8 Months Later: Japanese Homestead Reveal!

We settled here with aspirations to live a slow life in the Japanese countryside. We got everything lined up and ready to go. Koichi built a garden. We got chicken, duck, and goose eggs. And we have all the space we need to build our dream homestead in Japan, with trickling spring water, room for the birds, mountain views, and even a big old folk house for visitors. But there's one pesky thing that keeps getting in the way. The whole reason I came to Japan was to try and poke my head out from the rat race, to take some time to reassess what the heck I'm doing in life, so I can spend time more intentionally. And as a byproduct of that, I'm still here. And since Koichi shares a similar vision to mine, we've teamed up on this property, and you know what? He's been cruising. I'm so amazed at all the things he's gotten done. He's prepared logs to grow shiitake, built bee houses, prepared the collapsed rice field by digging trenches to allow better drainage, and planted blueberries, vegetables, Japanese pepper, kiwi, fig trees, mandarin orange, yuzu, apple, and more. We've already harvested wheat, built compost areas, chicken tractors, and a house for geese. We've been making home-cooked meals with garden vegetables and picking our own fresh blends of herb tea. Koichi took over an abandoned polytunnel where he rooted rows and rows of fig tree cuttings. When the neighbor grandma's pond filter broke, we adopted 12 koi fish who now live on one of the mountain terraces. And Koichi built a charcoal-making outdoor stove so we can have charcoal for the indoor traditional fire pit, and to make bio-jar for the planting areas. Looks like a starfish. When I got married and moved on to a spouse visa, I was able to quit my day job so I can independently build the working environment I want to remotely, aka introvertedly, and at my own pace to give myself enough flexibility to both jump to action should my presence be requested by our beloved community, or to savor the small things I really like in life. Which for me means a relaxed morning coffee with the addition of whole new loves of my life. I can't believe this is new since the last video. But even though I escaped the rat race I was in, there is one pesky thing I was unable to escape. While we have been amazingly lucky to be invited to stay here for nothing, Koichi has been growing food, and we often receive boar and fish from neighbors, you still do need some money to exist. Pension, taxes, car insurance, utilities, things like that. And while I've heard conflicting information about whether the feds actually care or not, supposedly you need to bring in three million a year to keep a spouse visa. I'm not sure. I'm interested in your feedback. So myself, what you may call an ex-corporate designer, has now turned to entrepreneurship and freelancing online, remotely, doing design, content, writing, photography, marketing, consulting, etc. And since I'm both managing a career track change, and my area is not exactly bubbling with networking opportunities, well, this has been a tad difficult. In between the semi-panic hustle I've been in trying to establish myself in my new roles professionally online, with the increased domestic responsibilities of two houses, lots of land, birds, fish, plants, and local expectations, and double, no, triple the paperwork, it has been feeling like I just can't seem to get around to the slow life fast enough. Meanwhile, I know I would have opportunities with people I would love to work with in person, in Tokyo and Fukuoka, and it all has just made me wonder every once in a while, maybe we would be better off in the city. Okay, no, maybe a suburb. Maybe we wouldn't have so many town obligations. Maybe it would be nice to be closer to Koichi's family. Maybe it would be nice to be able to meet up with a friend for coffee at a coffee shop, with friends who are about my same age, who I just haven't met yet, or who are there and waiting for me. So I've been wondering, is it really worth it? Things started sorting themselves out. I got a teeny but regular online gig that, as it turns out, did a lot of good for my mental health. Isolation, who knew? Yeah, well, it sucks. My husband and I are learning how to better divide chores, and I get to hang out with my lovely birds. And just as soon as I was starting to think, yeah, we can do this, I returned from the local matsuri, and I simply don't wish to discuss the details, but our beloved baby shacho had gruesomely succumbed to nature, likely by way of weasel. Why are we here, so far out in the middle of nowhere? Did we really need to take the rural life aspiration this far? Maybe this is too extreme. We barely have roads. Sometimes the water just fully gets cut off. Maybe we took this idea too far, like maybe we could have just done urban gardening and done triple-decker planters to make a private teeny jungle. That's real, right? Maybe it's human nature to want to make drastic pendulum swings. It was when I was talking to my new long-distance friend Ziv that he asked me where I go when I want to get away from the countryside. And I felt a bit boring, but I took a second and imagined how I felt when I take trips to Tokyo. And it doesn't actually feel more exciting, more fun, or more comfortable than here. In fact, I usually just look forward to coming home again. And he asked me what I do when I want to take a break. And the truth is, I do exactly what I want to do, which is go spend a few minutes hanging out with the chickens. The next day I said to myself, okay, fresh slate. No pendulum swing polar opposite responses. Starting with a clear mind and no limits. If I could have any life I want, what would it be? Any country in the world. Rural, urban, corporate, indie, pets, plants, rich, poor, whatever. What kind of life would I want to design from scratch? And as it turns out, I still can't think of anywhere else I'd rather be, even when things aren't perfect. I've yearned for my own garden, chickens, a companion, and a place to do projects. So I'm recalibrating my expectations some and we've decided to attack and fine-tune our challenges one at a time. We're welcoming help, I've gotten support in my work, I've outsourced some of the things it's less important for either of us personally to pay attention to, and we continue to build this place together. Because if we can solve the challenges here, not only will we have fully realized our dreams, but maybe we can be available to more realistically share how others might be able to do it too. This is the dream. It's my dream, and it's also the dream of many people like you who show up to watch these videos. This is the non-rat race, sustainable, natural, beautiful, culture-rich, healthy, creative, affordable life that so many people want. So we'll just keep trying, and hopefully none of the setbacks push so hard that we can't keep moving towards that dream and take you along too.