Fixing up a 250-Year-Old House in Japan Snow Country - House Tour & Talk with Ed Stratham

Ed Stratham is a talented entrepreneur and community builder based in Nagano, Japan. In this talk with Ed he gives us an insightful house tour of his 250+ year old property that he has been working on renovating. He also has great advice for anyone interested in renovating old houses in Japan. Amazingly, despite doing most of the work himself, Ed has spent most of his career as a dive-instructor and bar owner in Southeast Asia, but now doing a great job renovating his old house and being a positive and active member of his community. This was a great chance to visit Ed in a small village in Snow Country over the mountain from famous Nozawa Onsen where he is not only remodeling his own house, but also helping get other international residents in Japan to move in to other houses - stay tuned for more videos with Ed's neighbors coming up! We need connectors in rural Japan like Ed who can help find new residents to work on renovations of these AKIYA abandoned buildings which still have good structures worth saving. In this video we tour the 250+ year old house he has renovated (and is still working on) to create a stylish and cozy home for him, his wife and his giant dog. Stay tuned to the end to see his antique shop of salvaged treasures from the many abandoned house projects he has worked on.Ed & I first met at the 2022 Minka Summit (in the carpark of course where all the cool kids hang out). From the get-go I was impressed with his infectious laugh and true commitment to building community in rural Japan. I am astounded by the number of Akiya projects he had taken on!In 2022 after meeting Ed at the Minka Summit, I introduced Ed's community building passion in combination with the philosophy of Alex Kerr & the reason this is a great time for the Minka Summit for a Japan TImes article: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/202...Get in touch with Ed below - especially if you want to name-your-price to get any of his antique treasures he shows us at the end of the video: dive.monkey.ed [atmark] gmail.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dive.monkey...Join Ed & me and many likeminded people at the next MINKA summit Japan or online at one of the Kominka Japan pages: https://kominkajapan.org/LIVE video walkthrough with Ed (some of the good live clips are included in this video)