I would be very surprised if the median price of a house in Tokyo is ~$250k USD. I would ballpark it more to the $500-750k USD range.

My impression was that he had liquid assets and took on debt in order to avoid potential cashflow issues should he deplete his liquid assets.

I would hazard a guess that the value in the range of (new house, new house in Tokyo) refers to (sale of AR - $120k in debt) rather than his total net worth after the sale.