▶️ Watch a Tour of Their Renovated Japanese Guest House – https://youtu.be/x2d5dV8HzIU
Meet Evan and Dani Benton of @bentonhomestead Two Americans who followed their homesteading dreams all the way to Japan where they currently own 2 previously abandoned Japanese Homes (Akiya). They’ve renovated one into a guest house while growing garden and starting their bee keeping business to raise organic honey in Japan.
Follow Benton Homestead
Youtube: @bentonhomestead
IG: https://www.instagram.com/bentonhomestead/
Blog: https://bentonhomestead.com/
Stay at Their Air BnB: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/902413133356587873?source_impression_id=p3_1737480914_P3Sqbgjm7XMkfjN7
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Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:56 Sponsor
2:06 How Did They End Up in Japan
2:57 Garden Tour
8:25 Why Did They Choose to Live in Omishima?
9:07 More Garden Tour
10:18 What’s It Like Living in Japan as Foreigners?
12:30 Hornets Attack!
15:47 What’s Different About Raising Bees in Japan?
18:20 How Are They Living in Japan? What’s Their Business Plan?
20:51 What Happened to All the People and Farms on the Island?
22:12 Seeing More of Their Property Walking to Bee Workshop
#akiya #japancountryside #livinginjapan #homesteadinglife #homesteading
18 Comments
▶️ Watch a Tour of Their Renovated Japanese Guest House – https://youtu.be/x2d5dV8HzIU
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Happy it's working for them. Personally I can't imagine putting all this money, time, and work in when you're there on a visa and no guarantee you'll be allowed to stay in a couple of years though. I've also seen interviews about life in rural Japan from others that tells a different story. You need very good Japanese as often nobody in the country speaks English, all your neighbors are elderly, nothing nearby to do and very lonely, car is a requirement and getting a driver's license in Japan is tough, town hall meetings and volunteering is basically mandatory and old people are very petty about things with all the time in the world to look for problems. Ultimately it's a gamble if you end up with good neighbors or not.
Follow the works of Dr Higa and japanese natural farming methods for success
Ooooo Double upload on the Bentons! Love the editing man, it looks great!
💚👍very cool
I’m so happy for these guys. I’m wondering if they have or could have chickens/sheep/goats
Many houses for all of the expat and foreign and domestic refuseniks of America to go to – including back into Europe and all of the many abandoned homes and villages there.
As an Oregon U.S. Marine stationed at MCAS Iwakuni (40 km below Hiroshima) in the late 1970s, having driven the southern 1/2 of Honshu island, there are many great opportunities for expats, having homesteads, orchards, vineyards, gardens, fields, meadows, ….
It just the extreme weather (just like the basta northern Midwest) of Winter blood-freezing -40 F with 60+% humidity and 40 MPH winds, … and Summer blood boiling sun-scorching super-sauna 90+F with 90+ humidity and 0 winds. Both locations with their Winter polar vortex Siberian and Alberta Clippers bringing down bitter cold winds, snow, blizzards. Then all of the Summer equatorial supra-tropical humid air with maximum water vapor in vapor capacity with Pacific typhoons, monsoons, flash flood storms, or the Midwest with the northward Gulf of Mexico heat and humidity, tornadoes/cyclones, thunder/lightning/rain/hail storms… that people, landscape, and the greenery have a toll taken on them.
Japanese wasps are as big as your thumb. They eat honey bees like a larvae hamburger, and eat the entire hive colony. Personal experience of having an abandoned tourist inn, with a Japanese wasp attacking the window between us, wanting to bite and sting me. I got the hell out of these in quick fashion. Heard from my Japanese adopted family that they had a queen wasp nest in their attic. In Spring, early Summer, they all emerged, and were hugging the southern-sunny side of the house and wind drying out their bodies and wings. The police sequestered the whole neighborhood during this event.
Someone should have taken a scuba suit all covered up any skin ! – and then flame throw the wasps and their wings and then – NO PROBLEM !
Biggest issue with Japanese wasps and honey bee hives is to put in an enclosed small portal into the hive landing board and entrance. This allows the honey bees to crawl through, and the wasps can't get into the hive. Otherwise, put in a small wire grating around the entire landing board and hive entrance, that honey bees land on the wiring crawling through, down onto the landing board and into the hive entrance. The wire mesh keep the Japanese wasps any from the whole landing board and hive entrance, and the honey bees can swarm and kill the wasps on the outside of the wire mesh, versus fighting them at the hive entrance or inside the hive, by swarming, overheating and frying them in place.
Why are there 10 to 12 million empty houses?
Oh man, I've been following both you and the Benton's for some time, super glad to see this video in my subscription box 😄 I visited the island two years ago and instantly fell in love, what a gorgeous place to live in, hopefully I'll be able to visit in the future again 🤞🏻
Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with us, and for sharing our story with this video. You really did a great job helping to keep us comfortable in front of the camera.We're watching now! If any of your viewers are interested in following our adventure, we share videos on our channel about: honeybees, natural farming, Japan immigration, incorporating and operating a Japanese business, living in a rustic 'akiya' abandoned house, running our retro-style guesthouse, DIY traditional Japanese house renovation, and whatever else we have going on.
Cool the Benton’s! Awesome video thanks for sharing!
The worm you squished was actually a swallowtail butterfly caterpillar. Please don’t kill insects without doing you research. We need pollinators.
I love it! The only reason I thought of it was because, as you know, chickens are so helpful to any garden! All love!
I am so jealous, that's my dream to have a house and land in middle of a village where I can grow my own food and live peacefully🥹These people are beyond lucky to live such fulfilling lives, best luck 💖
For me it is a complete news that westerners move to Japan, which I support by buying the bikes although they construct them for dwarfs. When you are there please inform them about 2m nordics in existence.
Seriously, could you get a little into the visa things IN CASE ONLY anything changes to the more easy?
Hi-Standard t-shirt yay 😀