$4,000 gets you a seven-room, two-story house with 1,921 square feet, two toilets, a system kitchen — plus rice paddies, fields, and forest land thrown in — in southwestern Japan. And it's not a down payment — that's the whole asking price, and the seller says it's negotiable. The house wears sweeping orange tile roofs set against a forested mountainside. Inside are tatami rooms behind shoji screens, a bath with a reheating function, and a second floor that was added in 1999. It sits on a south-facing corner lot in Hagi, the old samurai castle town on Japan's warm southwestern coast. Japan has more than 9 million empty homes like this, and foreigners can buy them outright — no visa required to own one. The honest part: it needs some repairs to the floors and fixtures, and it's sold as-is. The supermarket is a ten-minute drive, city hall about twelve. For less than one month's rent in most American cities, you'd own the house and the farmland behind it.