Hello and welcome to the Slow Home podcast.

This is the podcast all about slow living in a fast-paced world.

My name is Brooke McCallory.

And my name is Ben McCallory.

Welcome to episode seven of season three.

We have a wonderful chat today between you and a lovely guest called Beth Kempton.

We do indeed.

Now tell me about Beth.

She's passionate about a culture that I'm also passionate about.

She is.

So I guess in keeping with our unofficial theme of this season, we've sort of looked at slow

through lots of different lenses and from lots of different

perspectives. And today's episode's no different. Today, Beth and I talk about, you know,

what I consider slow living, mindful living, conscious living through the lens of Japanese culture.

Okay. And Beth is someone who is not only passionate about Japanese culture, but incredibly knowledgeable. So she's been traveling there for the past 20 years. She's not Japanese. She's not Japanese, no, but she has a master's in Japanese. She speaks Japanese fluently. And she spent a significant amount of time over there, both with her family, but also, you know, with her husband and by herself.

It's interesting. She's like from the very beginning at goes to great lengths to explain that

she is not explaining Japanese culture. She has sort of absorbed herself in Japanese culture

and really found a lot of lessons on life, the way that she lives,

the way that a lot of us live. And there's certain elements of Japanese culture that have inspired

her writing and her work. And how wonderful is Japanese culture for that?

It's so incredible. And slow and intentional living go hand in hand. Like it's a very, to me, obvious

connection. Well, it is. But then you think about the other side of my very limited understanding

...