This is part of Why I Moved, a recurring series about Americans building a life abroad.
Japan has long enticed Hannah Kirshner. After college, where she studied Japanese, Kirshner went to live in Kyoto as a 22-year-old, working at a bike shop and immersing herself in its messenger bike subculture. Then in 2015, by then a food stylist in New York, Kirshner returned—this time to a “magical mountain town” called Yamanaka Onsen in the Ishikawa Prefecture, where she took on a three-month apprenticeship at a sake bar. What she couldn’t have predicted is that the locals she’d meet—wood turners and boar hunters and paper artists—would draw her to a deeper calling.
The idea for her book, Water, Wood & Wild Things, an ode to Yamanaka’s crafters and cultivators, was born. “As I moved there to write about the community, I became a part of it—and wanted to stay,” Kirshner says in a conversation with Traveler. Seven years on, Kirshner owns two old homes in a compound in Yamanaka that she’s slowly renovating (mostly by herself) using ecological design principles and local materials, and now has a white Kei truck that she uses to schlep supplies (and rubble). She is best friends with a pair of crows and her elderly neighbor’s Shiba Inu—he stops for treats as they pass by on their morning walk—and she spends time gardening and foraging. “I grew up on a small farm in the Pacific Northwest, and there is a sense of the familiar in Yamanaka’s misty forests,” she says.
The next chapter in Kirshner’s life includes hosting culinary retreats and food-writing workshops with a view to celebrating local food cultures, as well as an upcoming book. “It’s ironic that my husband moved to the US from Japan when he was 18, thinking he’d never go back, only to marry an American woman who never wants to leave.” In the Q&A below, we chat with Kirshner about what it’s been like to settle in Japan and how she built community in her adopted hometown.
Where did you move to, and why this place?
“The first time I lived in Japan was right after college, when I lived in Kyoto and worked at a bike shop. My friend (who was also my host) would tell me about this magical town called Yamanaka Onsen—a hot spring town surrounded by nature—but I never ended up visiting at the time. I did eventually return in 2016, for a three-month apprenticeship at a sake bar in Yamanaka and ended up meeting all these amazing artists and craftsmen and farmers, and realized I wanted to learn about what they were doing and how it all wove together into the culture and community of Yamanaka. Yamanaka Onsen is a culturally rich town even though it’s rural; it has more than a 1000-year history of tourism because of its onsen, its hot springs, and alongside that grew various craft industries like the wood turning. I started spending more and more time in Yamanaka and eventually got my resident visa in 2018 to begin research for my book.”
What prompted you to move out of the US?
“I originally thought I’d move for a couple of years, but in the process of writing about the community, I became part of that community. I fell in love with the idea of buying an old farmhouse and fixing it up. And that was sort of the next step, finding a house. I now own two houses: a 100-year-old kominka (an old wooden traditional house) that I’m renovating and another 60-year old home next door that I live in.”
Did you move alone or with a partner, family, or friends?
“Ironically, my husband is Japanese but lives in Brooklyn, where he runs a graphics studio. I do travel back and forth a lot.”
Give us a top-level explanation of the process of moving.
“In Japan, you can go for three months at a time on a tourist visa, but when it came to writing my book, I needed to be around much longer, so I applied for a self-sponsored artist visa. I spoke with a photographer who lived in Tokyo on that visa who gave me advice on how to do it and turns out, if you have been a professional in your field of arts for some years, the requirements aren’t that hard. Plus, I found that with all the connections I had made in the community, I was able to get letters of support that also really helped. I hear all these stories of it being really hard for foreigners to rent properties in Japan, but because I’m in a small town, everything is based on who you can get to vouch for you. I’ve never even had to pay a rental deposit. Being in a small community and making the effort to really assimilate opens a lot of doors.”
How does the nature of your work contribute to your decision to move abroad?
“I’ve actually found more opportunities in Japan than I did in New York. There are so many writers in New York, it can be a bit of a struggle to carve out space, whereas there aren’t that many writers writing in English who are living in rural Japan. So without really intending it, writing about Japanese craft and food and rural life sort of became my niche.”
What was the biggest challenge or obstacle to moving, or navigating your new life?
“Language. I’d taken Japanese in college, but I did not really speak it. That has steadily improved—now I like to say I’m renovating a house entirely in Japanese—but I’m learning how to read because it was infantilizing to have to ask my husband and friends to read my mail out to me. I still read at a first-grade level; you have to memorize some 2000 characters to be able to functionally read. So, yeah, that’s been a steep learning curve.”
What was it like adapting to a new culture?
“One of the things that’s really nice, now that I’ve bought a house, is that I have this neighbor who has become my guardian angel. He’s always looking out for me, and one of the things I’m so grateful for is he’ll tell me what I’m supposed to do to be a good neighbor. He’ll be like: ‘Tomorrow is the shrine cleaning day, so come at 9 a.m. and bring work gloves.’ Or, ‘The next time you cut the grass, it would be really nice if you could cut the grass for this person too.’ It’s important to have people who will clue you into what community expectations are. The other thing I’ve had to learn, especially as an American, is about consensus. As an example, I had to get a survey of my property line, and that involved a surveyor gathering seven different people whose properties abut mine and having them confirm and sign off on things. There are a lot of processes that take a lot of patience to navigate because collective consensus is valued over individual choice. I’ve come to think it’s lovely, but it definitely takes a mindset shift.”
Give us a brief description of your typical weekday or weekend.
“When the weather is nice, I like to sit and have breakfast by the kitchen window, and chat with neighbors as they take their morning walks. Both my houses are right next to each other, and there’s just endless work to do, working on the garden or renovation. I’m in the midst of renovating part of the big house into an outdoor kitchen with a pizza oven and a traditional Japanese wood-fired cook stove, which I plan to use for culinary retreats. So oftentimes the morning is dedicated to physical work, whether it’s stacking firewood or working in the garden or doing demolition work. I might step out into town for lunch, after which the afternoon is spent writing and illustrating for my next book. At some point in the afternoon, a pair of crows come to visit me and eat peanuts out of my hand. They’ve visited me for two years, and this year they brought their babies. In the evening, I might ride my bike into town and go to the onsen