The House across the street

This is the house across the street from us.

It stands, or rather, looms above us on the south side of Teach Gaynor-Takahashi. During this time of the year with the sun low in the sky, it blocks off the sunlight from 11:00 am to about 2:30pm, after which we get about 30 minutes of weak light before the sun disappears for good behind the hills. As you can imagine, this lack of high noon vitamin D is not doing my complexion much good. When we first moved into Teach Gaynor-Takahashi it was May and blocked sunlight was not an issue. You can imagine our happiness that following November when it started to get a bit dark come lunchtime. This continued through the winter until the beginning of March and so unaccustomed were we to the spring sunlight that we took to wearing sunglasses in the house for a week or so until our eyes adjusted. It has been the same every winter since.

Then last Friday evening we got an unexpected visit.
A man came to our door explaining that he was from a real estate agency and that they were planning to knock the house down across the street. Starting from Monday.
To which we replied "WTF?!"
We knew the family living there had moved out in early October but had merely assumed that this was due to the father relocating for work - not all that uncommon here in Japan, particularly for employees of the bigger companies.
However, we assumed wrong.
Turns out that the bunker-like concrete foundation the house is built on is riddled with cracks, and the  rain water has seriously comprised the safety of the entire structure. Should there be any sort of major (or even medium) sized earthquake, the house would most likely collapse. Onto the house behind and below it. Which would be sort of all right because there's an auld bollox living there and him and me have had words. In two languages.



Anyway, the plan is to have the whole thing knocked down and carted away in the next two weeks or so. When I was home for lunch today they were busy decoupling the electricity wires and carting some of the inside out. Cian can't wait until the big digger comes along and, as he says, "knocks the good shite out of the the walls".
Which means all going well it will be a sunny Christmas this year.