patrick.net

Maybe so affordable because not close to city center?

1. It's in Kyoto, not in Tokyo

2. A US$ is buying over 100 JPY again.

yeah, it's kinda in the sticks in the vacuum between Osaka to the SW and Kyoto to due north -- anywhere within biking distance of a Japan Costco is going to have less unaffordable land values, 'cuz that's where they put them.

Japan may be overcrowded, but they still have a lot of buildable land. But they limit development of it since this land is reserved for agriculture, mainly rice production, for national food security reasons.

But with the declining population, this will not be so important in the future.

http://www.athome.co.jp/ks_14/dtl_8758444201

is a typical land listing in the area, 1200 sqft for $150,000.

What with land loans at 2%, that's just $250/mo in interest costs; ZIRP does wonders for preserving land valuations.

But multiplying this lot out to the acre puts the valuation at $5M per acre.

Insane. The only way prices can be this high is by limiting the supply coming onto the market.

Lowering the cost of living in housing is not something the system is structured to work towards.

Japanese overall population density is actually lower than that of India, South Korea and Taiwan. Compared to the States, it is lower than that of New Jersey, Rhode Island, Puerto Rico and Massachusettes.

A lot of scams are fed to docile Japanese and outside observers alike. The high licensing fees for car ownership is designed to limit individual mobility, so the individual Japanese are more attached like serfs to local landlords and stores along the monopoly-built monopoly transportation system.

The ZIRP regime is obviously designed to transfer wealth from the ordinary people to the banksters and property development barons, so the former would continue to service the old debts.

Land reserved for agriculture is yet another scam for preventing building new houses in new areas. The Japanese population had not been brainwashed into the idea of conservation land yet, so the myth of rice self-sufficiency was used to con them. At this rate, they might start using the legend of water nymphs to enforce wetland conservations.

Reality says

The high licensing fees for car ownership is designed to limit individual mobility

This is not how life in the sticks is. Cars aren't that expensive, they have a special licensing class for mobility:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_car

"in most rural areas are exempted from the requirement to certify that adequate parking is available for the vehicle"

What Japan doesn't have is the urban parking infrastructure we do, so they limit car purchases in built-up areas.

The ZIRP regime is obviously designed to transfer wealth from the ordinary people to the banksters and property development barons

true to some extent of course but since the Japanese so horribly over leveraged themselves bidding up land values, not stopping the property collapse would have destroyed their actual economy more than the 1990s collapse actually did.

As for Japan's density, so much of the country is forested hillside (and uneconomic Hokkaido), making comparisons with other places problematic.

While not stacked together like the Indus River overpopulation, Japan and Germany have roughly the same land areas but Japan has 1.5X the people.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+density+Japan+vs.+Germany

is an interesting take.