As someone who’s been a bit of a Japanophile for a very long time. I’ve become pretty disillusioned with traveling to big city’s like Tokyo. When I was young places like Tokyo seemed pretty exciting to me, but as I’ve gotten older they have gotten less appealing. Small rundown over priced apartments. Despite being surrounded by millions of people it can be difficult to make friends are just a few of the negatives.
When I see video’s of Japan’s countryside all those negative feelings seem to go away. The scenery looks amazing and there is places to go hike and explore. The houses can be the same size of a home in North America, and can be very cost effective. And the locals seem to be more friendly and accepting. There’s also a lot of sandy beaches. So what is so bad about living in the smaller area’s that everyone is avoiding including expats? And is there places in the countryside that are better then others for the outdoors?
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Every country has its downsides. Just because you’re living in a remote location of a foreign country doesn’t mean you’ve escaped to wonderland.
I’d say there are two different reasons for the seeming disparity: First, some people simply prefer to live in bigger cities with all their convenience and its “cosmopolitan” lifestyle, while others prefer rural regions, regardless of whether it’s specifically Japan or any other country. Also, employment opportunities are obviously very different.
Second, for Japan specifically, there seem to two different experiences for expats, one talking about Japanese “xenophobia” and the other not having experienced anything like it. My use of scare quotes should make it clear that I’m in the latter camp and can’t relate to such stories at all, and I absolutely enjoyed the time I have spent in very rural Japanese areas, talking to locals etc., far more than the time I was in Tokyo. While it’s true for almost all of Japan, it is doubly true for the rural areas that you absolutely need to be able to speak Japanese, though, so make sure that you can hold a normal conversation if you want to go there for anything other than just sightseeing.
I’m Fukuoka local living in Tokyo for now. While I do understand the appeals of mega city, I hate Tokyo with passion. This is typical Fukuokaman’s comment but Fukuoka city is the best in balance. ([My honest opinion on this if you were interested for some reasons..](https://www.reddit.com/r/Tokyo/comments/r3pm4r/comment/hmceay8/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)) If you want to know the positives about the city, most of everybody who lives there loves to boast about it so there are resources everywhere. My expats friends there all seems to love that place. Yes many of them has actual house for human beings.
My mom is from Kochi and both I and her hate that place, more than Tokyo. Her English teacher came from New Zealand and France, so I suppose nature-loving people finds it relaxing and all. I mean river is great but.. there are places that are excessively Inaka and I don’t think anyone with right mind (even Japanese) should not live there. Everybody you see in whole village is about to die, almost no kids to be seen, you’re fucked if you didn’t find your neighbors and their rules reasonable and befriendable (again even for Japanese), constant traffic with slow af old people’s wobbly car driving @ 30kmh. There are funs in living in rural areas, but I’d say it’s risky especially for villager’s affair matters. My ex was in rural village and amount of jobs her family and relatives expecting me to do was batshit crazy. (I’m talking about all that lawn-mowing and banning on pesticides etc.) (And most of them were good people, it’s just that the lifestyle were insanely unrealistic on top of being conservative. There has to be a middle ground.)
Some prefectures has their own subs, so maybe it’s easier to gather the thoughts about it there. I know r/Fukuoka but there has to be a few more out there. I think Ibaraki is cool as well, especially ones along with fast train lines like TX. They still have greens around (well, at least for now..) and still has access to the capital city.
Every country is like this. People flock to big cities because that’s where the jobs are. A lot of them wish they could live in their home towns.
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I have just moved to Ayagawa (in Kagawa). So my thoughts on a short time living here:
My house is an old Showa-era house. Bigger than anything I have lived in Japan (kitchen, two sizeable rooms downstairs, two rooms upstairs, plus an external storage shed and various other things). This is a plus.
The design of the house (roofs, internal circulation of air etc) is exactly as you might expect. This means that at the moment (mid-May), it is quite cold. I doubt I shall need an air conditioner in the Summer. A friend brought me a fan, but that is unlikely to be useful. This is partly Ayagawa’s microclimate, but also design. In the Winter I bet it will be utterly freezing and I’ll have to break out a kotatsu, but I’ve had fewer bugs (almost none) than I would in the UK. My guess is that they take one look at this extremely dry and cold building and decide they can do better.
Looking out over fields and walking through them is very calming. However, the nearest konbini is about a 20 minute walk away. I don’t have a car and am not confident on a bicycle, so this is very different from a town where I can just pop out for milk etc.
Having said that, Ayagawa is weird, because 35 minutes walk (mostly through nice fields and quiet paths) is a huge Aeon Mall with just about anything you could want next to a vast homecentre and another vast electrical shop. So not as inaka as some places.
There is a rail station (on the Kotoden-Kotohira railway) with cute old trains running every 30 minutes. This again makes a difference. If I lived over the hill South of me, it would be much more difficult. I can get into central Takamatsu (the local “big city”) in about 40-50 minutes from my home. That’s pretty good.
I am not sure how easy making friends will be though. My immediate neighbours are rather elderly and I am afraid that’s another feature of inaka.
Still, you do get to see people walking their cows, so that’s a thing.
I lived in a small fishing town on the Pacific coast. In many ways I preferred it to life in the big cities, but like anywhere it can have its drawbacks.
Probably one thing to be aware of is with a smaller, closer community there is a higher expectation for community integration and social obligations. It really is quite different from a more individualistic Northern American worldview.
In the 90s, if you weren’t in a city, you were still living in 1950s Japan. Living in the countryside meant the only way to buy something was by the Nissen catalog.
Nowadays with fiber internet and amazon, living in the country isn’t any kind of defect.
I think you might be over romanticizing the countryside so that you can keep your “Japan glow” going? I do prefer the Japanese countryside too, but it’s not all perfect. Not all locals are friendly nor accepting (although to be fair, in my personal experience most countryside people aren’t cold and rude besides the occasional paranoid old man). And depending on how deep rural you go, it can be quite difficult to get things that improve the quality of life. That said, if you like “slow life” countryside or even deep suburbs for that matter, it can be a fun way to live. As others have said though, it’s not a dream or a fantasy. You need Japanese language skills and luck when it comes to finding a job, there are a lot less jobs in the countryside, especially if you come here on the basic work visa.
I also think you can set expectations to have both. I live on the outskirts of Machida in a bigger house than I ever had in Melbourne, and it’s even cheaper. I’m 10 mins from Machida city which is a major city compared to most places in Australia, and I’m an hour each from Shinjuku and Yokohama. Our plan is to move countryside because we both work from home and I grew up in a small town and prefer it, but our house is surrounded by parks and forests and we get basically best of both world. If you choose to live just a little further out and not then a 10 min walk to your local station you can find some gems to live in.
I currently live in Himi, Toyama. Downtown. Roughly 48,000 peeps living in this small city on the West coast of Japan. The scenery is definitely gorgeous but what I get from my kids (I teach) that *want* to move away, is because there is absolutely nothing to do.
We have a beach, but no water sport activity shops around. No new opportunities to try. So many empty run-down buildings. Yes, people are friendly and the population age is probably 40+, so if you’re going for that slow life with rice paddies upon rice paddies, and hiking then go for it. Himi has so much potential, but unfortunately they’re driving the younger population to bigger cities BC there’s so much more to do.
The jobs aren’t there in the countryside.
Not much to do, and Japan’s economy is highly centralized. Basically the same problems as everywhere else but magnified. That said, visiting is a lot of fun. Just rent a car because it’s hard to get around otherwise