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Growing up in Vancouver, where there is a large Asian population, he was always interested in Asia.
“I started meeting a lot of really amazing people from Japan, including my future wife, who was studying in Vancouver at the time, and I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll just check it out for myself,'” Jordan told Business Insider.
He initially planned to spend a few years in Japan teaching English, but he fell in love and got married, so he ended up moving to Japan permanently.
Jordan, who has two children and asked to only give his first name to protect their privacy, currently lives with his family in his wife’s hometown of Mie Prefecture, just under a four-hour drive from Osaka.
Settle in the countryside
They wanted to live in the same area as his wife’s family, so one day a house built in the ’80s across the rice fields from his wife’s family came up for sale, so they bought it and moved in.
“We struggled to live there for 10 years. It was badly designed, had fake wood and other low-quality, cheap materials throughout,” Jordan said. “It really wasn’t built to last.”
Ten years later, the couple decided it was time to renovate the house, which they planned to do but ultimately decided against.
“We looked into it and the advice we got back was basically that the house was probably not earthquake safe and it would be a waste of time and money,” Jordan said.
Given the high costs of bringing them up to modern building codes, he says it would be better to buy or build a new home.
And that is exactly what they did: they demolished the old house and built a new one in its place.
A new start
Jordan said the couple received help from a local company, the same people who built Jordan’s parents-in-law’s home and several other homes in the area.
“I really liked the feel of the houses they built,” Jordan says. “They were wood, they used the space well, they used really good solid materials, and they were not fancy, but they had a modern, clean design.”
They already had an idea of ​​the layout they wanted and worked with the company to refine the design. Once everything was finalized, it was time to start preparing to pack up and tear down.
While they were excited about their new home, Jordan said it was emotional to see their old one demolished.
“It was really strange. My two children were more or less born and raised in that house, and there are a lot of good and bad memories in that house,” he said. “It was really hard to see it demolished.”
Jordan and his family were staying with his parents-in-law while their new home was being built.
“It was good that we lived across from the fields. We only moved there for seven months,” he said.
Construction began in the winter, and by fall 2020, Jordan and his family moved into their new home.
Build a cozy family home
Jordan estimates that it cost about 30 million yen (about $200,000) to build the house, plus an additional 2 million yen for the home’s solar-powered heating and cooling system.
“We could have built it for less, but we used a local company that was very hands-on and used timber from local mountains,” Jordan says, “so we kind of paid a bit of a premium.”
This is on top of the 10 million yen he spent 20 years ago to buy a 150-square-meter plot of land. Average land price per square meter In 2023, it will be 90,066 yen.
Challenges faced during the process
He added that his wife chose all the materials, even the type of tile used in the house.
The three-bedroom home is set over two floors. The master bedroom, family room and bathroom are on the first floor. The kitchen, living area and children’s rooms are on the second floor.
“The main living spaces are where I spend most of my time – the kitchen and living room – so I wanted to make them gorgeous,” he says. “There are rice fields all around and mountains behind, but you can’t see very far from the first floor, so I moved everything up to the second floor.”
The main construction company they worked for did mostly carpentry work, so Certain tasks, such as wiring and plumbing, had to be outsourced to separate contractors, which sometimes led to miscommunication.
“People come in and we have a vision for the house and we think everyone knows that,” Jordan said. “Our carpenters get it, but what happens when you hire an outside company is they come in, they look at the house and they just do what they always do.”
“Things were happening differently than what we thought we had agreed upon,” he continued.
In the end, everything was resolved, but there were moments when I feared things might not go well.
It also helped that his wife and her family were involved in communicating ideas to builders.
“I can speak Japanese, but there are a lot of nuances. It would have been really difficult to explain it in Japanese,” he said.
Appreciate Japanese culture
Jordan says they’ve managed to create the perfect space for their family.
“One of the differences is that I feel less like going out because I’m more comfortable at home,” Jordan said.
He is also close to the local community, which is one of the things he really loves about Japanese culture.
“That’s another thing that’s unique to Asia. It may sound negative, but it’s about making yourself small for the community. Learning how to make yourself a little smaller for everyone,” Jordan said. “Thinking about how everyone around you feels. That’s very practical and it creates a welcoming community.”
He also likes the hard-working attitude of the Japanese people.
“The other thing is that in Japan, in general, if you do something, you want to do it well,” he said, “and I love the sense that people take pride in what they do, whatever the job, and respect others who work hard.”
A laid back lifestyle
Jordan is not the only country that is attracted to Japan. Ministry of JusticeBy 2023, 2,604 Americans will move to Japan, bringing the total number of American expatriates living in Japan to 63,408.
Four Americans BI previously spoke to cited the country’s safety standards and relatively affordable costs as reasons for moving.
Like Jordan, many expats are choosing to live in the countryside, enjoying a laid-back lifestyle surrounded by Japan’s natural beauty, some even choosing to buy and renovate one of the country’s eight million abandoned houses.
Jordan loves living in Japan. YouTube Channel Document it.
“What really motivated me was realizing that after living in Japan for so long, I had stopped appreciating the little things. I’d lost that fresh perspective and excitement with which I looked at things,” Jordan said.
Jordan says that by picking up his camera and vlogging his experience, he’s reconnected with his old self and learned to appreciate the ordinary yet strange things about being in Japan again.
Although he lives in the countryside, Japan’s excellent public transport system means he’s never far from a city – he says he can easily get to places like Osaka or Nagoya in just two hours.
“It’s exciting because you get all the benefits of living in a less competitive, more settled society but you’re only a train ride away from a bustling city,” he said.
Have you recently built or renovated your dream home? If you have a story you’d like to share, contact me. Agof.