The House (some old videos)

I thought I would post a couple of videos about my home's building process- the first one I made to put up in Facebook- but I don't think too many people found it, so I thought I might slap it up here, just a bunch of pictures I took showing the progress of the home as it was built ...

The next video I found sitting forgotten on my poor forgotten video camera. Now that the baby is close to arriving- I took out the camera, blew out the dust and found this old nugget. In Japan, more so in the more rural areas now I would guess, people have an interesting tradition when building a new house called tatemae. On the day that the roof gets erected, the owner first has the pleasure of treating the workers to a nice box lunch and dinner (which wasn't cheap- but if we don't do it, maybe they forget a nail or two...). Later in the day when the work finishes, we go into the house and pray for good luck at the home then pelt rice cakes at our future neighbours. It's quite funny, the older people when driving by on the day recognize the roof will finish and make plans to return at 4 o'clock. They turn up en masse and scrape and claw to get all the cakes. Indeed I saw a couple of cute old ladies grabbing rice cakes from children's grasps! It was pretty fun and interesting to see what it looked like from the other angle...