This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sia and Mikael Lilja, who moved from Sweden to Japan, where they bought and are restoring an old house. It’s been edited for length and clarity.
We’ve been together for 12 years and married for the last 4.
In 2020, we bought a piece of land in a small town about 15 minutes outside Malmö in Sweden, and started building our dream home. We were planning for our long-term future: have kids and live close to family.
By the end of 2023, we were able to move in, although there were still projects — including an upstairs bathroom — that we’d take our time to complete.
However, by then, our plans had already begun to change.
We joined the waiting list for IVF in 2021, but the process was delayed because of the pandemic. We had a lot of hard conversations about the future we’d imagined for ourselves. By the time it was finally our turn to begin IVF, we’d already decided it wasn’t the path we wanted.
The house felt too big for just the two of us and our dog. The life we’d planned around it no longer existed, so we started thinking about what else we could do.
A change of plans
Back in 2019, we’d spent six months traveling around Asia and fell in love with the region. We’d always imagined that if we ever moved abroad, it would be somewhere like Bali or South Korea. However, as we looked into both places more seriously, neither felt quite right.
As we explored other possibilities, we came across a podcast about buying a house in Japan. We’d been wanting to visit Japan for years, so we booked a trip for the end of 2025.
Even though we’d never set foot in Japan, it already felt like the right place to begin our next chapter. Before our trip, we started browsing Japanese property listings online and began selling our home in Sweden.
By the time we arrived in Japan for our 3-week trip in November 2025, our house in Sweden had already been sold, although we still had until May 2026 to hand over the keys.
The trip was our chance to make sure Japan really was the right place for us before buying a home there, and it did exactly that. Over the next 3 weeks, we explored different parts of Japan, including the Kansai region, to decide where we wanted to settle. We eventually narrowed it down to places within a 90-minute drive of Kyoto.
When we returned to Sweden, we stepped up our house hunt. We hired a buyer’s agent and set up alerts for akiya — old, vacant homes — that matched our criteria.
We wanted a traditional home with natural light, a wraparound veranda, and a rural setting while still being close to a train station and other amenities.
In January, we finally got the alert we’d been waiting for.
Our agent quickly arranged a viewing. Since we were still in Sweden, he walked us through the house over a video call. When we saw it, we knew it was exactly what we were looking for, so we made an offer immediately.
Our offer was accepted, and the purchase price was 8 million yen, or about $49,000, before taxes and other fees.
The start of a new chapter
We decided to look at this time as a gap year for adults, so we both left our jobs.
With that, we turned our attention to wrapping up our lives in Sweden. In May 2026, we handed over the keys and flew to Japan.
When we saw the house in person for the first time, we were pleasantly surprised; it had been incredibly well-maintained.
The kitchen looked almost brand new, and the bathroom was much nicer than we’d expected. It almost feels strange calling it an akiya because it’s nothing like the old, half-ruined homes people often imagine.
Everything is in Japanese, so we’re constantly translating labels with an app. We spent almost two weeks eating convenience store food before we’d bought a fridge and could finally cook our own meals.
Thankfully, our neighbors — mostly older Japanese residents — have been welcoming. Our house sits on the edge of a small village surrounded by fields and bamboo forest, and they’ve already shown us how to weed the property and look after the bamboo shoots.
We spent about a month settling in, cleaning the house, and buying simple furniture and appliances. We ordered new tatami mats, had the roof inspected, and started planning the work we’d tackle before returning to Europe.
We’re back in Europe for a few months, visiting family while we wait for our dog’s vaccination paperwork to be finalized. We’re aiming to officially move to Japan in September.
Once we’re back, we’ll start renovating. Unlike our house in Sweden, we don’t want this project to take over our whole lives. Instead, we want to travel around Japan and renovate the house little by little. There are plenty of places we’d like to visit with our dog.
We’re looking forward to starting this new chapter.
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