Local Help

This month our friends at BridgetoJapan were featured on "ONLY in JAPAN * GO" where they showcased their fabulous home in the beautiful Shikoku countryside. Check it out here.

Having been through the akiya hunt and purchase process themselves, they would be happy to share their knowledge with anyone who plans to travel or relocate to Shikoku. We've been so impressed by their active efforts to help their local community that they inspired us to add a "Local Help" tab for any property listing you find in Shikoku.

BridgetoJapan marks the first of many in the "Local Help" category. As we build a small network of trusted guides we encourage anyone who has had a positive experiences with other services to contact us. We hope to have an independent contact point for each region to help our subscribers through the local process.

We are also considering adding a "Foreigner to Foreigner" sales section to the service to help foreigners who are intending to sell their property. We believe this will help the reduce some of the friction that can sometimes be associated with buying a property overseas. For a starting example please see this listing from a user that has a home for sale: For sale in Nara Prefecture.

You may have also noticed a few small changes on the site. We've replaced the general "Search" button with separate Buy and Rent buttons to limit confusion with the newly added rental property category. We've also made a few changes to make things clearer and easier to read, particularly the map.

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Introduction of Rentals in search

Hi everyone! This month you should see a big boost in listings on this site, including the introduction of "rental" search option in the filters. This has been added by popular request, however please note it will take some time to populate with content.

For users who want akiya bank listings only, we would also like to remind you to please use the filter option in the search.

Entrepreneurs who would like to set up a business in Japan may also be interested in the "business" option for business listings.

We have also added a feature to let you know how long ago a property was added. While we try to reguarly ensure sold listings are up to date, it is not always possible. We think this information may be helpful for you in assessing the likelihood a property is still available.

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Move to Zentsūji City, Kagawa!

Every now and then we receive feedback from people who have had success purchasing a home in Japan and setting up a new life. We love hearing these stories. Recently we heard from the nice people at BridgetoJapan, who have told us of their success finding a home in Zentsūji, Kagawa. They also spoke of their meeting with Zentsūji City officials who expressed enthusiasm for attracting foreigners to move to their city and start building a future.

We are happy to announce that BridgetoJapan are available to provide advice on how you can do this too! You can read an introduction from them in this article: Our story of buying an Akiya house in Japan.

Akiya Japan would like to invite other users to share their experiences of moving to Japan -- stories you would like to share with the community and information/services you believe would be helpful. We would be happy to publish submissions in our upcoming "articles" area.

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