Surrounded by a cafe and dog run?!

[Deep Blue]

Ah, pavements, about 20% of streets in my town have them. Another of these paradoxes in a safety-driven country.

I feel, at least where we live that cars drive much more slowly and with more attention that they would do if all the roads have pavements. Certainly I know I can't safely drive any more than 15km/h on the roads round by our house. I think some Western countries are experimentling with removing pavements and barriers for this reason.

[Roger Van Zant]

Just curious. Why did you do this? Is it harder to rezone mountain land?

I wanted to buy the land, but since I am not a farmer I was unable to do so as long as it was classified as agricultural land.
Anyone can buy mountain land though.

Don't mean to be hijacking this thread, but this sounds very interesting. I recently found an interesting piece of land, mostly mountain, but after learning that a tiny part of it is classified as agricultural, I thought that all was lost. I would have thought that only the owner could have the land reclassified, but you could do it on their behalf? I'm also guessing that they were not in rush to sell if were ok to wait for three years.

The land came attached to the house I bought (house was residential land), but since I am not a farmer, I purchased the attached agricultural land as 仮登記 (provisional owner). After a few years, when the city hall people got off their lazy backsides and came to see the land, they could see that I was not trying to use it to farm, so they were happy to reclassify it as mountain land. At that point, I went from 仮登記 to 本登記 (owner).
The previous owner needed to fill out paperwork, as did I. It wasn't hard though. I paid a lawyer about 85,000 yen to take care of it.

[captainspoke]

...
Ah, pavements, about 20% of streets in my town have them. ...

As for pavements vs streets, (and this of course doesn't apply everywhere) I've sometimes considered that there are only pavements here--and no streets. That would be why there can be varying widths, people/bikes/cars going every which way and/or stopping wherever, utility poles (they're not in the street since everything is actually a pavement), and on trash days that is also occupying the pavement.

And if driving, that's why you have to drive differently/more carefully--you're not on a street, you're actually (functionally) on a pavement.

[Matt_Black]

I wanted to buy the land, but since I am not a farmer I was unable to do so as long as it was classified as agricultural land.
Anyone can buy mountain land though.

Don't mean to be hijacking this thread, but this sounds very interesting. I recently found an interesting piece of land, mostly mountain, but after learning that a tiny part of it is classified as agricultural, I thought that all was lost. I would have thought that only the owner could have the land reclassified, but you could do it on their behalf? I'm also guessing that they were not in rush to sell if were ok to wait for three years.

The land came attached to the house I bought (house was residential land), but since I am not a farmer, I purchased the attached agricultural land as 仮登記 (provisional owner). After a few years, when the city hall people got off their lazy backsides and came to see the land, they could see that I was not trying to use it to farm, so they were happy to reclassify it as mountain land. At that point, I went from 仮登記 to 本登記 (owner).
The previous owner needed to fill out paperwork, as did I. It wasn't hard though. I paid a lawyer about 85,000 yen to take care of it.

Thanks for sharing your experience, this gives me some homework to check if I could leverage a similar process.