For eight years, a Japanese woman ran a Thai restaurant in Kigali, Rwanda. Lunch cost about ten dollars, which put it out of reach for a lot of locals, so roughly two-thirds of her customers were Americans and Europeans who worked for the United Nations or an embassy.

The woman is Lisa (Chisa). She now lives in Sapporo, where she runs an Airbnb and takes small groups around Hokkaido through personal referrals. She came back to Japan almost five years ago without a firm plan, and she ended up in the one city where her father had been transferred.

She told us before the call that she isn't a tidy one-story guest. That turned out to be true, and it made for a better conversation. We talked about Rwanda, her first winter on Sapporo's roads, what hosting really earns, and what her children learned at two very different kinds of school.

Lisa grew up moving around: Kobe as a small child, before the earthquake, then Kyushu and Chiba. She says she's from Tokyo, because that's where her family settled and where she lived longest. She went to work for a big Japanese corporation and stayed until she was 30.

By then she was a single mother, and the hours were punishing. "It was like eleven years ago, so it was very tough," she said. "You have to work so long." She felt stuck. Friends of hers, a couple, were already running a business in Rwanda, and they told her to come visit. She went with her son, who was four, and found Rwanda a "surprisingly very nice place to live." She decided to move. "So I quit the company and I moved there," she said. "And I have to do something, right?"

Her friends had an answer. "Why don't you do a Thai restaurant?" There was already a Japanese restaurant in Kigali, run by Koreans, but she wanted to do Asian food, so she named hers Asian Kitchen and put Thai at the center of the menu. "Thai food is popular among expats in Rwanda," she said, and expats were who she was cooking for. "I just went for some cuisine that they like."

English made it possible. After high school, before starting university, she took a year off to improve hers, studying in Vancouver on an intensive course meant for people who want to become translators or interpreters. In Japan, she said, students study English for years but mostly reading and writing, and conversation is hard to practice. "That course was so tough, but somehow I survived." When she was stuck in Japan, English opened another door. Her friends invited her partly because they knew she could speak it, and they helped her set up the business.

She ran Asian Kitchen for eight years, through Covid. "It was not easy," she said. "Somehow we were lucky, we survived." Afterwards, he sold it to another Japanese woman, who runs it today.

Her son is the reason she left Rwanda. He was about to finish elementary school, and she started thinking about what education would suit him. The rest came together by coincidence, she said, because she doesn't make specific plans. Her father, who still works for a Japanese corporation, had been transferred to Sapporo, the way companies do, and he liked Hokkaido. Her mother stayed in Tokyo, close to her own mother and the rest of the family. When Lisa mentioned she was thinking of coming home, her father suggested Sapporo.

She planned to try it for a year or two, and that was almost five years ago. "I really feel comfortable here in Sapporo," she said, "and I don't think I'll go back to Tokyo to live." Tokyo has too many people. Space per person is much wider in Sapporo, the rent is cheaper, and the summers are cooler.

The first winter surprised her, though. She was driving, trying to turn left, and couldn't see anything through the snow. "My god, how do they drive in this?" she remembered thinking. She eventually got used to it. Interestingly though, for climate, she still rates Kigali as first. At about 1,500 meters it's dry and mild enough that you don’t need either an air conditioner or a heater all year, and she said Tokyo is much hotter.

Lisa has written about living between two bases, and she'd go to three at most. The idea is simple. "You know Japan better when you see Japan sometimes from outside," she said.

She likes a lot about Japan: it's organized, clean, safe, and lately cheap. But inside Japanese society, she said, you're expected to be the same as everyone else. "We have so many rules not written, but you are supposed to know. So sometimes it's exhausting." She doesn't think that makes Japan special. Every country has good sides and bad sides and knowing a few of them lets you look at your own more evenly.

Her guiding is small and comes mostly through referrals. The most recent group was seven people from Singapore, some on their first visit to Sapporo and some repeat visitors. She took them to Sapporo, Otaru, Asahikawa and Furano. What she shows people depends on what they like: nature or city, nightlife, confectionery parks, a canal cruise.

For people who like history, Hokkaido has plenty. "Hokkaido used to be not Japan," she said. The Ainu lived here, and after the Meiji era, when Japan changed "from samurai style to the new modern country," Hokkaido became the main focus for building new industry. History is also what she thinks is underrated, because visitors don't really know it.

For overrated, she named the Clock Tower, the old clock house that sits near the top of most Sapporo guidebooks. She softened it right away. "It's an icon, so maybe it's okay or not overrated, but somehow people love taking photos there."

She started hosting about a year ago (check her place out here), at the end of October. It's the part of her life she's most candid about. "To be very honest, it's not really super profitable," she said. She rents the place instead of owning it, and after rent and fees, what's left is "really tiny," even in winter, when sales are big.

Renting is unusual. In Sapporo and the rest of Hokkaido, she said, you generally have to own a house or an entire building to run an Airbnb. Hers is one unit in an eight-unit apartment building, so the other residents are ordinary neighbors, and not all of them were pleased. The first guest parked in the wrong spot and blocked people from getting their cars out. She talked with the neighbors, put up signs, and made sure guests followed the rules. Now there are no complaints. Garbage is the other hazard, because Japan sorts plastic, organic and paper separately, so she handles it herself. She writes out the house rules (no parties, be quiet, sort the garbage) and knows how many people read them. "I know they don't read," she said. "I don't read either."

Business follows the calendar. Snow Festival week in February sells out almost at once, even at a much higher price. April and October are the slowest. Location helps: the apartment is near a highway entrance, a short walk from a subway station, and has parking. More than half of her guests drive, and most are families of three to five. A couple can use a hotel, she said, but a family does better with an apartment and a rental car. Whether it pays depends on what you own and how you run it. "It all depends," she said. As for the second year, "let's see how it goes."

Her teenage son grew up in Rwanda, and English is now his first language. Back in Japan she chose an international school for him, and he enjoys it. As a Japanese citizen and resident, he also holds a seat at the local public school through junior high, so when the international school was out he sometimes sat in class there. He was surprised by the difference. "It's exactly Japanese society," Lisa said. You follow the rules, you're the same as everyone else, and you behave as one person in a group. At the public school, if one student misused the laptop the school provides, the whole group was punished.

She sees good in it too. Public schools run regular health checks, including eyesight and other tests, which she counts as a free way to keep an eye on a child's health. But she thinks the basic mentality is a hundred years old. "The Japanese education system doesn't really change," she said.

Her seven-year-old daughter attends a public elementary school and comes home every day with a pile of paper, even though the school also uses an app. The reason, Lisa said, is a philosophy: "We cannot leave anyone behind." Some families have no smartphone or internet. She agrees with the principle and thinks the answer is to support those families with money or a device, so the rest of the system can move on. City hall works the same way, she said, with an older population that finds paper, stamps and fax easier than email. "So many old legacies remaining there."

Her daughter's schooling came down to timing. Around second or third grade is the last good window to learn to read and write Japanese, with its kanji, hiragana and katakana. A public school is also where you learn to behave as a Japanese child. At school you swap your outdoor shoes for uwabaki, indoor shoes, and sometimes the girl mixed them up and came home still wearing hers.

Asked whether Sapporo is doing a good job as an international city, Lisa said yes, with a comparison. Tokyo is more advanced, but Sapporo is changing fast. When she arrived, during Covid, there were few foreigners and no tourists from abroad. Now she sees more foreigners every year and finds Japanese people more open to them. Sapporo has nearly two million people, she noted, and the rest of Hokkaido is "completely different." Some people are still closed-minded. Even so, she likes Sapporo for being "very balanced."

She thinks the openness has a history. Apart from the Ainu, "almost all the Sapporo people are outsiders," she said. Kitahiroshima, between the city and the airport, takes its name from settlers who came north from Hiroshima. "Originally we are all outsiders, so I would say Sapporo is more open."

She likes the everyday parts too. Hokkaido Japanese is neutral and close to standard, so it's easy to understand. A good onsen is about 45 minutes away at Jozankei, which would take hours from Tokyo. The food is fresh, and the supermarket dairy aisle, milk and yogurt especially, offers more choice at slightly lower prices. "Tokyo has everything," she said. "But it's expensive."

Lisa writes a Substack called Unlocking Japan, and she'd like to write more about life in Sapporo and Hokkaido. She admitted she can't remember when she last sent a newsletter, probably a month ago, and said she should be more regular. "I always wanted to create my own channel," she said, "but when I get busy..."

She has also written a book about opening a Thai restaurant in Rwanda. It came out in Japan about five years ago, later in paperback, and recently in Taiwan. She hopes to do an English version someday.

Lisa writes Unlocking Japan on Substack, and is a local travel navigator via her Airbnb and hospitality business.