My wife and I began fantasizing about our dream home the day we moved into our first Tokyo apartment.

That place was meant to be a temporary solution until we found ¡°something better¡± but, five years later, we still hadn¡¯t found anything because we hadn¡¯t really been looking. One day, our 6-year-old daughter, Hana, started crying, without any obvious trigger: ¡°I want to go back to grandma¡¯s and grandpa¡¯s NICE place,¡± she whined. That particular place would be in Germany. Apparently, it was time to speed up our moving plans.

Everybody around us was buying houses, but owning wasn¡¯t for us. With that kind of total freedom comes sole responsibility. We didn¡¯t want to pick up all the pieces all on our own come next typhoon season.