Belgian embassy in Tokyo to be sold for 65 billion yen

[Maciamo]

VRT News : Tokyo embassy is a money spinner

The Belgian Embassy in Tokyo has been sold to a Japanese business consortium that includes the Mitsubishi group, for almost 420 million euros.

The value of the building, which was given to Belgium by the Emperor of Japan, has always been known to be high and consequently there has been talk about selling it for the past 25 years.

Now a group of Japanese investors has said that it wants to buy the embassy
site and has promised to provide to provide the Belgian diplomatic mission in the Japanese capital with a new home in a building it plans to construct on the site.

The embassy is located in Niban-cho, near the British, Irish and Israeli embassies and the Imperial Palace. The embassy building itself isn't so big, but the grounds have one of the only private Japanese garden and swimming pool in central Tokyo. The compound is surrounded by a traditional Japanese wall, like those of the Imperial Palace.

Nothing justifies that a small country like Belgium could afford one of the biggest embassy grounds in Japan (as big as South Korea or Germany, and bigger than China, although only a tiny fraction of the British embassy), especially for under 500 Belgian citizens in Japan, which is why it is probably a good thing to sell and get a floor in a tower, like the Japanese embassy in Belgium. It didn't make much sense that the Belgian embassy in Japan was many times bigger than Japanese embassy in Belgium, especially when one knows that there are 10x more Japanese living in Belgium than the reverse.

[nurizeko]

I dont see the crime in a small country owning such a lavish embassy if it was given to them.

Sounds like its a nice place though.

[RockLee]

Hmm, I wish I had that amount of money. I would buy my own embassy in Japan