We need your help! We’re launching a crowd-funding campaign on Japanese-based website Campfire. We’ve been dreaming up fun and interesting rewards for supporters, including: a private taco party, staying at Benton Guesthouse, annual “Honored Guest” at Benton Guesthouse, and portrait photography sessions on Ōmishima.
Date to remember: Tuesday, November 10th!
While all support is welcomed and appreciated, it’s also really important to get lots of activity on the first few days of the campaign: specifically November 10th to 15th!! That will tell the Campfire algorithm that our project is exciting, and they will bump us towards the top of their website. This will help our campaign to be shared with more potential supporters, far and wide. And yes! Campfire allows support from within Japan and internationally.
How can you help before November 10th?
The team at Campfire has explained one very helpful task: If we have over 200 people “save” the project (clicking the “heart” icon) before November 10th, there is a good chance we will get featured on their website at launch. This will help big time!
How can you read it in English?
For English speakers, please note: The first half of the page is in Japanese, and the second half is in English. So you have to scroll pretty far down! But the whole story is in English! As well as the rewards. You have to click “see more” and the reward description will be in Japanese, followed by English. We worked really hard to make this a bilingual campaign.
We’re still following our Shimanami Kaido dreams
If you’ve been following our story, you know that we are in the middle of an uncertain time. We’ve been living in Japan via the Business Manager visa since 2023, and we were meeting the requirements. In October 2025, the visa underwent sudden and dramatic changes. The greatly-increased requirements were applied retroactively to existing visa holders. We’ve been given a three year “grace period” to grow our business and meet this incredible new goalposts. We have been working non-stop to revise our business plan, implement our plan as quickly as possible, and keep faith that we will get there, before the October 2028 deadline!
Let’s bring Mexican food and a fun retro shop to Ōmishima!
[The following is just a small excerpt from our project story.]
Please read the full campaign, over on Campfire!
We planted our roots on the Shimanami Kaido to cultivate our new life in the Japanese countryside. The beautiful island of Ōmishima (Imabari city, Ehime) is where we chose to build our small business: Benton Homestead.
It’s been nearly four years since we arrived, and we haven’t stopped working towards our dream. First, we renovated a former ‘akiya’ abandoned house into Benton Guesthouse, our Shōwa retro private full-house rental. The house has welcomed over one-thousand guests from all over the world, and maintains very high guest review ratings. We’ve also built a small natural farm, which specializes in producing monofloral ‘mikan’ citrus honey as well as the essential vegetables for Mexican cuisine, which can be difficult to find in Japan.
Our next project is transforming the former warehouse on the guesthouse property! We envision two businesses under one roof: a Mexican-food restaurant and a retro shop. It will be a gathering place where you can enjoy delicious tacos made with local ingredients, and also interact with interesting vintage items from the Shōwa era.
The combination ¡Tacos Party! restaurant and Natsukashii Retro shop will be a unique attraction on Ōmishima. Where else can you get Mexican food, made by Americans, on a rural Japanese island, and also find an antique treasure to take home with you? We hope it will become a community hub for both locals and tourists, as well as a new dining option for our growing neighborhood.
Over the past year, we’ve been testing and refining a simple menu while participating in local pop-up markets. The response has exceeded our expectations! Every time we pop-up, we sell out of tacos completely. At events such as Sando Market (on Children’s Day) and Miyaura Market (over the New Year holiday), our customers are mostly local and traveling Japanese folks. But we also had some foreign customers travel over two hours specifically to enjoy our tacos! Our horchata has also been very popular.
As we expand our menu, we plan to add seafood options. Ōmishima is a popular sport fishing destination, and the calm, blue waters supply us with sea bream and flounder for Baja-style fish tacos, as well as shrimp, octopus, and oysters for ceviche.
Dani’s vision for the Natsukashii Retro shop is difficult to explain with words, because she dreams of creating a space the likes of which she has never seen before. It will not just be a shop, but an experience. We love old things, partly because they are made better and so they tend to last longer than new things, and partly just because they’re cool. The retro style of the Shōwa-era has come full circle, and now there’s a demand for many of the items that had previously just been collecting dust in abandoned houses.
Not only will visitors get a chance to hear the warm sounds of a record player, but they will be able to take a vinyl record from its sleeve, place it on the turntable, and drop the needle themselves. There will also be a laserdisc player for watching movies on a projection screen, a Nintendo Famicom console for playing games on a retro CRT television, and a rare vintage Japanese typewriter with 3,000 kanji characters for typing your own keepsake. be cute postcards for visitors to hand-write and stamp, to mail to friends back home. We believe it’s little details like this that will elevate Natsukashii Retro from shop to experience.
The Shimanami Kaido is made up of seven suspension bridges spanning the Seto Sea between Hiroshima and Ehime prefectures. As the small island community grows to meet the needs of increasing cycling tourism, we want to help Ōmishima become a thriving and well-rounded destination.
Did you know that the Shimanami Kaido has become recognized world-wide? In 2025, nearly 200,000 bicycles were rented to visiting cyclists, both domestic and international. Considering that the bridge network has only been connected for about two decades, and the number of cyclists has increased over tenfold in the past few years, the islands still have plenty of room to grow in response to the increasing.
Ōmishima is one of the central islands, which offers beautiful Seto Sea views and a rich cultural history. Our neighborhood already has a few top-quality restaurants, operated by our friends and neighbors. But on holidays and weekday evenings, there are simply not enough dining options. By bringing Mexican food to Ōmishima, we will be helping to meet the needs of hungry travelers, and offering a cuisine which is not yet available locally.
On a small island like Ōmishima, in the middle of the Shimanami Kaido, we are building our dream one step at a time. We believe that by carefully building upon each individual initiative, our small business will enhance and support the growing island community, to meet the needs of the increasing cycling tourism.
Our business Benton Homestead is made up of many small complimentary pursuits that fit together to create a cohesive vision. The meaning of the word “homestead” implies a self-sustainable lifestyle where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. ¡Tacos Party! restaurant and Natsukashii Retro shop are a natural addition to what we’ve already built.
This project is not simply about creating a single store. We believe that by transforming this abandoned warehouse into a thriving community space, we can demonstrate a model for regional revitalization. Ōmishima is already attracting young Japanese people to relocate and start island-based businesses, even natural farming, so our efforts are already reflecting the current trend.
Your support will be the driving force behind the creation of this new space for ¡Tacos Party! restaurant and Natsukashii Retro shop. We would be delighted if you would join us by investing in this project. When it’s completed, or even during renovation, please come to visit us on Ōmishima. We look forward to meeting you!
Thanks for reading,
Dani & Evan Benton
