Akiya Renovation » Sorting Items Left Behind » Empty for 10 Years » Omishima, Imabari, Ehime, Japan

We're only in the very beginning stages of renovating this house. It's a great little house with a big garage and lots of potential! It was built 70 years ago (1953) and has been vacant for 10 years. Many rooms are in nice condition, just needing cleaning and minor updates. Note that the kitchen needs fully remodeled.

However, today we’re looking at three rooms of the house that were filled floor to ceiling with the previous owner’s items. This is one of the reasons the house was so affordable; we are responsible for cleaning and disposing of all these items properly, which can be time-consuming, and sometimes costly. To keep costs low, Evan and I are willing to do the dirty work ourselves, as you’ll see in the video! I’ve already mentioned many times, we plan to restore and use as many of these belongings as we can. We’ve found lots of useful items, including many hand tools, power tools, lumber, beautiful antique furniture, housewares, cookware, vintage Showa era decorations, lots of “old tech” cassette tape players and CRT televisions, and even pickling equipment!

The three rooms were a later addition, and they weren’t built to the same quality standard as the rest of the house. To be clear: these are the only rooms that have damage to the traditional Japanese style walls, resulting in a hole to the outside, as well as wood floor rot, which fortunately, was built on top of perfectly good cement floor. The rooms seem to have been used as a workshop, storage, and apparently, a pickling space.

We began by emptying the rooms into the garage, where we cleaned and sorted. The items we plan to reuse and restore will be safe here while we renovate. I’m quite pleased that it only took us seven work days to clean the garage, and five work days to clean these rooms. Of course, this is only “phase one” of cleaning, so we still have lots and lots of work ahead of us! But one thing is certain: we won’t ever need to buy any more dishes.

Accompanying Photo Slideshow:
https://youtu.be/gHKfxCrbUYg

Accompanying Full Blog "Sorting Items Left Behind":
https://bentonhomestead.com/archives/1575

Full Blog "Our First Six Weeks Living in Japan":
https://bentonhomestead.com/archives/1408

Full Blog: "What We're Looking For in Mexico or Japan":
https://bentonhomestead.com/archives/564

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Japan has an estimated 8.5 million akiya (abandoned homes), and we're in the process of buying this one, prior to receiving our residency status. The purchase price is ¥1 Million ($7500 USD). We have our work cut out for us! The house is in a great location for attracting tourists as they ride their bicycles along the Shimanami Kaido, so we currently intend to renovate it into a guesthouse rental. We will renovate a second nearby akiya for our own homestead, and restore nearby farmland that's been sitting unused for over a decade. We're in the process of applying for a Startup Visa, which will then allow us to apply for Business Manager Visa, and essentially sponsor our own residency in Japan.

I’m documenting literally everything, with photography, as well as our rough attempts at learning to incorporate video. Please stick with me through this learning process! In the meantime, if you’re curious about looking behind-the-scenes, I’m sharing pretty much daily updates on our Benton Homestead “stories” on social media.

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