today we visited a guesthouse that was run by a punk woman + her husband w anarchist ideals around off grid living / radical self reliance — it was a fascinating structure / system, that were living very alternative ideals. for example, they didn’t have an online presence on purpose but still had incoming guests and would find out about this place organically.

their marketing strategy was completely offline: they would distribute zines / people find out only about them via word of mouth; we actually found out in a really similar way — shuu went to a zine store in tokyo, and the owner of the zine made the introduction to the guesthouse owner

they also don’t charge rent for stay, but run off a completely donations-based model; they eat the food and vegetables they grow themselves, and pride themselves off of being self sufficient. when we asked them why they didn’t want to create a website to advertise and find new customers, they said they didn’t want to rely on other networks (were worried about having no internet / relying on technology so much that they would fail if something like an earthquake damaged the network towers)

additionally, they run a cafe that has rotating owners — i think about 10 people take turns manning the cafe (community-owned / driven), and whoever cooks that day will basically take the profit / revenue. it’s such a fascinating model, one of collectivist spirit, feels grassroots, self-organized, and is exactly the kind of alternative and creative structure / ideals that web3 technologies are designed to promote. it’s inspiring to see this kind of organization already organically emerge: what can we take from it, and how can we get inspired by it (and also what things can we also weave in / improve?)

while shuu and chang stayed at the Sanpo Cafe to talk to the members there (later, we heard about their conversation with amy, a woman who focuses on akiya revitalization + art), megumi and i went to a bakery — one that we heard, from komura-san, that was the best bakery in nishiizu. we ended up chatting with the owner of the bakery for more than an hour about how he ended up in nishiizu, how he started the bakery, and what other things he is up to in life.

after noticing that so much of his cafe looked to be recently built (and with recycled wood), he told us that he built everything himself. turns out that he only moved to nishiizu last year, bought a plot of land, not only learned how to do DIY / renovation stuff on his own, but also learned how to bake bread as well ALL in the last year.

this was super inspiring to us: the possibility and progress that someone could achieve in a year, basically starting from 0, if they were highly motivated and had a voracious appetite for learning. i left with so much respect for him, and we also planted the seed of doing some kind of language exchange with him, as he said he wanted to get better at english and also support our project.

his land that he bought for the bakery was right next to an akiya, and he said he’s still looking for the owner of the akiya so he could move in one day. this seems to be a common problem — even though the neighbors love him, and he is contributing to the nishiizu economy, and is basically already part of the community, the information distribution around akiya discovery (especially as the property seemed like it hadn’t been used for years) is severely lacking. it makes me wonder how many cases of this that there are (lots), and what we can do to help make use of underutilized spaces, especially as it seems to benefit both sides.

later, we came back home, and went to see a concert that sato-san invited us to. this was a private concert, with capacity of about 20 people inside a beautiful shrine — the singer was a friend of sato-san’s and welcomed us warmly (in english!) she said she usually wears normal semi-formal clothing, but today wore a yukata so we could have a more cultural experience while watching her perform, which was super sweet of her

coming back, we walked with another resident of nishiizu, a chinese man who recently moved to china to work at a nearby aloe vera factory. we cooked kin mei dai, a local fish specialty, and then some of us went out to see the stars later at night. it was an incredible, packed, and fun day through connecting with locals in so many different environments.