still dont charge that fee. it use to be 1-2% but now almost all are up to 3% if they charge it.

 

there is a way to get around it if you do have a cc that does not charge the fee. first you go into your paypal prefs and choose the option to get charged in the currency the transaction is in (here yen). then when you go to pay with paypal use your cc for the payment method and their exchange rate will go away and paypal will say exchange rate will be determined by your cc.

 

careful some ccs now do the 3% charge as an additional charge after giving you the current market exchange.

 

ive checked every so often on charges with capital one and they always charge the high exchange for the day, so not getting bumped there.

 

disclaimer, my wife works for capital one, not pushing them because of that its just the one cc i know that does not charge the international fee. my chase cards do charge the full 3%.

 

i know 3% does not sound like much, but when you add it up for the year of train buying it usually pays for a nice little order!

 

cheers

 

jeff