Japan is Giving Away Free Houses (fastcompany.com)

There are some 8 million abandoned homes -- or akiya -- in Japanese suburbia, according to The Japan Times . And if you've got a visa allowing you to live in Japan, some of them can be yours for free or very low prices, and the government may give you a subsidy to renovate one. From a report: There are even databases devoted to helping people find these homes, known as "akiya banks." What's driving the government to give away homes? In part, it has to do with Japan's aging population: According to the World Bank, the country's population decreased by -0.2% in 2017 alone, while China and the U.S. slowly grew 0.6% and 0.7% respectively. There are simply fewer people in Japan than there once were -- roughly 1.3 million fewer people than in 2010 by one count [paywall].

Comments

Don't get too excited.

[Gravis Zero]

As fun as it may be to visit, Japanese culture is still "uncomfortable" with foreigners moving to Japan. Japanese youth love American culture but it's more like how people in the US like Anime: it's a sliver of their culture and not really representative of anything. Depending on how they process applications, they may be trying to get expatriated Japanese to return to Japan. Essentially, the Japan majority is like those in the US who want to build a giant border wall but it's all just below the surface like the rampant racism in parts of the US.

Re:Don't get too excited.

[Koreantoast]

As someone who did move to Japan for a while I can tell you that it's not quite that simple. It depends where you are for a start, but more generally it tends to be hard at first because the language is hard and the culture is very different and many people are a bit frightened of you. Not frightened of violence of crime or anything like that, but worried that they won't be able to understand you or help you and end up being embarrassed.

Completely agree. This is true for a lot of countries, but the Japanese especially have a rigid, very particular way of doing things, and if you don't understand how that flow works, you quickly stand out as that loose bolt that bounces around inside an otherwise fine tuned, well oiled machine. They give you grace because you're a foreigner, but that still doesn't mean they don't get annoyed by you messing up their neatly defined system.