There isn't a huge difference in the way residential homes are
built in Japan compared to in the U.S., although the Japanese
are more likely to invest in special earthquake engineering,
particularly in commercial and higher-end residential buildings.
Home builders in both Japan and the U.S. use a lot of wood-frame
construction, which is flexible and tends to ride out a quake
fairly well, said Heidi Faison, outreach director at the Pacific
Earthquake Engineering Research Center in Berkeley, Calif. But
wood frame structures do have potential vulnerabilities in two
key areas: the foundation and the wall that supports a crawl
space, which is called a cripple wall. She recommends home
buyers hire an engineer to make sure the wood frame is bolted to
the foundation. If a house has a crawl space underneath it or
you need to climb a few steps to get up to the first floor, it
likely is supported by a cripple wall, which can buckle in an
earthquake. If you're in an earthquake-prone location, that
space needs to be fille