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The story
Masako Ohara (50), wife of former MLB pitcher Mac Suzuki and member of the comedy duo “Kuwabata Ohara,” revealed on her blog on September 4th that she’d moved from the 2nd floor of a tower condominium in Suma Ward, Kobe, into a secondhand detached house — and confessed that the renovation left her “deeply regretting it” and “pretty down in the dumps.” The house reportedly also came with a bat infestation. On a 5channel thread, discussion spread out to cover home-buying topics in general: whether bats pose any real health risk and how to get rid of them, what it’s actually like living on a tower condo’s lower floors, and the security differences between detached houses and tower condos.
Tower-condo-to-secondhand-house mother of three Masako Ohara: “I deeply regret it,” “I’m pretty down in the dumps”
An unexpected wildlife problem in Kobe, and a secondhand-home renovation
Masako Ohara (50), wife of former MLB player Mac Suzuki and member of the comedy duo “Kuwabata Ohara,” updated her blog on the 4th, revealing “something I deeply regret about renovating my house.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Aren't some of them potential rabies carriers too?
There hasn't been a single confirmed case of a bat-borne pathogen or virus infecting a human in Japan in like 70 years, though.
I've got the money, but a regular house just isn't even on the table.
Wonder if you'd still say that after living through a big earthquake.
Fine if you've got the guts to survive a long-term blackout, though.
The 2nd floor is rock bottom of that hierarchy.
All that wasted time waiting for elevators — you might be losing out there.
It's not just about money.
Gotta respect the honesty.
Well, she's basically admitting she lived in one of the cheaper units even by tower-condo standards —
living on the 2nd floor and all.
I used to live in a house out in the sticks, and I never once saw a bat at home.
pigeons,
sparrows —
those are the usual droppings-damage suspects, but I've never heard of bats being one.
Must be a pretty fancy house.
Totally ordinary house.
Artificial turf in the yard.
Places with bats are usually upscale residential areas anyway.
Just get an ultrasonic repeller.
That fluttery thing flying around at dusk that looks weird for a bird? That's a bat.
Nothing that special.
Can't be helped if a house is all you can afford, but if you've got the money for a tower condo, you'd normally just stay in one forever.
Can't say about the future, but right now they don't hit newly built houses with proper security. Older houses just weren't built assuming someone would smash a window to break in.
The cheapest security measure for a house is keeping a dog — something like a German Shepherd.
Those guys factor in the hassle, so they're less likely to deliberately target a place like that.
Apparently high walls are a bad sign, though —
once they're over the wall, it's supposedly smooth sailing.
They mess with bats' sense of direction so they stop coming near.
No idea what it does to humans, though.
it's honestly not a bad choice at all.
but you still get the full benefits of tower-condo living,
so I've heard it's actually a good deal —
as long as it's not one of those Musashi-Kosugi towers with the infamous sewage-backup flooding.
Went back to see it years later and it had been fully renovated. Wonder if the infestation ever came back.
Yeah, places near rivers get rats.
And it smells kind of off on rainy days too.
Something about Kobe restricting them because they'll eventually turn into derelict ruins, I think.
Don't know her income, but a newly built house would've been the sensible call.
(That's what we did from the start.)
1. Maybe because on the mid-to-upper floors of a tower condo, you end up waiting forever for the elevator?
2. The seismic-isolation structure in high-rises and tower condos keeps the shaking down to around intensity 3 even in a bigger earthquake, but it takes a while for the building's own sway to settle, so some people end up feeling seasick.
3. The view is amazing, but living like you're stuck in an observation tower gets old.
↑ what even is this
Once anti-gravity gets invented, the very first application
will be a tower condo with no 2nd floor lol
No idea about the lower floors, but the upper floors have thin walls to keep the weight down.
Just the other day there was news about a company president's house in Aichi — top-notch security and all — that still got its front door pried open with a crowbar.
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/4dd67555442b4d2a6b9e5195fcaa93f948a510cd
That's not exactly yami-baito-gang level.
so normally those aren't residential units at all — a lot of the time it's commercial space or offices.
Yeah, it tends to be the floor people look down on even if you live there. The only real upsides of deliberately choosing a low floor in a tower condo
are that it's cheaper and easier to deal with in a disaster —
but then again, low floors also carry more risk if the building itself collapses in a disaster.
Apparently it can make kids, young people, and dogs/cats feel sick, though.
Background and key points of this discussion
Tower condominiums tend to be valued more for asset worth and views the higher up you go, so living on a low floor — like the 2nd floor here — keeps the price down but comes at the cost of the brand cachet and perks that tower-condo living is known for. What split opinion in the thread was whether to view the move to a detached house as a “step down” or a “sensible decision.” On bats, some pointed out that there have been almost no confirmed cases of bat-borne disease in Japan in recent decades, while others noted that although ultrasonic devices are considered effective as a repellent, there are concerns about their effects on infants and pets. The thread also touched on the recent string of home-invasion burglaries and which is safer — a detached house or a condo — but opinions differed depending on security equipment and regional factors, so it’s worth keeping in mind that safety can’t simply be compared based on housing type alone.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5channel (Entertainment/Sports News+) thread “[Entertainment] Moving from a tower condo to a secondhand house… Kuwabata Ohara’s Masako Ohara: “I deeply regret it,” “I’m pretty down in the dumps” — secondhand home renovation.”
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