[klausa]

There's plenty of old buildings here that are not built up to the latest standards; increasing exponentially the further you get from the core of a big city.

Japan is _very good_ at tearing down old buildings and building better in their place; but it doesn't mean that there are zero old buildings around.

[amelius]

Wouldn't the not so strong old buildings have collapsed during previous quakes?

[klausa]

They could have been further away from the epicenter of the previous ones, or the previous ones weren't strong enough to cause that specific structure to collapse, the previous ones might have weakened the structure and this one brought it down, a million different things factor into this.

Earthquakes aren't a perfectly repeatable occurrences you can run a regression test against.

[Cthulhu_]

Possibly, and then rebuilt. They rebuild houses every 20, 30 odd years anyway (according to https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/nov/16/japan-reusabl...), and temples too https://longnow.org/ideas/long-term-building-in-japan/.

[SoftTalker]

Meanwhile here an 80 year old, completely unremarkable house is likely to get declared "historic" and you as the owner can't even change the windows without permission. Tearing it down would be virtually impossible.

[kalleboo]

If only a 7.1 earthquake came along to cull the herd every now and then?

[SoftTalker]

Some of those old houses seem to burn mysteriously. Bad wiring, I suppose.

Then there was the developer who tore down a couple of houses over a weekend before the historical commission had a chance to meet and formally confer historic status on the rotting, worn out properties.