As winter’s chill inches into Nozawa Onsen, a natural hot spring village in the Japanese Alps of Nagano Prefecture, a warm, welcoming community known as Shizen Collective enters its third year of providing smoothies and stretches for locals and visitors alike.
Shizen, which means “nature” in Japanese, encompasses a cafe, a yoga studio and a retreat program of the same name, all founded and run by Australian Rowie Geraerts. The 35-year-old has lived in Japan for five years and has built not just a business but a community in a rural place.
Geraerts landed in Japan in early December 2019, flying in from Melbourne and joining the approximate 10,000 Australians in the country on a working holiday visa. An older man approached her at the airport, asking where she was going. As an experienced traveler, she was on her guard until he explained he was training as a volunteer for the upcoming Summer Olympics in Japan.
