Report #9: Hanamaki

Kominka alert! Follow us up to Hanamaki city in Iwate to enter Japan's pristine Northern Reaches, to scope out a beautiful traditional Japanese house!

A&I News

Substack is Really Messed Up

So, uh, we don’t know what the deal is, but the newsletter creation/editing process in Substack right now is extremely broken. According to their Twitter account they’ve been performing some maintenance, so that maybe explains some of it, but gee whiz what a hassle putting this issue together has been.

Unfortunately, one of the issues has to do with images not appearing, so minus the Youtube video preview, there are no images in this issue.

Sorry for the inconvenience, and if you wanna start yelling at Substack about them negatively affecting your ability to get your A&I fix, we won’t stop you ;)

Infiltrating an Abandoned Middle School

For the past few months, we (Matt & Parker) been working closely with the town of Ogawamachi, Saitama on a project they began in 2021 with a local middle school that had been abandoned for ~12 years. A sturdy structure to be sure, and with countless spaces that can be used for, well, anything, we decided to rent out the now-empty library to use as a satellite office for A&I and our mother company Parthenon Japan, as well as the broadcast room which we plan on retrofitting as a small recording studio for Parker’s podcasts like Tokyo Wave and Japan Unleashed, or some of Matt’s heavy metal projects.

We won’t lie: we’re pretty excited about this development. If a boutique consulting firm like us can do it, major corporations can surely do the same. Giving team members the opportunity to work in a totally different environment, and also get more of our network and colleagues out to see the potential that exists in the countryside is something that we have wanted to do since we began Akiya & Inaka, and it feels great that we are finally getting the ball rolling.

Wanna know more about this project? Leave a comment! We’re more than happy to share our experience and advise on how you, too, might leverage this property type.

Morioka Makes NYT Headlines

Earlier this year, the capital city of Iwate, Morioka, made a surprise appearance on the New York Times’ 2023 52 Places to Go list (… why 52?) earlier this year, which both of us at A&I applauded. Not only is Morioka off the beaten path, but its also in one of our favorite prefectures, Iwate, where we have considerable connections.

Wanna figure out what all the hubbub is about? Check out the article through the button below!

Event:「サステナブル」を超えて— 　世界の「Regenerative Design」と日本の先駆者たち

We dropped into the Cambridge Innovation Center in Toranomon the other day to check out a panel discussion on regenerative design across Japanese industry. Participating were Kind Capital (VC), Fermenstation (sustainable beauty products), mymizu (water accessibility), Venture Cafe (Japan Startups), Sanu (sustainable architecture), and Hanna Saito (bio art), which made for a lively and multi-angle discussion on Japan’s moves towards a sustainable future.

Make sure to pay attention to CIC’s upcoming events, almost a guaranteed good time!

A Preview of Iwate’s Many Akiya

Something that doesn’t seem to be particularly well known is that Akiya Banks are usually not part of the “proper” real estate industry environment. Sometimes, akiya are listed on public property portals like Suumo or At Home, sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes they’re listed on the national private MLS system, REINS, sometimes they aren’t. Akiya Banks try to pick up the pieces of this fractured ecosystem, and while their efforts are commendable, they aren’t always the most effective.

Recently, those property portals have picked up on that fact, and sorta reskinned they’re “normal” real estate listing services specifically for akiya. This also isn’t such a great effort most of the time, but we suppose that the consolidation of abandoned properties makes it a bit easier to search.

So check out what Iwate has to offer via Lifull Home’s Akiya Bank!