Personal

A home to call our own

9 October 2014

I really want to write about the Canada trip, but lately, all I am obsessed with is… looking at houses online.

Yes, we are planning on getting our own place in Japan!

Really, having to sort through and edit > 700 photos and 100 videos versus fantasizing and searching for my dream home… there really isn’t much competition at all as to which is more appealing lol.

We’re bleeding A LOT of money into monthly rental now. If we bought our own place, we will definitely be paying lesser each month, and the monthly mortgage might be just half our current rent! AND we own the place! More money + a house in our name. We really should have done it sooner.

Oh btw, if you think houses in Japan will be much more expensive compared to Singapore because “Japan is such an expensive country!” then… surprise surprise! The price range of houses we are considering is cheaper than a 5-room HDB apartment in Ang Mo Kio! The best part? People don’t even own the HDB flats in Singapore! (it’s on lease by the government for 99 years) To buy a similar house in Singapore would cost, let’s see… about 5 times that of Japan, give or take.

In the past, we believed we would never live in anything else apart from apartments, because that’s what both of us grew up in. An even bigger factor is because I’m iffy about security in houses. I spend a lot of time at home, so it’s extremely important to me.

In apartments, there is only one point of entrance (unless Superman or Spider-Man turns into a petty burglar, I suppose). However, in houses, there are so many points of entrance and all on ground level. ACK. Feels like people can just easily break in! I know, I have so much faith in people. But you can never be too safe, you know.

But lately, we’ve been entertaining the idea of houses, because it’s kinda nice to own the piece of land, and in a worst case scenario of a disaster – most likely culprit is earthquake – at least we will still have something left. We might also be able to design and build a house, exactly the way we want it! Awesome or what??? Best of all, it’s because I found a way to minimize the effects of the security issue…

TADAH!!! Build a super private fort-like house with minimal windows/doors! Windows on the ground floor, if any, are super skinny ones that even children cannot enter.

This might conjure images of a dark cave without light. While I do not object to that and in fact will happily welcome it, I have to consider the well-being of the other person living in the house haha.

This is what the interior of the house above looks like!

Probably not what you expected, right?! Lots of natural light and not gloomy at all!

For the record, this is an actual house in Japan! So it’s entirely possible for us to have such a house ^o^

Another house from the same company:

One last one ;D

I LOVE THEM!!! After looking at all these, I don’t think I could just buy any cookie-cutter design house or apartment. I formed so many preferences I don’t think I can just accept any old design. Besides, it will likely be our forever home so I wanna do it exactly to our style!

GAHHHH, it’s so exciting! Being able to design and decorate the entire place from scratch… I really can’t wait! When I was young, I used to move the furniture in my room around every other month or so, because I wasn’t satisfied with the layout, but had no money as a kid to buy new things so I could only make use of what I had lol. In fact, I still do it now, but to a much lesser extent since I now have the ability to buy furniture haha.

Ok, now that I’ve relieved myself a little of the guilt (of the accumulating backlog) and excitement (of searching for a house), imma gonna head back to house hunting :D

2 Comments

  • Reply Tammy 13 May 2015 at 2:41 pm

    Hi! This is my first time commenting (actually, it is a question). Thanks for the wonderful content. I am thinking of designing my own home too, and wonder if you share the name of the home design company? Thank you.

    • Reply Rin 14 May 2015 at 1:35 am

      Hi Tammy, this is the design company the photos featured came from :)

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