Japan Day 35 - Sekisui Homes

Today we went to tour Sekisui's Factory, another modular home plant. They have a very similar process to Misawa Homes.

They build steel framed modules that they assemble together at the job site. You can read all the details over at their website. They also have another factory that produces wood framed homes. There tour was very through. They had several videos showing the manufacturing process up close. One of the coolest parts was the huge machine that automatically assembled the steel frame. It loaded all the pieces and spot wielded all of the joints.

They also had a model home. Walking in, you would think you walking into modern western home. Very nice. The house was huge by Japanese terms- about three times larger than normal larger than the They had a couple of traditional Japanese rooms too and it was amazing how you turn a corner and you leave the west and enter the east as you walked into a very traditional tea room. Our guide said this house would be about $1million US (not including land). It was only a 2bed and 2 bath but it also had an office, living, dining w/bar, family room, tatami living room, tea room. It was huge. Unless you knew, you couldn't tell that it was a modular home- it looked spectacular. The were no hints that the home was built using 41 prefabricated blocks.

After dinner I went out to see Shibyua and this time I found the "Times Square". I stepped out of the JR station and there it was. Very cool.

There were had massive dueling big screens, huge billboards. The only things missing were the massive skyscrapers probably because of the difficulty of building in earthquake land. The shear amount of people waiting the cross the street was amazing.

Then I went to see Omotesando Dori at night but I got there too late and many of the stores had already turned off there lights the only one still nicely lit was this one-

The bold blue caught me by surprise. The building is white and glass during the day. It wasn't at what I was expecting but I really liked it and showed how dramatically a building can change at night.

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