"The House in the Middle of Nowhere" (ABC TV/TV Asahi), a variety show that uses satellite photos to find a secluded house, will be broadcast on December 29th from 7pm as a two-hour special.
The guests were actors Kaho Minami and Katsuhisa Namase. Minami, an avowed fan of the show, spoke of her yearning for "living alone," saying, "It's so romantic, isn't it?" On the other hand, Namase said with a wry smile, "I don't have any yearning for it. I don't think you can live in an isolated house just by yearning for it."
The search team headed for a house in the middle of the forest at the foot of Mount Aso in Kumamoto Prefecture. In the endless deep forest, at the end of a mountain path that looked like a green tunnel, they came across a triangular-roofed log house. They were greeted by an 88-year-old and 83-year-old couple who live here as a vacation home. There used to be a large settlement here, but this place is at the foot of Mount Aso, which is an active volcano. There used to be frequent eruptions, and the effects of volcanic ash made it impossible to grow crops, so the residents were forced to relocate.
Her husband's family home, which had been a farming family for generations, went out of business about 70 years ago. "This is my hometown, so I thought I'd build a house where I could relax occasionally on the site of my parents' house," and 24 years ago they built a mountain hut-style log house as a vacation home. Currently, her husband is also maintaining a vast mountain that is the size of 10 Tokyo Domes, saying, "If we don't take care of the mountain, we won't be able to preserve it." With their feelings for their hometown in their hearts, we will look into the lifestyle of this couple who never stop taking care of the mountain.
The second house we will introduce is the home of a couple who helped us out when we first searched for an isolated house in Okinawa Prefecture in the episode broadcast on September 15th this year. We will be following their lifestyle in a stylish log house. The couple who live in this log house, which stands out among the others in the village, are 55 and 53 years old. They built the log house in 2000 using a building kit made in Finland and built it with the help of a carpenter.
The husband, originally from Hiroshima, moved to Okinawa at the age of 21. "I wanted to work by the sea. When you think of the sea in Japan, you think of Okinawa, so I came to Okinawa for that simple reason," he said, and began working as a beach staff member at a hotel in Okinawa. Meanwhile, his wife, who was an office worker in Tokyo, was also fascinated by Okinawa and started working at the same hotel as her husband, which is how they met. After being transferred from beach staff to restaurant work, the husband changed jobs to become a fisherman, saying, "It was painful to work with shoes on (laughs)." He continues to "dive fishery," diving into the sea to find rocks where fish are found and poking them with a rubber underwater gun to catch them.
The search team, who had an interest in diving fishing, are allowed to accompany him on the trip. To protect the coral, they dive and manually set the boat's anchor. The preview video shows him catching fish with an underwater gun and serving fisherman's meals while protecting the Okinawan sea. His wife fell seriously ill three years ago, but has now recovered enough to work at the hotel in good health. "My goal is to go fishing with her one day and stay at home on the boat," he says with a smile.
