準備中 · One moment
One moment, the house is unlocking…
A new podcast from Old Houses Japan. David Lake and Victoria Lane are recording the first season now — real Japanese homes you can buy, the prices, the paperwork, the people. First episode lands on Wednesday, June 3, 2026.
公開まで · Until episode one
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予告 · A first look
We’ll reveal each home — prices, photos, paperwork, and the full walkthrough — on launch day. Until then, here’s the shape of what’s coming.
Episode 01 · Niigata新潟県
Snow country
A 120-year-old kominka with a hand-cut hinoki frame.
Episode 02 · Kyoto京都府
Heritage townhouse
A Murasaki-no machiya, four generations of one family.
Episode 03 · Shimane島根県
Sea of Japan
A coastal cottage at the price of a used car.
Full walkthroughs revealed Jun 3, 2026
日本地図 · Where season one takes us
A preview of where season one travels — Niigata, Kyoto, Shimane, Yamanashi, Tokushima, Gifu. Each sakura dot is a real listing the show walks through. Click one to see the home, hold Cmd / Ctrl to zoom.
第一季 · Season one
We’re recording the rest of season one now. New episodes every Tuesday after launch.
The big-picture explainer — where akiya came from, what kominka are, who's buying them, and why now matters.
How Japan's empty-house registries actually work, why some listings are essentially free, and the paperwork no one warns you about.
We tour a 120-year-old kominka with a hand-cut hinoki frame, talk through the renovation budget line by line, and ask whether snow country is really for you.
紹介 · About the show
David and Victoria are the co-founders of Old Houses Japan. Each week they pick a real listing — sometimes free, sometimes a few million yen — visit it, talk to the people around it, and dig into what it would actually take to live there.
Together they founded Old Houses Japan to do the unglamorous work behind the show: surfacing real listings, decoding the paperwork, mapping the grants, and introducing buyers to vetted local agents. The podcast is how you discover one of these houses; the service is how you actually move into one.
Co-founder & host
“Every old house I walk into has outlasted four generations. The least I can do is listen to it.”
David moved to Japan in 2019 chasing a single Niigata farmhouse listing. Five renovations later he's still chasing them. Carpenter, narrator-in-chief, and the show's worst-kept secret kettle hoarder.
Co-founder & host
“There are nine million empty houses in Japan. We're going to introduce you to as many as we can.”
Victoria runs the data side: scraping akiya banks, mapping grants, and translating municipal forms nobody else wants to read. She brings the receipts; David brings the stories.
理念 · Why we do this
Most aren’t ruins. They’re 1906 farmhouses with hand-cut hinoki frames and irori still drawing breath. Kyoto machiya whose families ran a bookbinding shop for four generations. Sea-side cottages going for the price of a used car.
Their owners died, or moved to Tokyo, or simply got old. Their grandchildren have apartments in Yokohama and no obvious way to inherit a house six prefectures away. So the houses sit. Some get torn down for parking lots. Most just wait.
The Old Houses Japan Podcast exists because we think they deserve a better ending than a bulldozer.
That’s why Old Houses Japan exists. Each week the podcast walks through one of these houses and tells its story. The rest of the time we do the unglamorous work — surfacing real listings, mapping the grants, reading the paperwork, introducing buyers to vetted local agents, and making sure people who actually want one of these homes can move into one.
If one listener moves into one of these houses because of something we said, that’s the whole point.
— David Lake & Victoria Lane, co-founders
夢の家 · Find your own
The podcast is how you discover one of these houses. Old Houses Japan is how you actually move into one. Browse the full catalogue, run your prefecture through the grants tool, and get matched to a vetted agent when you’re ready — all on the main site.
物件
Hundreds of vetted houses across all 47 prefectures — kominka, machiya, akiya, and post-war finds. Photos, floor plans, and prices in plain English.
助成金
Japan has 500+ live municipal and prefectural subsidies for buyers, renovators, and movers. We map you to the ones you actually qualify for.
繋ぐ
Bilingual realtors, judicial scriveners, architects, and renovation contractors — introduced when you're ready, never before.
Be there for episode one
Subscribe and we'll email you the moment the first episode drops on Jun 3, 2026 — plus a short list of interesting akiya we find each week. No spam, unsubscribe in one click.
No spam. Unsubscribe in one click.