Shozaburo Kon did not expect to face the ordeal he eventually had to endure when he took the plan of his new house to a local office of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government 10 years ago.
The 74-year-old owner of a grocery store in Musashino was told that he could not build the three-story shop-cum-residence on the 100-sq.-meter plot because it violated a zoning regulation banning buildings with more than two stories in areas along the route of a planned expressway.
His two-story house could not accommodate his expanding family, now with two grandchildren. Worse, his wife had started dialysis treatment at a nearby hospital, ruling out the option of the old couple moving somewhere else.