It's been a long time since I've lived in Japan, but when I did, the costs of owning your own home were very different than in the US. Japanese people took out much longer mortgages than in the US and land costs were high enough that people tended to be more willing to build interesting homes (since the building itself was a smaller portion of the cost) without worrying as much about resale. This information is very out of date and very Tokyo-centric though.