In Japan, Ten Miles From Town Can Feel Centuries Away OGINOSATO, Japan - A few years ago, one of my Japanese friends and her husband, both Osaka-born artists in their 30s, decided to move from Kyoto to Oginosato, a cluster of tiny agricultural hamlets just northeast of the city. They were looking for more affordable housing, safer food and a quieter, more traditional lifestyle. Asked recently to describe the experience, my friend said, "culture shock." As the crow flies, they had moved less than 10 miles - well, 10 miles and a couple of centuries, it seemed. Demographers have been warning for years that Japan's rural areas are graying fast. And foreigners sometimes puzzle over Japan's dogged refusal to welcome migrants from abroad. But even Japanese people from nearby cities have a hard time integrating into rural society here. In fact, my friend asked me not to reveal her name, in order to avoid any more trouble from her neighbors. Just after their arrival in Oginosato, some three years back, their new landlord advised her and her husband to put together small gifts and introduce themselves door-to-door to a dozen neighbors. Much bowing ensued, but among the tiny lanes they missed one near-by house. There, the trouble started. "Soon enough we realized that the neighbor had started complaining about us to the village head," she said last Saturday as she was serving a lunch of salmon hotpot. "The village head told us that neighbor was worried my husband's pottery kiln could cause a fire," she said, but she could sense it was the earlier offense that drove his displeasure. We ended up having to go to his house to apologize. In this village of just a few hundred inhabitants there's a clear hierarchy - and newcomers are, by definition, on its very lowest rung. "Some of the neighbors won't even acknowledge us when we cross them in the street," she said, "even after all those introductions." The village is littered with vacant homes. Often built by extended clans for children who ended up moving to the big cities, they are quietly falling into disrepair. The house my friends rent is a traditional wood-framed, tatami-floored home, a little over 900 sq. ft. It, too, had lapsed into a shocking state after over a decade without tenants. Work to make it habitable again dragged on for far longer than seemed reasonable, but for the newcomers there was no possibility of complaint: the job had fallen to the one contractor in the village. Another barrier to feeling welcome is the "village association," the group that maintains common hedges, organizes funerals and puts on the all-important yearly religious festival, Ogimatsuri. Stay in town for a few years and you will be formally invited to join the association. But it's an offer you cannot refuse, and it brings its own complications: for men, it means essentially mandatory heavy drinking at association events - a prospect that my friend's husband, a committed teetotaler, positively dreads. This year, the two enjoyed the village matsuri but were treated almost as tourists; actually participating in any of the rituals was out of the question. Living in Oginosato is not all doom and gloom. The surrounding landscape is dotted with hills and affords stunning views of Biwa Lake, Japan's largest. And my friends love being able to feed themselves mostly on vegetables grown within a short stroll of their house. Some of the neighbors are also opening up to them little by little, occasionally even bringing them small gift baskets of local cucumbers, tomatoes and beans. But integration is slow going. "It takes about 10 years, really," my friend said. Until you've lived here at least that long, nobody is going to treat you like anything but an outsider.