“We Arrived as Investors. Left as a Part of The Community.” (Part One)

When digital ownership meets traditional community in the mountains of Japan.

On May 9th, they arrived in Wakayama as strangers to the local community and as a group of co-owners connected by shared ownership, but not much else. Some of them have never met before. By the time we left three days later, something had fundamentally shifted. Not just between us as PlanetDAO members, but between all of us and the incredible community that welcomed us with open arms.

What started as a Spring Gathering became something none of us expected: the beginning of relationships that feel like they'll last lifetimes. The experience became the reason to come back and to miss this lovely village. But let’s start from the beginning…

Meeting The Local Community Leaders

Have you ever met someone whose story lingers in your mind, leaving a lasting impression? That's what happened after hearing stories about the village from Takora-san, Hara-san, Ohkubo-san, and the other Irokawa residents who sat down with us to share their stories. What we learned blew us away.

Fifty years ago, this place was shrinking like many rural Japanese communities. Kids were growing up and leaving, the kindergarten was about to close, traditions were fading. With enrollment numbers rapidly approaching the critical threshold of ten students (below which government support would cease) Takora-san was compelled to take action to save the kindergarten and the village.

One family came from Niigata with dreams of organic farming, followed by a journalist from Kyoto, who brought expertise in chemical-free agriculture. One by one, people arrived—not families looking for a quiet suburban life, but individuals choosing something radically different.

What surprised us most was how well everyone knows each other. Not just names, but skills, histories, family stories, dates, the specific ways each person contributes to keeping the community alive. This is what the actual community looks like. They literally depend on each other to survive earthquakes, bad crop years, harsh winters.

We found ourselves comparing it to our own PlanetDAO community. Here we were, co-owners who'd invested together but were still learning about each other's backgrounds and skills. Watching how naturally the Irokawa residents collaborated and supported each other gave us a template for the kind of bonds we wanted to build among ourselves.

When Morioka-sensei Opened Our Eyes

Walking through the 170-Year-Old Temple with Morioka-sensei felt like getting a masterclass in architecture from someone who is passionate and experienced. But more than that, it was watching our group of PlanetDAO co-owners discover something together. That moment when you're all looking at the same thing and suddenly everyone understands something hidden, but now evident and meaningful.

"Look," Morioka-sensei said, pointing to where wooden beams joined without a single nail. "Everything connects through wakugi joinery. The building breathes, flexes, endures." Some of us had backgrounds in construction or design, others were complete novices, but we all found ourselves fascinated by the same details.

The sliding shoji doors weren't barriers but invitations, designed not for protection but to blur the line between inside and outside. The ranma panels let air and emotion flow freely. Even the windows were conceived as frames for the natural world beyond. “Japanese architecture isn’t about shutting the world out," he told us. “It’s about letting in light, wind, seasons, energy, or even feelings and emotions”

Our co-owners asked a lot of questions and step by step, growing understanding made everyone more attached and impressed by this temple. You could feel the connections forming between us, the building and the area.

Sleeping in the Sacred Space

Here's where things got really interesting. Most of our PlanetDAO group volunteered to spend a night at the 170-Years-Old Temple before its renovation, and by "roughing it," I mean really roughing it. No electricity, no plumbing, just an old-fashioned "drop" bathroom and sleeping bags spread across the main hall floor.

The local community members were amazed that we'd chosen to stay in such basic conditions. "Most visitors want hotels, we’re surprised" - one of the locals said. But our willingness to embrace the temple's raw, pre-renovation state seemed to earn us a different kind of respect and welcome.

You might think sleeping in a 170-year-old temple would be romantic and peaceful. The reality? It was cold, the floor was hard, and none of us slept particularly well. But something magical happened in those shared hours of discomfort and vulnerability.

Lying there in our sleeping bags, whispering in the dark like kids at summer camp, we found ourselves developing a connection that usually takes months to develop. People shared personal stories, fears about the future, dreams for what PlanetDAO could become. The formal boundaries between us as co-owners completely dissolved.

One person talked about why they'd really joined PlanetDAO. It wasn't just about the investment, but about finding community in an increasingly disconnected world. Another shared their background in sustainable living, tourism, and more. By morning, they weren't just co-owners anymore. And the morning was outstanding.

As the first light of dawn stretched across the sky, warm hues of orange and gold bathed the landscape, signaling the start of a new day. The sun's rays pierced through the dissipating clouds, gradually revealing the majestic peak and offering a breathtaking view of the sea beyond. Birds began to sing their morning melodies, their songs echoing through the valley, harmonizing with the gentle increase in the village's daily rhythms.

In this serene setting, conversations among the PlanetDAO community deepened. By morning's light, they had evolved from mere co-owners to a cohesive community, united by shared values and purpose.

The Forest Hike And Natural Water Resources

Tamura-san led a group of us up the steepest, most beautiful forest path by the river to reach the community's water source. The trail was covered in moss and felt like walking through a Japanese fairy tale or something straight from a Ghibli movie.

We were huffing and puffing together, helping each other over fallen logs, asking Tamura-san a million questions about how the whole system worked. Such a system is something we don’t really see in the cities. Here was this incredibly simple but effective setup: river water channeled through hoses to tanks scattered throughout the settlement. Beautiful, sustainable, and requiring constant community effort to maintain.

"If it rains for two days it gets clogged," Tamura-san explained as we examined the pipes. The maintenance is manual, strenuous, sometimes dangerous as the rocks get wet, and wild boars and deer share these paths. But when elderly residents call because their water has stopped flowing, people like Tamura-san just go up the hill to help. Even in the middle of the night. This was one of the examples of the strong ties and dependency between each other in the community.

Walking back down, we all realized that this is what resilience actually looks like. Not high-tech solutions or individual preparedness, but people taking care of each other and the systems they all depend on.

That evening, our PlanetDAO group found ourselves talking late into the night about what we'd seen. How could we build that same spirit of mutual support in our own community? What would it look like for us to take care of each other the way Irokawa residents do? We also shared food and heard stories about Irokawa’s various fauna.

Learning Words We Didn't Know We Needed

Here's something that caught us completely off guard: the word tōshika (investor) doesn't land well in rural Japan. To many locals, it suggests people who swoop in for profit without caring about the community.

We learned this during one of our evening conversations with Irokawa residents, and it sparked this amazing discussion among our PlanetDAO group about what we actually are and what we want to be. Are we investors? Co-owners? Something else entirely?

By the end of our stay, we'd found out that we are people who value relationships and community wellbeing as much as any returns. The distinction matters, both in how we're received by communities like Irokawa and how we see ourselves and our role in PlanetDAO.

What really moved us was how the local community received us once this understanding was clear. People were genuinely curious about us, our backgrounds, and what brought us together. We found ourselves in these wonderful conversations where locals were teaching us about traditional farming while our co-owners shared their own expertise in everything from design to technology to finance.

Even the older Ohno residents, who initially seemed a bit reserved, started making efforts to find English words during conversations. There's something beautiful about watching people reach across language barriers because they want to connect.

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This transformation from strangers to something deeper was just the beginning.

In Part Two, we'll share the moments that sealed these new friendships, from laughing until we cried with 80-year-old monks to creating art with our hands and planning a future together that goes far beyond any investment we originally imagined.

If you’d like to find out more about PlanetDAO project,

visit our website at www.planetdao.world