Perhaps you've driven by them, walked past them or even lived next to one without realizing it, but they're there: one of the many aki-ya, or empty-houses, that silently sit and pose a worry to residents of Japan. In Niigata, this issue is becoming increasingly problematic as a 2023 survey from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications' Housing and Land Statistics Survey shows that the number of vacant houses in...
Abandoned and Empty: Niigata's Aki-ya Problem