It started as a simple fantasy: sell everything, buy a one-way ticket to Japan, and wander through its remote villages and mountain trails for a year or two. I had the backpack picked out, the minimalist wardrobe sorted, and a Google Doc titled “The Infinite Trip” filled with potential itineraries. I was a news journalist covering city council meetings and downtown real estate developments, and I was burned out. The plan was to escape the noise, the deadlines, and the endless notifications. I wanted to live in a place where the loudest sound at 8 PM was a rice field’s irrigation pump.
Six months later, I found myself in a dusty, vacant kominka (a traditional wooden farmhouse) in the Tohoku region of northern Japan, surrounded by empty sake bottles, a laptop with a cracked screen, and an incorporation certificate from the local legal affairs bureau. I hadn’t gone on a single hike in three weeks. Instead, I had accidentally started a company.
This is the story of how my “infinite travel” plan collapsed under the weight of a very different kind of adventure—and how I ended up as an accidental entrepreneur in a village with a population of less than 300 people.
The Great Escape That Wasn’t
My first week in Japan was everything I had dreamed of. I cycled through the Aomori prefecture, ate scallops from a hut on the coast, and slept in temples. But by week two, the loneliness of the road began to feel less like liberation and more like a void. Traveling indefinitely sounds romantic, but the reality is a daily grind of logistics, currency exchange, and transient conversations that end as soon as the train departs. I craved a project. I needed a reason to stay in one place.
That reason found me in a small village called Minamisanriku. I was helping a local farmer shovel snow from his roof (a desperate act of neighborly goodwill) when he mentioned that his son, a web designer in Tokyo, had moved back home during the pandemic but couldn’t find reliable internet. The fiber optic line stopped two kilometers from his house. The whole valley was a digital dead zone.
I laughed. I had been a journalist covering the “digital divide” for years. Here I was, standing in the physical embodiment of the problem. That night, huddled in a minshuku (a family-run inn) with a weak pocket Wi-Fi, I started researching Starlink, local mesh networks, and municipal broadband grants. The farmer’s son needed a connection. But so did the elderly couple who ran the local onsen. So did the potter who wanted to sell his wares online.
The Accidental Business Plan
I didn’t have an MBA. I had a journalism degree and a stubbornness that bordered on stupidity. I started calling the village office, the prefectural government, and a few tech suppliers in Sendai. I pitched a ridiculous idea: I would create a small, rural-focused ISP that also served as a co-working and community hub. I’d call it “Yama Connect” (Yama meaning mountain). The local mayor thought I was a crazy foreigner, but he gave me a free, crumbling farmhouse to use as an office.
The first three months were brutal. I learned to run ethernet cables through 100-year-old wooden beams. I negotiated with a satellite provider in broken Japanese. I slept on a futon in the office because I couldn’t afford a separate apartment. My “infinite travel” fund was hemorrhaging cash into routers and permits. I wasn’t traveling; I was building infrastructure.
But something strange happened. The villagers started treating me differently. I was no longer a wandering tourist. I was “the internet guy.” The potter brought me onigiri. The old onsen owner let me use the bath for free. I was invited to the autumn festival to help carry the mikoshi (portable shrine). I had stopped being a ghost passing through and had become a part of the landscape.
Why I Stayed
The company is now two years old. We have 47 subscribers, a decent fiber connection to the main hub, and a small co-working space that gets used by remote workers, students, and the occasional journalist on assignment. We are not a unicorn startup. We are not disrupting anything. We are simply making a tiny part of rural Japan slightly more livable.
I never took that indefinite trip. The truth is, I didn’t want to. What I actually wanted was not to see every temple in Japan, but to feel like I belonged somewhere. Building Yama Connect gave me that. It gave me a stake in a place. It gave me a reason to wake up at 5 AM to fix a downed line during a typhoon. It gave me a community.
Traveling indefinitely is an escape. Starting a company in a village of 300 people is an embrace. It’s harder, messier, and infinitely more rewarding. I still take a hike every Sunday. I still explore the coast. But now, when I look at the mountain, I’m not just seeing a view. I’m looking at the valley where our fiber line runs, the house of the farmer who helped me, and the future I accidentally built for myself.
If you are dreaming of a grand escape, I have one piece of advice: don’t just run away. Run toward something. Even if that something is a dusty farmhouse in Tohoku, a stack of routers, and a community that desperately needs you to plug in.
Ahmed Abed – News journalist