Japan has a very different real estate market. Homes are typically built to order, you buy it on a 35 year loan and then live it until you die, then the next person buys the land, tears the house down and builds their own dream home to order. So houses depreciate like cars. Land only gains value in specific downtown areas since the country is depopulating.

It's common to do a "full renovation" where the house is torn down to the frame and the rooms rebuilt. Instead of people DIY maintaining their house (they're too busy with work or whatever), they'll just do one of these after 10-20 years to modernize it. When you do this it's easy to have it converted to all-electric at the same time.

For the 180 m2 (1900 sq ft) house we bought used, the full renovation cost us $120k. This included literally ripping everything out down to the base concrete walls, re-arranging rooms, and re-building everything - walls, floors, ceilings, kitchen, all exterior/roofing, all plumbing/fixtures including installing a heat pump water heater, electrical including lights and an induction stove, cat 6a, tearing out the old rock garden, etc etc etc.

We agree. New buildings can be designed and built with induction stoves without destroying precious Japanese cooking culture, just as gas (and wood for that matter) has been replaced elsewhere. And medium term Japan does not lack the resources to convert legacy buildings, either.