[innocentoldguy]

I lived in an old wooden house in Sanjo, in Niigata prefecture, for a while back in the 80s. It was a pre World War 2 house and didn't have any indoor plumbing, though it did have a nice smelling campground-style toilet on the first floor. You could stand outside and shake the corner of the house and hear all the windows rattling. It seemed pretty junky, but it withstood at least eight decades of earthquakes without falling down.

Also, I went to Sadogashima earlier this year. While there, we visited an entire town that was built in the 1600s. A couple of the homes had been turned into museums, but people were living in the rest of them, so there must be something to the way they build those old homes in Japan. I don't know if the same would be true of more modern houses though.

[rangibaby]

old code (pre-1980s) houses have poor resistance to MAJOR earthquakes. Their heavy roof tiles make them liable to collapse in major earthquakes (Kobe), which is a pretty nasty way to die