The Foreign Ministry's entire staff will relocate by Jan. 18 to temporary quarters in Tokyo's Minato Ward for 2 1/2 years while the ministry's Kasumigaseki district offices undergo a 6 billion yen seismic upgrade, ministry officials said.

The full-scale relocation of the ministry's functions to the Shiba-Koen district will begin later this week, they said.

The ministry will be temporarily based in two buildings, which are about 2.3 km from the current offices in Chiyoda Ward.

The ministry will occupy the first floor and the third to 24th floors of one 30-story building as well as part of the building next to it. The monthly rent for the offices is 340 million yen, and the entire cost for relocation will reach 200 million yen, according to the ministry.

Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka, whose office will be located on the 17th floor of the primary building, visited the site last year and said her office has a very nice view.

However, she was surprised to learn the total cost of moving the staff and renting the Shiba-Koen buildings and said the government should have opted to build a new ministry building rather than renovate the present one.

In 1995, the then Construction Ministry, which examined the quake-resistance level of the Foreign Ministry building, concluded it would be highly likely to collapse in the event of an earthquake as strong as the Great Hanshin Earthquake, which hit Kobe and its vicinity in January that year.

Tanaka's predecessor, Yohei Kono, consulted with then Construction Minister Chikage Ogi about a plan to rebuild the ministry building, but the government decided to renovate it because it would cost several dozen billion yen to build a new edifice.

The Minato Ward buildings are less convenient in terms of public transportation access compared with the Kasumigaseki building, which is close to several subway lines.

Some Foreign Ministry officials have complained they will not be able to get to other locations in Tokyo quickly if traffic is jammed near Shiba-Koen.

There is very little parking space near the Minato Ward buildings, which is expected to inconvenience foreign dignitaries and other visitors to the ministry.