- Ned Watson bought a home in Japan that had been abandoned for two years for less than $50,000.
- Watson says that with the favorable exchange rate, he can get by on just $1,000 a month.
- Watson says he enjoys the peacefulness and nature of his area but loves its proximity to the city.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ned Watson about his experience living in a once-abandoned home, known as an akiya, in Shisui, a 20,000-person town in Japan's Chiba Prefecture. Watson, a 44-year-old former web developer, was born in Australia and grew up in the US state of Georgia. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.
I started studying Japanese in 1994. I always liked it and figured it was a place that I probably would end up living in.
As somebody who grew up in America but not as an American, I felt like things that maybe Americans consider freedom are not things that I consider to be freedom. I feel Japan gives me the freedom that I want at a very attractive price point.
Not needing to drive to do the most basic things. Affordable healthcare. Being able to buy alcohol 24 hours a day — in Georgia, you have dumb blue laws.
The lack of guns and violence is one of the best things about Japan. If you watch Japanese news, nothing ever happens. They'll cover domestic gossip as news, and they have feel-good stories, but unless a disaster happens, you're not necessarily hearing about shootings or gang violence or anything like that.
I have a temple that I walk by every time I go to the convenience store, or I can take a different path and go through a bamboo forest and see old trees.
This is true for most people who live in the countryside. You get to see how nature works. But I also get to do that in a way where I feel like I'm not destroying nature by driving a big old truck around in it. I can walk through it and see little things.
When certain flowers start to bloom, you're like, "Oh, it's this season," or, "The weather is going to start being good." I get to watch rice grow, which is kind of boring but also nice. I get to see the birds fly around in it. I don't think a lot of people get to experience this.
Where I live, I can just ignore the outside world and focus on what makes me happy.
My house was abandoned for two years but didn't need much work
I've been living in Japan since 2010, and I got this house in late 2019. Before I moved to Japan, I was living in New York City.
I went onto a Japanese real-estate site here, and they all basically have access to the same database. I set up the criteria that I wanted: less than 10 million yen (or $66,696), to be able to get to Tokyo Station within 90 minutes by train, more than 400 square meters of land, and within a 15-minute walk to a train station.
I wanted as much land as possible simply because they're not making any more of it.
I live in a little town called Shisui, which is in Chiba Prefecture. I'm right on the border of Narita City, which is one of the major international airports. My house was 6.6 million yen (or $43,941).
My neighbors said a lot of people came to look at it, but at the end of the day, I'm the one who ended up buying it. The house had been unoccupied for two years.
If you think about how Japanese people would buy property, anybody who would have enough cash to buy a property like this outright would probably just prefer to get a loan and have a new house built somewhere. Unless they specifically wanted to tear this place down and live on this land, there is not much incentive for them to buy.
There was also a typhoon earlier that year, which made a huge landslide behind this house, so that probably turned people off as well.
Because of the favorable exchange rate, everything in Japan is cheaper
Some of the utilities in Japan may be a bit more overpriced than the US just because of Japan's electric production. Because they shut down the nuclear reactors, they have to import gas.
My electricity bill is a bit higher than most, but I also use a lot of electricity. But with the exchange rate being what it is right now, Japan is basically 30% cheaper price-wise. The value you get for your dollar over here — I think it's just going to keep getting cheaper.
If you go to McDonald's, you'll probably get the best McDonald's that you'll ever have — just clean, fast, and really looks like the picture. A Big Mac right now, I think, is 480 yen, which is about $3.
Not having a mortgage or rent is such a huge thing to me — it changes the way you think about your money. You're not concerned about what happens to your living situation if you don't work for a long time. I could basically live this lifestyle forever for $20,000 a year, which, to me, is not a lot of money.
I'm looking for a new job right now. But because my cost of living is so cheap, $1,000 a month is basically all I need to be happy.
I'm in a rural part of Japan, but I still have access to the conveniences of a large city
I live in a place that is semi-rural, and my town is very small by size and population. But I live right on the border of Narita, so as soon as I leave this valley, it's all built up.
It's crazy convenient.
I can take a train from here to Tokyo. It's always on time, so I can plan when to leave my house and never wait more than a minute or two for the train.
I come to the airport and then get on a train and in 15 minutes, I'm at my station, and then it's like a 10-minute walk home. Being able to access a major international airport in that amount of time is really nice.
I have access to a very nice grocery store and an area that is modern and a place where wealthy Japanese people are happy to live. But my town is zoned for farming, so you can't just build houses here. That's one of the things that makes where I live a bit more interesting compared to some of the other places where people are finding cheaper houses.
A lot of the akiya that are really cheap are in places that Japanese people have decided they don't want to live.
Make sure to research the neighborhood before buying an akiya
Just be aware of what drives the economy of that area. If it's a bunch of old people that are on fixed incomes because they're retired, then not a lot of development is going to happen. If you are expecting the place to become more exciting just because you showed up as a foreigner, that's not going to happen.
And then, what specific things do you need to be happy? Do you like going out to eat at restaurants? Well, if you're at a place where they don't have many restaurants, that's not going to be fun. So really think about the area that the place is in, what type of personal infrastructure you're going to need to live there.
There may be some communities where they're apprehensive about foreigners buying property because it's been in their family names forever. But if Japanese people aren't buying it, who else is going to buy it? It is going to be a foreigner at the end of the day.
No matter how long you live here, there are going to be a lot of experiences where, even if you're fluent in Japanese and you've been here for a long time, you're always going to be seen as a foreigner.
Inside my little community, I'm not seen specifically as a foreigner. I'm seen as that guy who lives over there, Ned — he's a foreigner. That can be complicated for people because in America, you do your time, you learn the language, you make friends, you'll become an American. But in Japan, that doesn't happen.
