Furusato Travel: From Cities to Countryside

Nestled in the Keihoku district of Kyoto City, one is surrounded by untouched nature and forested peaks. A backbone of the timber industry since the Heian period, the Kitayama cedar is renowned for its straight trunks, polished wood, and use in adorning sukiya -style tea rooms and temples. Along the Hosono River valley, hidden within the dense forest, one can find Takimata Falls, a 25-meter-high, three-tiered waterfall. It is said the falls were named by Oda Nobunaga's nephew, Jikkai Inga Koji, who fled to Hosono following the Azuchi religious debates during the late 16th century. It was here that he practiced takigyō —a spiritual meditation where the practitioner stands beneath the freezing torrent to chant and purify the mind—and bestowed the name Takimata.   I started my journey by car, leaving the Arashiyama area and heading north on Route 162. Within the half-hour, I found the free parking lot, easily identifiable by the large, beautiful dragon sculpture at its entrance. ...

  “We are moving to Japan!”  A phrase that many of you may want to say to friends and family but don’t know how to get there.  Youtube and social media are full of videos with these successes, but for a working family, that information is not so easy to find or they are missing crucial details on how you get there.  That’s where we want to help! Matsumoto Castle Welcome. My name is Matthew and we are a family of three—plus our cat, Disco—currently living in the US but getting ready to call Kameoka home.  To be clear, we are not relocation experts.  We are a family that is ready to call Japan our home with little to no knowledge of how to actually make that happen.  Our journey will not be yours, it may be wildly different, it may be very similar.  Our hope is to help shed the light on some of the things you may run into as you look into your own journey! For the past fifteen years, my wife, daughter and I have been visiting Japan as tourists. But ...