A woman who gave up her stock-market job to open a rural CrossFit says the idea of a slow-paced life in the countryside is a myth

19.10.2023 - 14:41 / insider.com

A woman who left her career in the stock market and opened a CrossFit gym in rural Japan said life in the countryside wasn't as slow-paced as some might think.

Violet Pacileo told the Japanese website Savvy Tokyo that she used to live in Tokyo — Japan's capital city — and work in finance. She said the job was stressful, and she didn't have much work-life balance, so she moved to Kochi Prefecture in southern Japan.

"When I was working in sales, I would leave the house at 5 a.m. to fit in a CrossFit class at 6 a.m. before heading to the office, so I didn't see my kids in the morning," said Pacileo, who first started working in Tokyo in 2006. She added that she only spent time with her kids on the weekends, which made her feel as if she "wasn't being a good parent."

Pacileo's LinkedIn profile says that she's worked for multinational companies, including the Macquarie Group and Aberdeen.

Pacileo told Insider she, her husband, and three kids moved to Otoyo, a rural town in Kochi Prefecture where some 3,500 people live, in 2020. She opened a CrossFit gym named Otoyo Strength several months later.

As a business owner, Pacileo said she learned that the pace of life in the countryside could be the same as in the city.

"I thought we could unplug, take life slowly, spend more time with the family and in nature," Pacileo told Insider.

But she said the reality was quite different.

"Many people may think, 'Oh, you moved to the countryside, you must have a really slow pace of life, and you have lots of time with the kids,' but as a business owner, I still work 24/7," Pacileo told Savvy Tokyo. "Actually, it doesn't matter where you are — in the city or the countryside — if you're a business owner, you're working 24/7."

"We don't get any time off! Having said this, we are in the process of hiring more staff, so hopefully this will improve over the next few years," Pacileo told Insider.

Pacileo isn't the only one who's moved to the countryside and found that life there can differ from expectations.

Dave Alistair, an American who moved to a rural province in Portugal in 2022, told Insider in September that the most important thing about moving to the countryside — especially when it's in a different country — was having an open mind.

"I think that if you come to a country and you want it to be the America that you came from, where you're just trying to meet immigrants from the United States and living in a bubble, then I think that you'll be disappointed and unhappy with the lifestyle," Alistair said.