My wife and I are planning a move to Japan. Here is some info about our situation.
Both of us have N1 language skills. I qualify for a highly skilled visa (75 points) but decided if I wait slightly longer I can get the remaining 5 points needed for PR in 1 year. I have 4 degrees a 15 year long career and my salary is also over 10 million yen per year after tax. I've worked in 8 different countries in my life and travelled over 70 countries, including having moved halfway across the world when I was 17 to build a 15 year strong career for myself from scratch.
My wife and I both have a lot of adequate savings stored and no children. I am a full-time employed automation expert and my wife is an architect with a honors/speciality in Nordic and neurodesign.
The thing is, we want to buy an Akiya. Yes, really. Not too far from civialization but not too close either. Such as the less rural area of Kagawa. We've spent a lot of time previously all across Japan from Fukuoka to Tokyo and we especially like Shikoku and would start our search there.
My company is ready to let me relocate to Japan to one of our offices there. Which leaves the main question of the Akiya house. Whilst we're aware that so many people like more modern amenities and living smack in the middle of civilization etc. we're not interested and want to move away from that. I was born in a rainforest and spent 17 years of my life there before moving to a capital city and I would like to return to such a state.
So the Akiya thing. Well aside from my work both of us will have plenty of time and the means to renovate the place as my wife is an architect anyway and I've got half a background as a carpenter from another life. Though we'll definitely need local help to do a lot of the work and handle legalities which are outside our knowledge. Obviously Akiya vary from those that look like they've been hit by a bomb, to those that are in pretty amazing condition and we'd aim in the middle to latter category. Yet generally all of them need some level of work. We intend to actually live in the house though year round. Not just have it as a holiday home. So doing the renovation in steps and if possible with local hands.
I make this thread mainly for my partner who doesn't use reddit and who really wants information on things like "earthquake proofing" and so on. We've read that it's a bad idea to consider anything built before 1983. So one first question is really how important is that? The place is going to be wood, maybe even a Minka (民家) so it would be nice to know how much we need to think of eg. natural disasters and snow proofing etc.
Also in general it looks far easier to buy a house in terms of less documents needed and less bureaucracy if we don't yet have the residence permit. Is this actually the case? That is, if we come on a regular tourist visa. All sources say then that we only need the cash for the building, proof of address and notarized ID etc. Whereas if we have a residence permit already there's a whole bunch of other things involved. As we have the money already saved, we're not at all expecting to need a loan from any Japanese bank.
Maybe this is enough information for now? If not, please just ask. We'd really appreciate any advice, especially in the way of practicalities and so on to look out for when owning this type of an older house.
Thank you so much in advance for your time :)!
by christiskingmydudes