by Axel Eriksson

After spending five months in Japan, I returned to Europe. A recent, quite normal dinner with my partner sparked a grumbly pining for Japan. He came to visit for a few weeks, and unexpectedly, he burst out with nostalgia, saying, “I really miss Japan!” His outburst sparked a long conversation about our experiences living in Japan, our encounters with people, hurdles, food, health, and travel. The conversation kick-started my writing and brought back memories of my experiences living, working, and being in Japan. After some necessary distance between my experience-self and my researcher-self, I finally started writing. Between March and August, I had crisscrossed the country, sitting in coffee shops, staying in share houses, riding horses in the sea, while searching for foreign digital nomads in rural areas to understand how their views of Japan changed once they moved beyond familiar tourist areas. That was easier said than done. I imagined digital nomads as being at the forefront of travel, similar to how Paul Hansen (2024) describes dairy farms in Hokkaido as being at the forefront of technology. Surely, digital nomads, not wanting to be associated with tourists (Cook, 2022), are at the forefront, able to experience Japan beyond what other visitors, immigrants, and even Japanese people may experience.

Of all the things that strike me about Japan, the contrast between rural areas and urban centers stands out the most. Anyone who has exited Tokyo Station is confronted by an enormous edifice. While not necessarily tall, its immense size bulges out in all directions, defying any sense of what could possibly be inside or how it could host so many people. Given that Japan’s rural areas are losing population, one might ask why such large buildings are being constructed. This growth is nothing extraordinary in Tokyo or Sapporo. After returning from a short trip outside Sapporo, where I was based during my research stay in Japan, I noticed a new building that seemed to have appeared from nowhere. The growth of Japanese cities seems inevitable. However, I cannot stop viewing urban areas as “capitalist ruins,” to borrow an expression from Anna Tsing (2015). Urban centers grow endlessly as monocultures, absorbing people and leaving rural areas empty. Yet, behind this seemingly inevitable flow, there are movements pushing outwards. Susanne Klien (2020) has highlighted the experiences of many Japanese individuals who have moved away from the city in search of new livelihoods. Rural identities cannot be cultivated in laboratories; they are shaping a new wave of living elsewhere. I will present three stories from my research on brief encounters at crossroads where new identities are formed through ideas and experiments and show how rural Japan can become a frontier of new imaginaries.

One summer evening, Korey (a pseudonym) and I sat on the rooftop of a co-living space a few hours from Tokyo. As a digital nomad, I thought Korey could contribute something to this rural town, so I asked her what she thought she could teach this small place. But she countered, “Why should we save this place? Maybe they don’t want to be saved!” I was stunned. Why should digital nomads like her, researchers like me, or anyone else assume that we have something to teach? Korey is from Taiwan and has worked as a teacher with indigenous communities in mountain villages. She recognized that, perhaps they should teach us how to live as we only visit residents’ lives for a short while before moving on to the next place. We should be the ones learning how to live together with them. My conversation with Korey has stuck with me. Her thoughts influence how I envision rural areas. Korey and I were both at a crossroads, searching for something different: a rural livelihood and new experiences. Although we didn’t have many connections beyond those at the co-living space, digital nomads like her prefer to live life through brief encounters. Korey and I met, our paths briefly converged, and then diverged again. We haven’t stayed in touch since. Still, I imagine a kind of kinship remains between us. On her last day, we made onigiri, rice balls, from leftover rice to use as snacks. She saved one for me and left a note in the fridge, knowing our paths might never cross again. The note simply said, “Have a good life.”

I met Hibiki (a pseudonym) at the share house where I was staying in Hokkaido. I had been away for some time when she arrived. The people were always changing, and at first, we barely spoke. But after a trip to the center of the island, we realized that we were on similar life paths, both trying to forge new connections. Over the past few years, Hibiki had traveled through every prefecture in Japan. She realized that she was looking for a new home outside of large metropolitan areas. Now, in Hokkaido, she was spending a month or more looking around, supported by a state-funded program aimed at encouraging people to leave big cities. But what she mostly wanted to move away from was the heat. Hibiki detested the summer heat in Japan. Even Hokkaido was unusually hot that year. She was longing for winter! Hibiki also wanted to connect with people. While few people seemed willing to leave urban life behind, Hibiki was one of them. For her, the question was not ambition or status, but survival. The type of work didn’t matter much as long as it could be done remotely. We drove around Hokkaido together. Every so often, she would say, “Maybe I like it here,” or “Perhaps that would be nice,” pointing at houses along roads winding through national parks. We went on walking trails and spoke about everything and nothing. I felt like we had known each other for a long time, even though we had just met. However, we didn’t speak about everything. I sensed that I had crossed a boundary when I started asking about her family life and she hesitated to say anything about it. We are leaving our old selves behind. After parting ways, we exchanged LINE contacts and LinkedIn profiles. Maybe we will meet again somewhere, but that remains uncertain.

All my life, people have walked up to me and told me their life stories without much prompting, which has been both a curse and a blessing. One such encounter occurred in an onsen located just down a long, straight road from Higashikawa in central Hokkaido. This onsen sits on a small hill in a flat landscape overlooking fertile fields and the central mountain range. While sitting in the corridor waiting for my friends to finish and already feeling boiling hot, I made eye contact with the only other foreigner around. Richard, as I call him here, approached me and started telling his story almost immediately. He had moved from England, didn’t miss home at all, and was now a stay-at-home dad while his Japanese wife worked remotely for a Tokyo-based company. His Japanese seemed limited, but he had lived there for four years, if I recall correctly. He told me that he had never returned to England and had no desire to. We spoke a bit. Many people have told me that Hokkaido is not “really” Japan. I strongly disagree. Hokkaido is what Japan aspires to be. As Richard described it, the rules are more relaxed, life is calmer, and the people are more welcoming here. Winters are harsh but beautiful, and summers, which are painfully hot elsewhere in Japan, are mild. Living in Japan felt liberating for Richard. He had everything he needed around him, and he and his family seldom went to urban centers. I had heard similar stories from others I interviewed, too. Richard insisted that we exchange numbers. We exchanged numbers and left, thinking we would meet again, but we never did. Although our paths crossed briefly, this sense of liberation defines Japan—a place at the frontier. I hope we meet again someday!

Rural life in Japan is a frontier of new imaginaries, which are the simplified narratives that circulate and repeat as we share stories about cultures (Salazar, 2012). These narratives are set in motion through new encounters. Together, foreigners and Japanese people are part of the making of Japan by pushing the frontier forward, forming connections that merge and split apart. These connections offer crossroads where attempts at new livelihoods unfold. Several imaginaries emerge in parallel, intersecting and breaking apart. What remains is rural change. After enduring economic downturns, Japan leaves the capitalist ruins behind and shapes its future. In my search for digital nomads, I crossed paths with Korey, Hibiki, Richard, and many others who, in different ways, were searching for something different from home. These individuals were searching for places of belonging (ibasho) (Klien & Eriksson, 2025). Rural Japan teaches the world about living with new imaginaries—places of new encounters and ongoing searches through intersecting paths. Japan’s rural areas demonstrate what alternative futures could look like—not only for Japan, but also for those of us who could follow paths leading elsewhere.

References:

Tsing, A. L. (2015). The Mushroom at the End of the World. Princeton University Press.

Hansen, P. (2024). Hokkaido dairy farm: cosmopolitics of otherness and security on the frontiers of Japan. State University of New York Press.

Salazar, N. B. (2012). Tourism imaginaries: A conceptual approach. Annals of Tourism research 39(2), 863-882.

Klien, S. (2025). Post-pandemic developments in lifestyle migration in Japan: From back-to-the-land to urbanrural? Journal of Rural Studies 114, 103505.

Klien, S. & Eriksson, A. (2025) Ibasho tourism: Rural areas as pockets of resilience or risk? Wakayama Tourism Review, 7

Axel Eriksson is a postdoctoral researcher from Sweden who recently graduated at Mid Sweden University. He was rewarded a JSPS short–term postdoctoral scholarship to be in Hokkaido University in Sapporo conducting ethnographic research across Japan to understand how digital nomads connects to rural Japan. His research focuses on how groups meet and renegotiate their livelihoods, especially through tourism and new foreigner residents.

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