Following the 2011 Eastern Japan Earthquake, sales of high-rise condominiums in Tokyo saw a drop that reflected anxiety over living so far off the ground. Though no high-rises were damaged in the temblor (if anything, the disaster showed how well they'd been built to withstand earthquakes), matters such as stopped elevators and the possibility of losing water or other utilities even temporarily were made apparent to tower dwellers. More significantly, elderly people who lived high up realized how difficult it would be to evacuate in the case of a quake hitting the city more directly.
The sales decline was short-lived. High-rise condos, or "tower mansions," are as popular as ever right now, and according to a recent article in Shukan Asahi, especially popular among retired and soon-to-be-retired people.
With the memory of the quake receding and developers promoting even safer high-rises, the aging baby boom generation is looking at the issue from a practical standpoint. The article profiles a 60-year-old woman named Midori Takahashi who bought her condo four years ago in Koto Ward on the Tokyo waterfront, in a new high-rise 10 minutes by foot from Kiyosumi Shirakawa Station on the Hanzomon Metro line. She and her 57-year-old husband bought the property after assessing the situation of her own parents, who lived in Shizuoka City. When her father retired, he bought a house in the countryside, near a river with a beautiful view, since he wanted to spend the rest of his life surrounded by nature. But as his health deteriorated he found it difficult to make regular visits to a hospital, so he moved back to the city.