Personal Update » “Hasta Luego” (for now) to Mexico » We Moved to Japan!

Konnichiwa, friends! We made it to rural Japan, and have hit the ground running to work towards building our new life here. Let’s take a brief first look at our new surroundings, a brief explanation of how and why we’ve ended up across the sea, and what we hope to accomplish here!

I do try to keep our travel and house-sitting journey exclusively over on our Benton Homestead Travel Journal, while keeping the content of this photo blog focused on photography. But as this is a personal update, I’ll go into a little more detail than usual, and refer you to some previous Benton Homestead blogs and YouTube videos.

While our life shifted to Mexico in 2021 as our way of making the best out to the bad situation in our home country, it evolved into something much more beautiful and unexpected. We did not plan on being full-time house-sitters during our 14 months south of the border, but it really gave our travels a sense of purpose and direction. It’s hard to believe we enjoyed ten solid months of back-to-back house-sits, which gave us new friendships with wonderful people all over Mexico. We drove over 9,000 miles, and visited 21 Mexican states!

I want to be clear that we’re not leaving Mexico because we don’t like it, and in fact, Mexico is still on the table as a place to permanently settle, depending on how things go the next few months in Japan. If you’d like to read more about our time in Mexico, you can start with this Benton Homestead blog (Happy Mexico Anniversary) which reminisces and reflects on our first year living abroad. My realization that Mexico is completely different than what many Americans are led to believe has been the driving force behind my travel photography, and I sincerely hope this has been conveyed when sharing Mexico landscapes and streetscapes. And in case you missed the big announcement in my previous blog, many of my Mexico travel photos can now be purchased in my new Print Shop, and more will be added soon!

You see, our tentative plan all along has been to secure long-term Temporary Residency in Mexico (which we now have until the end of 2025) prior to moving to Japan. This is because the Japanese visa process is lengthy and tumultuous. That means: we might need to leave Japan temporarily at some point, in which case, we could fairly easily come back to Mexico for another period of house-sitting or travel. So this move is basically second phase of a long-term multi-phase goal. While in Mexico, we worked for many months to obtain a Japanese Business Startup Visa. But Japan is still very much an in-person society, so it’s been extra complicated doing this process from afar over email and video calls. Since Japan has opened to tourists again, we’ve been advised to go as tourists to finish the residency visa process in person. Which is why we’re here!

If you’d like a (much) more in-depth look at my thoughts on Mexico and Japan, the differences, the similarities, and much more information about our future plans, hopes, and dreams, then feel free to pop on over to this super-detailed Benton Homestead blog (Mexico and Japan: Compare and Contrast), or you can watch the corresponding YouTube video where I add some additional commentary.

Currently, we’re busy exploring Omishima island. Our days are filled touring the “akiya” abandoned homes we’re interested in buying to renovate, and looking at available unused farmland. Next week, we move temporarily to greater Imabari city on mainland Shikoku, where we’ll have three weeks to work with both the Imabari City officials and an Immigration Lawyer, to finish our business plan and Startup Business Visa formal applications. If you’d like to see more regular in-depth updates covering our house-hunting, visa process, life in Japan, future remodeling, and honeybee farming, you can follow along with our Benton Homestead “stories” on Instagram and Facebook. It’s all so exciting!!! But also exhausting.

So for now, I’ll leave you with just a few photos from our first week in Japan, on our new tiny island:

Two bonus photos with my PaperShoot Camera:

You can find more of our travel and house-sitting adventures, here:
Dani & Evan Benton | Benton Homestead | www.bentonhomestead.com
Currently getting settled on Omishima island, in Imabari, Ehime, Japan »
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Personal Update » “Hasta Luego” (for now) to Mexico » We Moved to Japan!

© copyright 2009-2023 Dani Benton Photography | Japan | All Rights Reserved | Previously Dani Mouser | Previously Located in Oregon, Louisiana, Mexico