Our Journey to Japan: Why We Chose a New Life in Kagoshima 🇯🇵

We moved to Japan after visiting it three times. Discover why we chose Kagoshima, our new life in Japan, and travel tips from Kyushu.

Japan was love at first sight

When we first visited Japan, we came as tourists. We wanted to see Mount Fuji, Kyoto, Osaka… But something unexpected happened. The more we traveled, the less we cared about checking famous places off a list. Instead, we fell in love with the everyday life.

Stopping at a small local restaurant. Buying snacks in convenience stores. Driving through quiet mountain roads. Watching the sunset over the ocean. Meeting incredibly kind people. Japan slowly became much more than a travel destination.

🎥 Watch our move to Japan

Prefer watching instead of reading? In this video we take you through our move to Japan, introduce our new home and show the beginning of this adventure.

Three trips changed everything

Over the years we explored three of Japan’s main islands.

✔️ Kyushu

✔️ Shikoku

✔️ Part of Honshu

Every trip showed us a different side of Japan.

• Bustling cities.

• Tiny villages.
• Volcanoes.
• Hot springs.
• Mountain roads.
• Coastlines.

And every time we left, we already wanted to come back.

We wanted different things… and found the same place

One thing made choosing where to live surprisingly difficult. We wanted different things. I love mountains. Milan loves the sea. We both prefer warm weather over cold winters. Finding one place that had everything seemed almost impossible. Until we discovered southern Kyushu.

Why Kagoshima Prefecture?
After visiting several parts of Japan, one region kept pulling us back.

Kagoshima Prefecture offers almost everything we were looking for.

🌋 Beautiful nature

🏔️ Mountains within easy reach

🌊 The ocean just a few minutes away

☀️ Warm climate

🚗 Great starting point for exploring Kyushu

🏡 A quieter lifestyle than Japan’s biggest cities

It’s not a place most foreign visitors know about.

Maybe that’s exactly why we love it.

Isn’t Japan dangerous?

One question we hear all the time is:

“But what about earthquakes and tsunamis?”

Japan is one of the most seismically active countries in the world.

Before deciding where to live, we spent a lot of time researching natural risks.

One of the reasons we chose Aira was that, compared to many coastal regions of Japan, the tsunami risk is significantly lower thanks to the geography of Kagoshima Bay. We also looked at historical earthquake data and local hazard maps before making our decision.

Of course, no place in Japan is completely risk-free.

But we wanted to make the most informed decision possible.

This is just the beginning

Moving to Japan wasn’t the end of our journey.

It was the beginning of a completely new one.

Over the coming months we’ll share:

• what everyday life in Japan is really like
• buying a house in Japan
• moving abroad with an Akita Inu
• hidden places across Kyushu
• Japanese culture and traditions
• practical travel tips
• hiking trails
• local food we discover along the way

We hope you’ll join us.

Coming soon

• 🏡 Why We Bought a House in Japan
• 🐕 Moving to Japan with an Akita Inu
• 🚗 Why We Chose Kyushu Instead of Tokyo
• 📄 Student Visa in Japan – Our Experience
• 🍜 Things That Surprised Us After Moving to Japan