Background

In London for nearly 10 years my wife and I bought and refurbished ourselves a 1 bedroom flat in Borough’s Leroy Street. (Makiko is a designer). It took a year and conicided with the birth of our first daughter but was something we both enjoyed.

When we sold the flat to come to Japan we initially considered buying some land here and building a house. However the economics of this wouldn’t have worked out; houses lose their value in Japan with only the land that it stands on sustaining itself - unlike th situation in the UK. We also had only planned to stay three years. But our desire to build our own house has been very strong for a long time but my continued exile from architecture practice makes it all the worse. (I am working as an assistant language teacher in my local high school).

Matsushima where we live is a small town (10,000) although it is fairly rural it is also within easy reach of a decent size city, Sendai (pop 1 million). Having come from London (and Tokyo) this was the first time living out of a big city for both of us but it seems to suit us very much. It’s nice to have a city nearby although as time passes we go in to the city less and less.

So in returning to the UK we felt comfortable with this kind of living – in a small town but maybe close to a decent size city.

What we weren’t agreed upon was where in the UK to live (and actually even if we should go back to the UK – Makiko was and remains nervous about leaving Japan). Options seemed to be Scotland, Brighton (where Makiko studied and has many friends) and London. We eventually ruled out London because we don’t want to live in a big city anymore.

So we planned a trip back to the UK to visit friends and family and to look for land. Our plan was to spend two weeks in Scotland and Brighton sizing up our options and to look at some plots, hopefully to buy one but at least figure out where we wanted to live.

I had read many reviews and reports online about the difficulty and problems of finding building plots in the UK so we weren’t expecting too much...