Tucked away in Japan’s countryside, millions of abandoned homes – known as akiya – sit empty, waiting for a second life. With property prices often shockingly low, these forgotten houses ...

Having studied urban planning at university, she had long been interested in placemaking and akiya-related issues. As a student, she had visited other rural areas in Japan being revitalized ...

Japan's Housing and Land Survey, conducted every five years, logged a record high of 8.49 million akiya in 2018 ... of our community and the larger region." Since inception, it's seen around ...

After all, it stood in a forest of shoulder-high weeds after being abandoned about seven years earlier — one of the millions of vacant houses known as akiya, Japanese for “empty house ...

I purchased an akiya in Japan this year ... The house I bought is on the southern portion of the Tohoku region of Japan. You still get snow, but the architecture as you get further south in ...

Municipalities across Japan can tackle the blight of "akiya" abandoned vacant homes under ... located in a residential area or a mountainous region,” a ministry official said.

The property became available under the Uozu city government’s “100-yen Akiya Bank” program ... buyers turned up from Uozu and the Kansai region. The woman learned about the seaside property ...