It took me some time to understand that my new pen pal Hironobu Kagae is an rising way of life guru. He and I met on Instagram: I despatched him a message admiring his entryway and we struck up a halting dialog. I don’t converse Japanese and Hironobu was counting on Google Translate, however he shared intriguing images of his household residence and rural life on the southernmost tip of mainland Japan.

He and his spouse, Hitomi, have three youngsters and dwell in a village in Kagoshima prefecture. He works for Sinken, a constructing firm specializing in environmentally pleasant customized wood homes—”we search for methods to fulfill each folks and nature,” explains the web site. Hironobu might need written that himself—it seems he’s a columnist on the Sinken website, and by making use of Google Translate myself, I got here to study extra about Hironobu’s personal story; his sensible, unpretentious method to design; and his celebration of on a regular basis pleasures, similar to “sitting by a window and calmly catching the air at the start of the day.”

A nutshell bio: To keep away from the forbidding highschool admissions take a look at, Hironobu attended technical highschool the place he studied inside design—then went on to earn a newspaper faculty scholarship and a grasp’s diploma in structure, all whereas delivering papers for 14 years (he began in fifth grade). It was touring a Sinken design that impressed him to work for the corporate—which entailed shifting together with his household three hours south to the countryside. In Kagoshima, he was capable of purchase a triangle of land and construct his personal work-in-progress compound, pet goat, oak forest, and newly planted rice subject included.

Hironobu’s residence chronicles—on the advantages, as an example, of getting a communal closet and household bathtub proper subsequent to the laundry space all on the second flooring (the title of that essay is “A home that makes house responsibilities simpler”) —have been so common that Hironobu has simply revealed his first e book, The Which means of Dwelling, which he described for me as “an essay on what I considered when designing and constructing my own residence and my day by day life.” Be a part of us for a tour by way of Hironobu’s household album.

Images by Hironobu Kagae (@kagae_hironobu).