Kyoto Charm in a Repurposed Flower Shop
Hidden in the backstreets of Kyoto lies Ayame-an, a charming machiya recently renovated by a private investor.
Matt is “The Akiya Hunter”, real estate marketer, event producer, and consultant. Originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Matt moved to Japan in 2009 after graduating from Hobart and William Smith Colleges to teach English in Miyako, a small port town in rural Iwate Prefecture, in the northeast of the main Japanese island of Honshu. Abundant seafood, open-minded musicians, a well-paying, easy job and a low cost of living — Matt was enamored with inaka life. But then, on March 11, 2011, at 2:46 p.m. all of that was washed away by a 37.9-metre tsunami and he was left standing outside of a hilltop temple, homeless, watching the city burn.
After two months of organizing response teams in Miyako, Matt moved to Tokyo to work with art galleries and NPOs active in Tohoku. Fast forward through a diverse career spanning market research, consulting, and most recently serving as Executive Director of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Japan, and you could say Matt is a jack of all trades, and a master of fun.
Underlying all of that, Matt has relentlessly pursued his passion for independent, boundary-pushing music as a guitarist for black metal bands Darkcorpse, Retch, and now Worship Pain, a respected booker and tour manager, and a data-hungry documentarian cataloguing and analyzing the physical history of Japan’s rich underground music cultures – a methodology which he has recently begun applying to the akiya market, culminating in the genesis of Akiya & Inaka.
Hidden in the backstreets of Kyoto lies Ayame-an, a charming machiya recently renovated by a private investor.
Akiya & Inaka supports technological experimentation as a means to uncover new business opportunities. Our most recent? An Inaka NFT series.
On our 1 year anniversary, we thought we’d look back and reflect on where we’ve come over the year and where we’re headed from here.
$500 houses in Japan? The 2021 akiya newscycle is upon us, and this time around it’s honing in on a very specific price point. Let’s dig in!
Kintsugi is the Japanese practice of mending broken pottery with lacquer infused with precious metals – what an apt metaphor for akiya!
Cryptocurrency has been around since 2009 and it’s time we saw it do something cool. We now accept cryptocurrency for akiya research!
Rural Japan offers much in the way of alternative lifestyle – come with us to explore all the options available to start your journey!
We’ve taken a look at our activity in the so far to see what learnings we could come up with. Unsurprisingly, Kanto is leading the pack!
We took a client out to Sagamihara in Kanagawa prefecture, an area renowned for its educational resources and artistic communities!