A Muslim couple builds community in a rural Japanese farmhouse

MATSUE, Japan (MNTV) — Dressed in kimono, a Moroccan Muslim and his Japanese wife whisk matcha tea and welcome visitors to their century-old farmhouse in rural western Japan, hoping to create a place where anyone feels at home, Japan Today reported.

Fatih Ymran, a 33-year-old Moroccan IT engineer, and his wife Nanami, 35, a former civil servant, have opened their traditional home in the Hakuta district of Yasugi, in Shimane Prefecture, welcoming neighbors for tea, conversation, and seasonal cooking. 

The house, with an earthen-floored entrance and a sunken hearth, sits among old merchant homes dating to the Edo period, surrounded by tea plantations. 

The couple met in 2016 when Fatih was a student in Kobe and Nanami worked for the city government, drawn together by a shared interest in traditional Japanese culture.

Nanami first observed Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, in 2018, and said it changed how she thought about food. 

“It made me realize that taking time to appreciate each meal could enrich your life,” she said, explaining her decision to convert to Islam. The couple married in 2020 and bought the farmhouse in 2023, where they live with their young son.

Visitors gather to drink matcha and make seasonal treats by wrapping glutinous rice in bamboo leaves, and the couple has hosted foreign residents from Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh for days at a time. 

“Back home in Morocco, it’s common for neighbors to drop by,” Fatih said. “The Prophet taught us to care even for our seventh neighbor.” 

Though anti-Muslim discrimination has been reported elsewhere in Japan, Nanami said their rural community had shown the opposite. 

“No one here has ever treated us differently because of how we look or what we believe,” she said, calling it what “multicultural coexistence really means — respecting one another.”