Walk through central Kyoto today and you’ll still find pockets of the city that look like they belong in another century — narrow wooden townhouses with lattice facades, tucked-away courtyard gardens, and tiled roofs that slope gently over the street. These are machiya, the traditional merchant townhouses that have defined Kyoto’s cityscape for over a […]
Two Houses a Day: Kyoto Is Quietly Erasing Its Machiya Read More »
During a recent routine maintenance visit at a house in Shiga, what should have been a quick 10-minute check turned into a full afternoon job. When we ran the pipes, we could hear water flowing outside and smelt sewage. When we found the location of the smell and opened the outdoor drain well, we found
Why Outdoor Drain Maintenance Matters (Absent Owners) Read More »
What Overseas Owners Need to Know If you own a home in Kyoto, Shiga, Osaka, Nara, or Kobe but live overseas, you already know the hardest part isn’t the distance — it’s the not-knowing. A property can look perfectly fine in a photo and still be quietly growing mold behind a wall, or sitting one
Seasonal Property Care in Kansai Read More »
Kansai — Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo, Nara, Wakayama, and Shiga — holds some of Japan’s sharpest contrasts in the akiya story. One prefecture ties for the highest vacancy rate in the entire country, while two others are actually improving. Here’s what the 2023 Housing and Land Survey shows. Kansai by the numbers The region’s six prefectures
Kansai Akiya Crisis: Vacant Homes by Prefecture in 2026 Read More »
If you’ve read that Japan has “9 million akiya,” you’ve only heard half the story. That number is real, straight from the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ 2023 Housing and Land Survey — but it lumps together four very different kinds of empty homes. Understanding the split changes how alarming (or not) the akiya crisis actually
Akiya Explained: Japan’s 9 Million Vacant Homes Decoded Read More »
Owning an akiya (空き家), or vacant house, in Japan comes with many responsibilities. One of the most important things that property owners should regularly check for is termite damage. In Japan, termites are commonly called shiroari (シロアリ), and they can cause serious structural problems if they are left unnoticed for long periods of time. Termites
Why Checking for Termites (Shiroari) Is Essential for Akiya Owners in Japan Read More »
