[labster]

People pay half a million dollars for 60 year old homes all the time in California, just as bad of an earthquake zone, yet these houses aren't worth half a million yen. Culture is a much bigger factor here -- I've never heard the phrase "used house" in the US. What I do hear is mid-century modern, arts and crafts, ranch-style.

[funkaster]

> just as bad of an earthquake zone

As much as people living in California would like to believe that, it's not true. I was born in Chile, a place that's actually as equally-prone to earthquakes than Japan, and I've been living in California for about 8 years now. In here, I almost forgot what is like to feel an earthquake. In Chile/Japan is common to feel at least a magnitude 5 earthquake a couple of times a year (they are actually called "tremors"). California is in an unstable zone, but nothing compared to Chile/Japan.

Anecdotally, right before moving to SF, we had the 2010 earthquake[0] (8.8), I'm pretty sure with an earthquake like that in SF, there would be no city left behind.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Chile_earthquake

[labster]

I must agree with your subductive logic. But magnitude isn't the right measure here for effect on structures, we'd want the Mercalli scale: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercalli_intensity_scale

[gcb0]

CA quakes range under M7. while japan over M8 is relatively common.

also japan have snow and hot+humid summers. CA is mostly dry warm weather year around. timber will decay much, much faster in the former. if japan had low quality housing materials like used in CA, the houses would need to be redone every 10 years or less.