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
Jeff Layfield spent years imagining where in the US. He and his wife would retire after leaving Hawaii. Instead, they now live in a traditional house overlooking the sea in Japan. Before retiring, the couple lived in an apartment upstairs in their parents’ home on Oahu. Layfield worked in data management for the Marine Corps,
My partner and I fell in love with our first home, a 1980s two-story residence in Edinburgh, before we even walked in. Sitting on a network of patios, each with a shared central garden, we walked through the wrought iron gates to see its enormous floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a patch of trees and immediately thought,
