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[00:02.14] Sorie: So Mark, you and I are married and we've lived in—

[00:06.89] Mark: We still are, aren't we?

[00:08.39] Sorie: We are married. I said we are married. And we've lived in several special places and I'd like to share our experience of Ogasawara.

[00:19.14] Mark: Ogasawara is amazing, isn't it?

[00:21.64] Sorie: Yeah. Can you tell us the place, and where it is?

[00:27.64] Mark: Ogasawara is a group of islands that's in the Pacific Ocean.

[00:34.39] And there's no airport there and if you want to go there, you got to take a boat that goes from Tokyo.

[00:40.89] And that boat takes 25 hours to get there, and it runs just once a week.

[00:45.64] Sorie: That's right. It's 1,000 kilometers away from Tokyo.

[00:49.89] Mark: Yeah, directly south.

[00:51.64] Sorie: Okay. And the population?

[00:53.39] Mark: There's two inhabited islands in Ogasawara. One is called Chichi-jima and there's 2,000 people, roughly, there. And Haha-jima is about 400 people.

[01:04.39] Sorie: Yeah. And Chichi-jima is Father Island and Haha-jima is Mother Island. And Father Island is a little bit bigger than Mother Island.

[01:13.89] Mark: Yes. And we lived in Chichi-jima.

[01:15.89] Sorie: And we lived in Chichi-jima. That's right. And what kind of—we had an amazing lifestyle there.

[01:23.14] Do you remember how we ended up there and what we were doing?

[01:27.89] Mark: Well, our good friend Rio-san has a eco village in the mountain there. And he built the whole place on the side of a mountain with his bare hands basically,

[01:42.39] with wood and he built his home where he lives with his wife and two children.

[01:46.14] And he built loads of like cabins, as you might in Thailand or Philippines or somewhere like that, which is quite unusual in Japan.

[01:54.64] But he built these also with his own hand and he like connected them together with like wooden bridges.

[02:02.14] And yeah, that's where he lived and we really wanted to live so close to nature.

[02:07.64] So we saw Rio-san and found out that he had a little shack at a bit lower down from his house, and the girl that was living there was gonna move out.

[02:16.89] So we really wanted to move in there. So we asked him and we ended up living there.

[02:20.89] Sorie: Yeah. I remember the day we went to see that little shack. And it was extremely small, four-by-three. I would say, 4 meters by 3 meters.

[02:31.39] Mark: 4 centimeters by 3 centimeters.

[02:34.14] Sorie: It was really small.

[02:36.39] Mark: That's how small it seemed.

[02:40.39] Sorie: And it was hanging on the side of the hill.

[02:45.39] Yeah, it was raised on a scaffolding, and because it's a very wet place, so it gets really humid and you don't want any contact with the building and the land.

[02:52.14] So we were hanging on the side of the hill.

[02:55.14] Mark: And there's the ants. Do you remember the ants? They had to build it on the scaffolding because there was white ants.

[03:02.64] They called them termites, that can eat the wood.

[03:05.64] Sorie: That's right.

[03:06.64] Mark: Do you remember seeing those ants?

[03:07.89] Sorie: I remember that. I remember how scared we were when the hurricane -- the typhoons would come and the whole shack would shake.

[03:19.14] And we'd be like praying so that we wouldn't slide to the side of the hill.

[03:25.89] Mark: Do you remember our chickens?

[03:27.39] Sorie: Yeah, we had four chickens. What about our toilet, do you remember?

[03:32.89] Mark: I remember our toilet. Digging the toilet. I remember digging the toilet and making the compost and moving the toilet every now and then.

[03:42.64] I remember growing all the vegetables. I remember collecting the eggs.

[03:46.89] Sorie: Yeah. One of the hardest things was the showers.

[03:54.64] We had this solar panel-run showers, and when it was cloudy, in the middle of the winter, I would suffer.

[04:03.39] It was so hard to take cold showers.

[04:05.64] Mark: Yeah. It wasn't like very cold was it really compared to mainland Japan but it really, really did feel cold with the wind there.

[04:14.40] Like you say, when the cloud came across because there was no hot water—yeah, it was tough.

[04:19.39] But did you remember next to the showers, every two weeks or so in the winter, Rio-san would light up the—make a fire, like wood-burning fire which heated up the outdoor pool?

[04:33.14] Sorie: That's right.

[04:33.89] Mark: And there's no hot springs on the island but we got to sit in the pool, under the stars in the evening.

[04:39.39] Sorie: Yeah. There were so many great experiences and to realize also that nature is so powerful.

[04:44.14] And if you want to live with it, you have to coexist and you have to be very strong to live in a place like that.

[04:54.39] Mark: Hmm.

[04:54.89] Sorie: And do you remember also the community, how everyone was?

[04:58.39] Mark: Lovely community, wasn't it?

[05:00.39] Sorie: Hmm, because it's such a small place.

[05:02.14] Mark: Exactly. There had to be a strong community in the mountain. There's only 400 people in the mountain, wasn't there? Two thousand total.

[05:11.14] It was like a separate village from the other village.

[05:15.89] Sorie: From the main town.

[05:16.89] Mark: Yeah, everyone looking out for each other and sharing.

[05:19.39] Do you remember the fisherman who used to share his fish?

[05:21.64] Sorie: Ah! He'd bring this big chunks of tuna, fresh tuna. It was so delicious.

[05:27.39] Mark: Such good memories there, wasn't it?

[05:30.14] Sorie: Yeah, definitely.