• Sia and Mikael Lilja spent six years building their dream family home in Sweden.
• When they decided that kids were no longer part of the plan, they moved to Japan for a fresh start.
• They paid 8 million yen, about $49,000, for an akiya, one of Japan's old vacant houses in the countryside.

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.

• Mori Nishimura, 34, grew up in New Zealand and moved to Japan at 16.
• After graduation, he began his career at real estate companies in Tokyo.
• Last year, he started his own company, which provides nature-based stays in mobile cabins in Japan.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Mori Nishimura, 34, the CEO of A Cabin Company in Japan. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I felt lost growing up. As a kid in New Zealand, I never questioned where I belonged. But as I got older, I became more aware of how different I was from my peers, which sparked my curiosity about Japan and my father's decision to leave it behind.

My father moved our family to Auckland because he wanted us to grow up surrounded by nature and away from the pressures of city life in Japan.

There weren't many Japanese families around, and I often felt caught between two cultures.

At 16, I moved to Japan by myself and enrolled in a boarding school in Kyoto. Life there was the opposite of New Zealand: Suddenly, I had curfews instead of the freedom to roam.

For the first time, I wasn't the odd one out. Two-thirds of the students were returnees — kids who had grown up abroad and come back to Japan — and they understood.

Exploring the countryside

Later, at university, I started exploring Japan. In the morning, before school started, I'd often drive out to different places and go surfing. I became fascinated with the Japanese countryside.

It reminded me of my childhood in New Zealand, when I used to escape into the woods near our house and build huts.

After graduating in 2015, I felt lost again and considered returning to New Zealand. Instead, I stayed in Tokyo and worked in real estate. A few years later, I started posting on LinkedIn about Japan's real estate market, the countryside, hospitality, and other interests. Eventually, I decided to strike out on my own.

During the pandemic, I traveled through rural Japan and reflected on what I wanted next. I came across a US company building tiny cabins on trailer chassis and saw an opportunity in Japan: fully operational accommodations that could bypass building permits and zoning laws because they were legally classified as vehicles.

I adapted the concept.

Starting a company from scratch

In 2024, I shared the idea on LinkedIn and wasn't targeting investors. Over time, though, the posts began attracting people who wanted to be part of what I was building.

A year later, when I launched a pre-seed fundraiser, investors reached out to back the business. My two full-time employees also found me through LinkedIn — the platform became an unexpected way to build both a team and a network of supporters.

The money raised from the fundraiser was used to open the first cabin in a national park in Chiba — about a two-hour train ride from central Tokyo — in August that year.

The 16-square-meter cabin is made from Japanese sugi and hinoki cedar and centered around a large picture window overlooking nature. Guests get complimentary firewood, coffee, and tea, plus bikes for rides to a nearby supermarket. It reached full occupancy within three months and has stayed booked ever since.

My second cabin opened in May, and my third will open in September.

Since the cabins are built on trailers, they are legally classified as vehicles rather than buildings.

Running a startup in Japan has been challenging because the ecosystem is still relatively new compared to those in other countries. There aren't many venture capital firms, so there aren't a lot of funding options.

The cabin costs about 30,000 Japanese yen for two guests, or about $190, a night.

So far, around 70% of our guests have been women. That came as a surprise, as I thought we'd get more solo male travelers, but we haven't had any.

Living up to my name

I didn't tell my parents when I started the business; they probably would have stopped me. When they found out, they were surprised but supportive.

My father was my biggest inspiration. About five years ago, he moved back to Japan and started looking for affordable land in the countryside where he could build a small cabin himself. But after being diagnosed with a terminal illness, he never got to see it completed. That experience gave me an even stronger sense of purpose in building the company.

He also gave me the name "Mori," which simply means "forest" in Japanese. It felt like I was born to do this.

Rebuilding my relationship with nature

My company focuses on nature, but I don't get to go out as much these days, except when I bring in guests. I work every day of the week.

Resting in Tokyo or any other big city is different because you never really switch off. I like doing campfires and having barbecues when I have the chance.

I want to enjoy my own cabin, but I can't because it's booked out.