How to enjoy the simple life on a Japanese farm stay

There’s a term in Japanese, “ikigai”, that provides a succinct explanation of why Shoko Kawachi is still doing this: why she still gets up every morning and cooks breakfast for strangers; why she spends all day cleaning, preparing and tending her farm; why she works every evening cooking and socialising. And why she does it all at age 73.

Ikigai is akin to raison d’etre – it’s your reason for being, your passion. It’s the thing you think about when you get up every morning, and the one you plan in your mind as you fall asleep.

This notion, this purpose, is a deeply honoured tradition in Japan, and for Kawachi, that ikigai is hospitality. It’s meeting people. It’s sharing her love of her home and her culture and soaking up the energy of those experiencing it for the first time.

“This is what I want to do until I die,” Kawachi smiles as she grabs a couple of cold cans of Asahi from the fridge and passes one over. “I take energy from all the people who come here to stay.”

“Here” is Kaminaomi, a tiny village in the Oita prefecture, on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu. Kawachi grew up around here before moving to Fukuoka to start a family and work as an announcer on the phones. If you called a certain number in the 1970s you would have heard Kawachi reading the daily weather forecast.

But Kaminaomi called to her, and so when her husband Mitsuo retired from his job with JR Kyushu, the pair returned to her childhood home to start a tourism business. That was 18 years ago. Not much has changed since.

Kawachi’s 60-year-old home is a modest one, nestled in a valley surrounded by rice fields and forests. The locals hunt wild boar here, farm fruit and chestnuts, and catch freshwater crabs in the mountain stream that rushes nearby.

This is not a luxury stay. My accommodation tonight is in the house Kawachi shares with her husband, in a simple tatami-mat room with a thin futon on the floor, a light dangling from the ceiling above. We take our meals in a little studio next door which is strewn with bric-a-brac, old boxes and household overflow surrounding a table where Kawachi preps and cooks incredible meals.

You may assume that the arrival of foreign tourists in Kaminaomi would be met with consternation among locals, if not discomfort, but Kawachi says her fellow residents have enjoyed the newcomers her farm stay has drawn. It has turned Kawachi’s studio into something of a community meeting place, where neighbours turn up to drink a few beers and eat any leftovers that Kawachi’s guests haven’t been able to manage.

First things first though, a farm tour. This is just a hobby farm really, used by the Kawachis to feed guests rather than turn a profit. We stroll through the paddock picking what’s in season: chestnuts in their spiky, hairy shells, persimmons hanging fat and ripe from branches, potatoes that need to be dug out from the rich earth.

And then we retire to the kitchen to begin the prep.

“Always we start with beer,” Kawachi grins as she heads to the fridge and returns with two cold cans of Japanese lager. We clink and drink and then get down to the business of skewering small river fish to be cooked over charcoal, slicing vegetables, boiling crabs, grilling chicken wings, preparing chestnuts for rice.

Kawachi doesn’t speak English – the quotes I’m providing here are delivered via my Japanese-speaking travel companion. Though that’s not to say the language barrier can’t be conquered via modern technology. Plenty of foreigners stay here and work their way through with translation apps and Kawachi’s easy-going charm.

Dinner is a multi-course extravaganza eaten while sitting cross-legged around the irori, or traditional hearth. The food is hearty rather than fancy, the sort of home-cooked cuisine Japanese people typically eat, rather than the restaurant food most tourists are used to, served in surroundings far removed from luxury ryokans or urban hotels.

Tomorrow we’ll wake up at dawn to go check the crab pots in the river, before returning home for a whopping breakfast of fish, vegetables, eggs and rice, served by Kawachi with an indefatigable smile. This is her life.

The writer stayed as a guest of Oita Tourism.

THE DETAILS

FLY

Qantas flies direct from Melbourne and Sydney to Tokyo, with onward connections to Oita. See qantas.com

STAY

Kawachin-chi farm stay costs JPY12,000 ($113) a person a night, including all activities, dinner and breakfast. To access the property, free transfers are offered from Saiki train station. For bookings and more information, see saiki-greentourism.com