Apartments for Sale in Akita
117 apartments for sale available · ¥800,000 – ¥224,800,000
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Akita, Akita Prefecture
Sunkus - 4 min walk / 1 min drive
Akita, Akita Prefecture
Sunkus - 4 min walk / 1 min drive
Akita, Akita Prefecture
Sunkus - 4 min walk / 1 min drive
Kanto Lanterns, Namahage Demons, and Japan's Deepest Sake Country
Living in Akita
A Tohoku prefecture where men balance twelve-metre bamboo poles loaded with 46 paper lanterns on their foreheads each August, where UNESCO-listed oni demons knock on doors at New Year, and where the rice climate produces some of Japan's most celebrated sake — at property prices that still reflect how thoroughly the rest of Japan underestimates it.
Why People Choose Akita
Akita gets chosen for two reasons that rarely appear in the same sentence: heritage and value. The prefecture has a per-square-metre property price among the lowest of any Shinkansen-served prefecture in Japan, and it also contains Kakunodate — one of the most complete surviving samurai districts in the country, with 400-year-old buke-yashiki residences still occupied by the original families behind unmoved stone walls and weeping cherry trees.
The Akita Kanto Festival (August 3–6 in Akita City) is one of Japan's genuinely distinctive events. The kanto — bamboo poles up to 12 metres tall with 46 paper lanterns attached — are balanced on foreheads, palms, shoulders, and hips by performers who train year-round for three nights of public performance. Each pole weighs up to 50kg. The scale of the event (over 250 poles, 10,000 participants, 1 million spectators across four nights) and the specific skill involved put it in a category of its own among Japanese summer festivals.
Beyond the festival: the Namahage ritual on the Oga Peninsula (UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage) has men dressed as straw-costumed oni demons visiting houses on New Year's Eve to demand whether children and lazy adults have mended their ways. The Namahage Museum in Oga shows masks and costumes from across the peninsula's villages, each with distinct regional variants. Lake Tazawa at 423 metres remains unfrozen year-round. And the sake — particularly from breweries in Akita City and along the Ou Mountain piedmont — represents a regional character (soft water, high-polish rice) that has won more national awards than its reputation outside Japan would suggest.
Daily Life in Akita
Winter in Akita is not a background condition — it is the defining fact of daily life from November to March. Akita City receives average snowfall of around 250cm per season; inland areas considerably more. Houses are built accordingly: steeply pitched roofs, reinforced structures, and enclosed passageways between buildings. The social infrastructure of winter — the izakaya, the onsen, the covered shotengai arcade shopping streets — is correspondingly robust.
Akita City operates as a full regional capital with population around 300,000: prefectural government offices, major hospitals including Akita University Hospital, national university, multiple large department stores and shopping centres, and a direct Shinkansen connection to Tokyo. The city's commercial centre around Akita Station is compact and walkable. Outside the station corridor, a car is useful.
Kakunodate's daily rhythm is quieter: a small city of about 12,000 that functions as a heritage destination for visitors but a genuine market town for surrounding agricultural communities. The covered shotengai has everyday shops alongside craft galleries. The Aniei-gawa river walk connecting the samurai district to the merchant area takes about 20 minutes on foot and passes through the tunnel of weeping cherry trees that defines the town in spring.
Food and Drink
Kiritanpo is the dish Akita is known for nationally, and it earns the reputation. The preparation — rice pounded and pressed onto cedar skewers, grilled until the outside chars slightly, then simmered in a pot of Hinai-jidori (Akita native chicken) stock with burdock root, leek, maitake mushrooms, and seri herb — produces something that has no real equivalent elsewhere. Hinai-jidori chicken is one of Japan's three designated jidori (native chicken) breeds, and the broth quality matters enormously. The dish is seasonal (September–March) and Odate City, where it originated, is the correct place to eat it in its full form.
Akita sake is the prefecture's drink of national standing. The combination of Ou Mountain snowmelt water (exceptionally soft, low in iron and minerals) and Akita Komachi rice (a high-starch variety developed locally) produces sake with a light, clean, fruity character well-suited to junmai daiginjo grade production. Dewatsuru (established 1879 in Akita City) and Kariho (Mitane-cho) consistently win at national competitions. The prefecture has over 30 active breweries.
Inaniwa udon — hand-stretched thin noodles dried on wooden frames, originally produced in Inaniwa village (now part of Yuzawa City) — is the prefecture's most widely exported food product. The noodles are notably thinner and silkier than Sanuki udon; they are served cold in summer and in clear chicken broth in winter. The Sato Yosuke chain, which originated in Inaniwa, has restaurants across Japan, but eating the fresh-made version in Akita remains the reference experience.
Culture and Events
The Akita Kanto Festival (August 3–6) draws over a million visitors to Akita City for three evenings of lantern-pole balancing on Chuo-dori Avenue. The kanto tradition — originally a Bon Festival ritual to pray for a good harvest and ward off illness — has been refined over 400 years into a precise physical discipline. Performers practice daily for months before the festival. The Neburi Nagashi-Kan museum near Akita Station has year-round exhibits and daily live technique demonstrations.
The Namahage ritual (registered with UNESCO in 2018 as part of the "Raiho-shin" group of winter demon rituals) takes place on Oga Peninsula each New Year's Eve. Men wearing large oni masks of twisted straw and holding kitchen knives visit every house in their village, demanding to know whether the household has lazy members, crying children, or disobedient wives. The ritual functions as social enforcement dressed as supernatural visitation. The Namahage Museum in Oga displays over 150 mask variants and explains the village-by-village differences.
The Kakunodate Sakura Festival (late April) centres on the 400 weeping cherry trees (shidare-zakura) lining Bukeyashiki-dori — trees planted by the samurai families themselves in the Edo period, now classified as national natural monuments. The combination of dark earthen samurai walls and cascading pink blossom is among the most photographed spring scenes in Tohoku. The festival runs for about two weeks and includes boat rides on the Hinokinai River under the cherry canopy.
Weekends and the Outdoors
Lake Tazawa (Tazawako) is the prefecture's primary year-round outdoor destination. At 423 metres depth — the deepest lake in Japan — it cannot freeze, and its water takes on an intense cobalt blue in clear conditions. The 20km lakeside cycling circuit is flat and well-maintained. The statue of Tatsuko — a legendary beauty who prayed to remain young forever and was transformed into a dragon in the lake — stands at the western shore. In winter, the Tazawako Ski Resort operates on the Akita Komagatake volcano above the lake.
The Nyuto Onsen cluster, accessible by bus from Tazawako Station, comprises seven traditional ryokan deep in a mountain valley: Tsuru-no-yu (the oldest, in operation since the early Edo period), Magoroku, Ganiba, and others. Each has distinct water character — milky sulphurous white at Tsuru-no-yu, clear at others — and most have outdoor rotenburo baths fed directly from the mountain spring. Day visitors are accepted at most inns outside peak season.
Shirakami-Sanchi — the UNESCO World Heritage primeval beech forest straddling Akita and Aomori prefectures — contains the largest remaining tract of virgin beech (buna) forest in East Asia. The Aoike (Blue Pond) in the Akita section is a 30-minute walk from the Juniko lakes trailhead and produces the same mineral-blue colour as Lake Tazawa. The forest is best accessed from Higashitoiga or Fujisato in western Akita by car; there is limited public transport in summer only.
Apartments for Sale in Akita
Akita has 117+ apartments listed for sale — from compact studio units to spacious family-sized condominiums. Japanese apartments come in two main categories: manshon (reinforced concrete buildings, the type most commonly purchased) and apato (lighter-frame buildings, typically rented). As with all of Japan, there are no restrictions on foreign ownership: any buyer can purchase an apartment in Akita regardless of nationality or residency status.
How Much Does an Apartment Cost in Akita?
Current listings in Akita start from ¥800,000. Prices vary considerably by location, floor area, building age, and proximity to transport. Reinforced concrete manshon in central areas command higher prices and hold value better than older wood-frame buildings on the outskirts.
Can Foreigners Buy an Apartment in Akita?
Yes. Japan has no restrictions on foreign ownership of apartments or condominiums, including in Akita. Any buyer can purchase regardless of nationality, visa status, or residency. You will need a Japanese Individual Number (My Number), obtainable at the local ward office. The purchase follows standard Japanese conveyancing: offer, purchase agreement, and title transfer through a judicial scrivener. Total transaction costs are typically 7–10% of the purchase price.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What types of apartments are available in Akita?
- Apartments in Akita include reinforced concrete manshon (the main purchase type), older wood-frame apato, and occasionally tower condominium units in central urban areas. Studios, 1LDK, 2LDK, and 3LDK floor plans are all listed alongside larger family-sized units.
- How long does it take to buy an apartment in Akita?
- A typical purchase in Akita takes 1–3 months from accepted offer to title transfer. Key stages: offer negotiation (1–2 weeks), purchase agreement with a judicial scrivener (1–2 weeks), optional building inspection (1–2 weeks), and settlement and registration (1 day).