patrick.net

Hello everyone, a while back before the big quake I posted here about my apt for sale in Shibuya Tokyo.
I just wanted to share what happened and thank all the people who wished me luck back then.

We got an offer for (yen eqivalent) $670k , about 4 weeks before march 11th. We accepted and the closing date was later set to march 28th. 17 days before the big one!. It took more then 2 years and 30% price reduction to finally find a buyer and a bank willing to lend.
We went back to Tokyo to start packing and cleaning up the place for the big closing date. On march 11th a friend and I took one small japanese truck load of furniture, mainly sofas and stuff from the living room
to the dump and some recycling shops.
After that my gf and I were sitting on the floor( no furniture in living roof) tapping away on our laptops, when suddenly it started to rumble . We live on the top, 12th floor of our building, a true tokyo penthouse! built in 1975 , Lions Mansion concrete apt. building.
Now we get small quakes all the time and the building sways quite a bit. we usually say a few funny things like " oh here comes the big one" , laugh a little nervously and then go on as usual.
On this day however the rumbling didn`t stop. It kept going and going and going. After 30 seconds the building was swinging violently side to side. we were rolling all over the floor. Then it started to bounce up and down and we knew we were in big trouble. we decided to head for the door but could not standup.
i tried to get on my knees but was knocked down. My head got dizzy as everything was swinging and i couldnt even focus to get my bearings .

Eventually it quieted down and we were able to take the stairs down to the street where there were many many people running out of buildings , people lighting up their cigarettes to calm the nerves down.

I was joking on the street with my gf, and said " there goes the sale", "no way we are going to get rid of this place now".
The hallways had small hairline cracks running up and down on nearly every floor.

2 days later, we got a call from the realtor. He said that the interested buyer would like to come by and see the place. Ofcourse we assumed that he wanted to inspect the place for damages and would soon back out after seeing the cracks in the hallways. It`s only reasonable considering that the quake and now
the nuclear reactor meltdown less then 160 miles away.

We were sure we had lost the sale, and were already making plan b and plan c on what to do next.

The buyer to be came on time 2 days later to...get this... measure the living room for furniture!
Then he came again a week after to measure one of the rooms for his office desk. The streetlights in central Tokyo were dark with rolling blackouts announced on tv, constant aftershocks all day and all night,
nuclear reactors melting down, building with small cracks, the economy soon to go down the tubes, 30,000 people presumed dead just a couple of hours north and this buyer is ordering a large custom "L" shaped sofa!!

It felt like the last real estate transaction in Tokyo. Surreal 2 and half weeks of waiting for the closing date listening to all the latest
We closed as scheduled on March 28th..!!!Sold!!!!!!!!!!! Amazing luck.

This is what those 2 weeks looked like on a quake visualization map.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fYYQhqDLh0&feature=related

Thx.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fYYQhqDLh0&feature=related

#housing