Akiya

There’s another nugget of interest in the article we discussed yesterday:

Maybe we greyhairs could learn from younger people, tired of their own daily grind. A few years ago, Mika and Jesse, a millennial couple from Vancouver, moved to Japan and discovered, on the island of Shikoku, an abandoned house –or akiya — that they could move into for $300 [per year]. At least nine million akiya dot the Japanese countryside, the result of changing demographics and the mass exodus of young people to the cities.

Indeed. I have heard of this. In Japan it’s more usual than in the West to knock houses down and rebuild them instead of moving into an old house. This mentality, combined with the usual tendency for populations to gravitate towards cities, has led to quite a few traditional old houses (often in poor condition, unfortunately) just sitting around. They’re perceived as practically worthless so those unafraid of “a fixer-upper” can pick them up for a song.

They contacted the owner, signed a rental agreement (around $300 for a full year), cleaned the house up and began their new existence, about as different from their old urban life as possible. Jesse works as a blacksmith, forging cooking knives, and Mika as a YouTuber, crafting hypnotic videos of their “akiya life.”

A YouTuber you say? This seems to be them:

These are the adventures of two people who skipped the line of the Western retirement-woe shitshow and found joy in a life that’s sustainable: economically, ecologically, psychically. Their first video has been streamed more than three million times. Three years later, they’re in the black.

They have a blog with important guides to Akiya escape planning, including posts about the real process, things to consider and everything you need to know about akiya.

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New Escapologist Issue 19 and the anniversary edition of Escape Everything! are both available now.