Hilary Tang, second from right, and her college friends bought an abandoned home in Hiroshima, Japan. Courtesy of Hilary Tang

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Hilary Tang, 23, a recent college graduate from Hong Kong who purchased a home in Hiroshima, Japan, with her college friends . The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I graduated from Minerva University in San Francisco last May.

I was planning to work at a startup in San Francisco, but I decided that I wanted to take a gap year. At Minerva, our cohort is pretty diverse, and I have quite a few friends from Japan. One of my friends had this concept: "There are these akiyas, but no one actually buys them ."

I actually never saw any of those videos about akiyas before, but I did know about the 1 euro house in Italy thing. I didn't know there was a similar concept in Japan.

My friend was initially planning to buy a house with his high school friends, but they backed out very early on.…