In Search for Belonging
Part 1 - Exploring a journey to rural Japan
It’s approaching the end of January, which means we’re finally remembering to write 2026 instead of 2025! I’ve already made this mistake a handful of times, and each time I realize my slip-up, I smile because the new year hasn’t quite settled in. If you're still finding your footing in the new year, I’m with you.
Here’s part 1 of my 3-part series where I explore how I ended up living in rural Japan.
I was born in Canada to immigrant parents—a Japanese mother and a Hong Kongese father who met while studying abroad. I spent my childhood summers often visiting Japan and Hong Kong, and in those early experiences, I learned that identity was a shifting, nuanced thing. For some, home seemed more of a given, an inherited thing. For me, I always found myself questioning what it meant to have, to find, and to accept a home.
As a kid, I was painfully shy. I had very few friends and spent most of my time daydreaming. So lost in thought that once I didn’t even notice a soccer ball flying toward my face, and it knocked me off my feet (and I almost lost a tooth).
I’m not someone who reasons their way through life. I feel things deeply, and I’ve learned to trust those feelings. Most of my choices have been moved by a force that many people call their “intuition,” even though that word has always felt fuzzy to me. I can tell the difference between fear that feels like danger and fear that’s a challenge worth trying. And I listen to these “cues” to guide me. I wonder if this is a silly thing to mention, but I reckon a lot of people make decisions from a much more rational place than I do.
In Search for Belonging
At university, I studied business in a small town outside Toronto. The campus was surrounded by nature, and I realized I was happier there than I’d ever been near the city. In my final year, a guest speaker, Zita Cobbs, spoke about “place” and “community” as the organizing units of a meaningful life. It was the first time someone gave language to something I’d been thinking about for a long time. It didn’t just deepen my thoughts about “home”—it also opened up a way of thinking about meaning in terms of relationship with others.
“If there is one thing that defines how I see the world, it’s community… The basic organizing unit of a dignified human life is a community. Everything we need to sustain ourselves is available in a healthy community. And at the root of a healthy community is an economy, and the people in that community have to have some agency over that economic activity.” – Zita Cobbs
After university, I went on to do my master’s to study tourism and sustainability in Europe. I wanted to understand how to create better, more enriching places both for visitors and local residents. What would it mean to think about the social, cultural, and economic fabric of places?
Around these years, I also spent time in Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada and later in Illulisat, Greenland’s ice fjords—places where nature was so expansive that I felt like a speck of dust on a mountain. I was so small, and it was so wonderful.
In the face of that kind of beauty and grandeur of nature, success felt relative. The relentless pressure to be something... kind of floated adrift like icebergs passing in the middle of a sunlit night. We don’t need to achieve anything; just our existence alone in this interconnected web of life is meaningful enough.
I listened to a podcast from artist and Substack author Wendy MacNaughton and couldn’t help but laugh when she articulated something I’ve always felt:
“Other parts of my life would be a lot easier if I cared more about efficiency or about making a good profit. That’s not what excites me, and that’s not where my talents lie. I’ve said often, if you want to make a lot of money, don’t hire me. Don’t come talk to me. But if you want to make a big difference, let’s chat.”
Living and Working Across Asia
In my early twenties, I was chosen for a project with the European Union. They wanted young “storytellers” with no background in international aid to share stories from the field on social media. Over six months, I travelled to seven countries across Asia and the Pacific (Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Fiji, Nepal, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan).
I saw cultural richness, injustice, poverty, pain, and beauty in the same breath. I broke down crying multiple times because, as someone who feels everything, it was so much to hold. I found myself in the poorest, least accessible parts of countries, witnessing deep inequality. There were always glimmers of hope underneath the suffering, but what stayed with me most was this feeling of anger.
I was angry that this was happening. I was angry at the root causes—colonialism, extractive capitalism, the whole gamut. International aid was a band-aid to a crisis of systems.
After that experience, I went on to work in Bangladesh with a university that empowers young, marginalized women through education. I believed then—and still deeply do—that education and women’s empowerment can make a meaningful impact in the world. My anger simmered as my hope grew by supporting a cause I truly cared about.
The work was beautiful, but living in Bangladesh wore on me. The pollution, the congestion, the small ways my freedom felt stifled. I almost always felt safe, and there was a tremendous amount of generosity extended toward me—but it was hard moving through daily life as a solo woman, constantly being stared at, or told I shouldn’t be doing what I was doing.
I wasn’t burnt out yet, but I could see it coming. Then COVID hit, and like so many people, life just stopped. I took one of the last few flights leaving Bangladesh before all the airports shut down. I quit my job. In the midst of anxiety and stillness, I realized I’d lost sight of that feeling I had in Greenland and Jasper—that wonderful, beautiful, interconnected feeling that comes from being in nature.
From City to Countryside
Travelling to Japan over 5 years ago was the start of the search to reorient myself a little closer to the natural world. The first place I travelled to was Kamikatsu, a small mountain community. I didn’t expect to find home so quickly. I intended to be here only a couple of months, but I could feel my intuition telling me to stay.
For most of my life, I grew up adjacent to the city in the suburbs, where it was always aspirational to be in the “city-city”—the place of opportunity. But I’ve spent much of my life learning to let go of those narratives.
All this searching—for home, for meaningful work, for a way to channel my feelings into good—has led me here. Now I live in this small mountain town where I’m so far from a city-city. I’ve built my own business, which is something I didn’t set out to do, but I’m so proud of. I’m surrounded by nature daily, which is part of what feels like home.
Not knowing where I belonged was disorienting and lonely for a long time. But maybe it also meant I got to choose. And for now, and for the past years, I’ve chosen Kamikatsu.
Thanks for reading Part 1 of this series exploring my journey to rural Japan. Stay tuned for Part 2 where I’ll share about exactly what I do in Kamikatsu for work and my thoughts on living here (good & challenging, everything in between). Feel free to leave your thoughts below and share!
With love,
Kana
Thank you for sharing your story. It is one of courage and conviction - and action. It is often easy to think of what one might do, but difficult to draw on the strength to act. Best wishes!
Thank you for sharing your story! In the past couple of years, my community and I have been challenged to rethink what it means to live well and your story is a beautiful reminder that there IS an alternative to what we conventionally think of as success.