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Shunsuke Ochiai
Hi I’m Shusuke Ochiai, This Is World Insight interview. We have Hillary joining us for the interview today and her villa in Ito is selected as one of the 11 top rated Air BnBs in Japan! So welcome Hillary!

Hillary Hewins
… Hello.

Shunsuke Ochiai
Yeah, nice to talk to you. So, yeah, first of all, we would like to start this interview by your journey. How did it start? What made you come to Japan in first place?

Hillary Hewins
Yes, so I’m originally from California but had been living in New York City. And my husband and I wanted to travel a bit and we were looking to sort of explore the world. And we landed in Shanghai first, but then I saw the opportunity to come to Japan.

Hillary Hewins
And it’s a place that, you know, we had traveled a lot and had really enjoyed. And once I saw my position come up in Japan, I worked really hard to get it and moved here a few years ago and have just loved every minute of it ever since.

Shunsuke Ochiai
Yeah, so when was this? This was before COVID and everything like that happened.

Hillary Hewins
Before COVID, so late 2017.

Shunsuke Ochiai
Hmm. Do you recall like, what was the move like? Did you have a struggle like finding places, like place to live and stuff like that?

Hillary Hewins
I was really fortunate that my employer gave a lot of support and really helped us find a great apartment. Living in Nakamegro, which is really central and just super fun neighborhood. I love to go out in Nakamegro.

Hillary Hewins
Even after six years of living here, it’s still super fun. Amazing access to the rest of Tokyo and other parts of Japan. And yeah, just settling in, there’s always a few bumps in the road, but luckily people were really kind and really helped us to feel at home.

Hillary Hewins
And it does feel like home actually at this point.

Shunsuke Ochiai
Right right. Nakamegro is like in middle of Meguro and Shibuya, so yeah, you can walk to Nakamegro from Shibuya

Hillary Hewins
Yes, exactly. I actually right now sometimes walk. I’m studying Japanese language and my class is in Shibuya. I go five days a week and yeah and I can walk to Shibuya if I’m not going to make a row and it’s quite a nice walk uphill but still a nice walk.

Shunsuke Ochiai
Was there any cultural differences you have experienced living in Tokyo?

Hillary Hewins
I think the challenge is that I was working in an all English language environment for my professional life. And so I think you can fall into the situation where you can get by without learning Japanese.

Hillary Hewins
And especially if your professional life is all in a different language. And so one thing that was a struggle for me is that I really did want to try and connect more with people and culture. And I wasn’t quite able to give the time to language study that I wanted to.

Hillary Hewins
At the same time, like I said, I was fortunate with friends and supports. And so the struggle was almost more internal. Like I wasn’t quite doing the thing that I wanted to do in terms of connecting with Japan.

Hillary Hewins
But I got by.

Shunsuke Ochiai
Great. And yeah, you have Airbnb now, your own, in a place called, in a town called Ito, which is a beach town, I think. And yeah, could you tell us about your Airbnb? It’s selected as like one of the 11 top rated Airbnb’s in Japan.

Shunsuke Ochiai
So could you tell us about that?

Hillary Hewins
Of course, thanks so much. Yes, so this all kind of came about with a friend. I have a great friend and business partner here. And we were connected by mutual friends. We both had a love of Japan, a love of hospitality and a desire to really sort of create a place that would connect people with experience that might be, I mean, initially we were kind of, we both have been Tokyo, we love Tokyo, but then we realized that there’s amazing opportunities to connect people with places outside of the sort of the areas that people tend to visit, especially on their first trips.

Hillary Hewins
A lot of people like to go to Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, a few other places. And we really wanted to, we had had some incredible experiences traveling in Japan and just love the experience of being in the countryside and how friendly and warm the people are and just how much there is to see outside of those kind of heavily visited areas.

Hillary Hewins
So it was right actually in 2020. We were on a trip to another, to a ryokan that we found to be really inspiring. And we were like, we want to do something similar. And we decided to just start small.

Hillary Hewins
And the town of Ito, it’s really easy to get to from Tokyo. You can take the Shinkansen and then just a local train, a few more stops, be door to door within a couple hours. But you’re right. What we fell in love with with Ito was it’s a beach town, it’s an onsen town.

Hillary Hewins
And it’s just got this really kind of retro seaside atmosphere, lots of architecture from the Showa era. And it, you know, it’s full of like really, really fun and warm and interesting people. Plus just access to everything.

Hillary Hewins
I mean, if you think about its location just right at the beginning of the Izu Peninsula, you know, you have access to the closest white sand beaches to Tokyo. You have access to mountains, hikes, onsen, amazing seafood, amazing nature, and just incredibly warm and friendly people.

Hillary Hewins
So yeah, fell in love with Ito. And we went down to look at a few houses, saw a couple. And there was one that we were kind of saving for last because we thought we were going to fall in love with it.

Hillary Hewins
And we showed up and we loved it. And we bought it. And this was during really, obviously it was 2020, late 2020. So it was a quiet time. And we had just a lot of opportunity to renovate it and think very thoughtfully about the type of experience we wanted to create with, you know, create for people.

Hillary Hewins
It’s a traditional Japanese house. And we wanted to make that experience, you know, honor the tradition and make it accessible and, you know, feel comfortable and contemporary at the same time.

Shunsuke Ochiai
Well, great, you did a really great job renovating it. It’s like very hip, but it does have that old school Japanese essence as well.

Hillary Hewins
Yes. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. So kind, yeah. We just, the renovation process, it was one of, it was a quiet time in life, but it was also one of the most fun times in my life where I just got to spend so much time with my business partner Blake, learning about the, just really traditional materials and sort of the right way to do things.

Hillary Hewins
But like you said, with a little bit of our personality in there as well.

Shunsuke Ochiai
And yeah, you’ve been also traveling quite a bit in Japan. You know, I see your Instagram all the time. You know, you’ve been going to skiing, you know, on send. And yeah, like what were your favorite places so far?

Hillary Hewins
Yes, so that’s, you know, love, absolutely love traveling in Japan. I feel, again, so fortunate that I’ve been able to be here and explore so many places. I think I’ve been to, been to, and I think stayed in more than 40 prefectures.

Hillary Hewins
So, yeah, so I really am an advocate for seeing places that, you know, you might not find initially and kind of trying to dig a little deeper and use resources to, you know, and when I say you, I just mean sort of like if you’re sort of just learning about travel in Japan, that’s a little bit what I mean, where, you know, like I really want to kind of get out there.

Hillary Hewins
And I can say that, you know, everywhere I go has something absolutely fascinating, whether it’s, you know, art or culture or cuisine. But I think some of my favorite places, I really, really love traveling in Kyushu.

Hillary Hewins
Yeah, it’s, again, got, I mean, just like everywhere, you know, but just really nice mix of like coast and, you know, wonderful food, warm people. But yeah, Fukuoka is one of my favorite cities. I think a Kyushu road trip is something that everybody should do or a train trip.

Hillary Hewins
There’s great train travel there as well, just like most of Japan. But yeah, recently, so I mean, it’s really nice in the summers, try and spend a lot of time in the coast down in Izu, Ito, Atami. I love Atami, and that’s another great area that I’m super interested in.

Hillary Hewins
And then in the winters, I love to spend time skiing in, I snowboard my husband skis, but in Nagano. So we spend a lot of time. There’s a few resorts that we really love to go to, but really want to just explore and kind of spread the, you know, the interest across the entire Nagano and Niigata region.

Hillary Hewins
But just, yeah, again, like snowboarding in the morning, on set, you know, lunch on the mountain, on set in the afternoon, dinner in town or cooking at home. I mean, it’s, you know, just incredible experience.

Shunsuke Ochiai
Yeah, yeah, I have like several people coming in all the time from America all over the places in the world and one thing that they get like kind of intimidated is getting into Onsen, you know, with strangers, you know.

Shunsuke Ochiai
How was that experience?

Hillary Hewins
Yes, I mean, I can understand that it can be a little intimidating at first. And it’s an experience that I’ve really grown to love. And I think the most important thing is maybe before you head into your first onsen, do a little bit of research and just try and figure out sort of what are the firm rules.

Hillary Hewins
Because I really, especially in some of the smaller towns, like we like to go to Nozawa Onsen, which is famous for having about a dozen free public onsen and also a really strong local culture. And so I really want to be aware and respectful of the locals who visit these places every day.

Hillary Hewins
And it’s part of their daily lives. So I would say just doing a little bit of research about what’s step one, step two. What are the absolute do not do’s? Like don’t put your hair in the water. You know, but there’s a there’s a there’s a protocol.

Hillary Hewins
But I think after the first or second time, it just becomes second nature. It just becomes part of life in Japan. And yeah, I recommend it to to everybody a little intimidating. But, you know, even if you make a mistake, it’s OK.

Hillary Hewins
Just remember for next time.

Shunsuke Ochiai
Okay, yes. And also we want to talk about the cuisine on, yeah, what’s your favorite, you know, dish in Japan that you want to recommend?

Hillary Hewins
Sure. I find this to be the hardest question because I love the food here. And I, yeah, I just love experiencing as much variation in cuisine as I possibly can. I guess I’ll mention a couple different things.

Hillary Hewins
Just one kind of casual thing is like a little bit of home cooking and almost even a little bit of Japanese, maybe soul food. I really love Oyakodon. Oyakodon. One of my favorite, favorite dishes. And then, you know, Japan’s famous for incredible seafood and I really, really enjoy seafood in Japan.

Hillary Hewins
Recently, we went up to, just last month, went up to Kanazawa on the northern coast and went to the seafood market and had just an incredible time sampling all the wonderful, rich winter seafood. Just absolutely delicious.

Hillary Hewins
Yes.

Shunsuke Ochiai
There are, you know, people around the world are kind of scared to eat the seafood from Japan because of the radioactive and stuff like that. But what’s your take on that?

Hillary Hewins
Yeah. So, you know, when, you know, I was sort of following everything that was happening and just reading about it and especially what sort of national and international health organizations said. And I felt really reassured by everything that I read and also just, you know, everybody around me, all, you know, sort of my Japanese friends and just, you know, everybody, you know, sort of while you’re traveling and in different places, just really enjoying the seafood.

Hillary Hewins
So I feel really safe eating seafood here. It hasn’t, you know, this hasn’t changed anything about the way that I approach it. And most people I know, actually everybody I know feels the same way. And so definitely would say, please come experience and, you know, enjoy the incredible seafood from Japan because it’s really, it’s really, it’s really the best in the world.

Hillary Hewins
It’s so amazing.

Shunsuke Ochiai
All right, well, thank you for your time. And I think that’ll wrap it up. And yeah, thank you, Hilary, and keep enjoying Japan. Thank you.

Hillary Hewins
Thanks so much. It’s great to talk to you today.

Shunsuke Ochiai
Thank you.