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What if your wanderlust wasn’t limited to a 10-day vacation? In our series My Life Abroad, we ask expats from around the world what it takes to resettle thousands of miles away from home, plus how their new city has influenced their style.
Who I am: Hannah Kirshner, food stylist and author of Water, Wood, and Wild Things.
Where I used to live: Brooklyn (my husband still runs a graphics studio in New York, so I go back and forth).
Where I moved: Yamanaka Onsen, Japan.
How long I’ve lived in my new city: Five years (but I first came to Yamanaka for a three-month apprenticeship at a sake bar in 2015).
Why I moved: In 2018, I signed a contract with a publisher to write my book, Water, Wood, and Wild Things, which is about the people literally making the town’s culture: lacquerware bowls, sake, rice and vegetables, traditional folk music, and contemporary art, too. That allowed me to spend the next year fully immersed in research. I became the first woman (or foreigner) to work at the town’s 14th-generation sake brewery; I followed duck and boar hunters; I learned to grow…
