Building a mountain Hut

Hello there,

I am from Germany and I want go to Japan for a year (working holiday visa) after covid is gone.
I want to stay in isolation, preferably in the japanese alps, far away from cities, people, etc.
So my question is:

- Is it possible for me to build my own little mountain hut (just a small mini hut, nothing fancy)? It would be like a tent replacement.
- If yes, which requirements are necessary?
- Which mountain would be good for my plans?

If you guys have any other suggestions for me, I would highly appreciate your help. I tried to find out myself, but my research wasn't successful.

I want to visit japan and I want to be alone with the nature and have time for thinking, reading, writing etc. I just want to enjoying a year of isolation.

Kind regards and thanks for your help!

No. You cannot build a structure on land that isnt yours.

「 Is it possible for me to build my own little mountain hut (just a small mini hut, nothing fancy)? It would be like a tent replacement. If yes, which requirements are necessary?」

Simple: you need to own the land you want to build on. If you don't own it, building a structure, or even staying there long term in a tent, is trespassing, vagrancy, or some combination of the two.

Are you perhaps under the impression that it's common for people in Japan to just go off into the mountains, build huts, and spend a period of their lives living like hermits? It's not, and even if the local authorities were kind enough not to press charges on you for trespassing/vagrancy, for safety reasons the local forestry services definitely don't want people going all "Into the Wild" in their jurisdiction.

To build a hut, you not only need to own or rent the land, but you need to pay quite a lot of real-estate tax for the hut (and the land if you own it, too). I'm also not sure if visitors to Japan are allowed to build huts.

Also, I don't know if you have actually spent time in an isolated place, but you would need to take care of all emergency shopping, maintenance, medical and disaster situations all by yourself. (You are not allowed to hunt game without a license.) Trying to do it at a place you're not familiar with, moreover a place you aren't familiar to the language of, is very risky. And frankly, I'm not sure if "staying in isolation" is what working holiday visas were designed for.

Instead, you can put up a tent at a camping site for a fee. Or you can rent a hut (that is already built). The rental huts are called "kashi-bessou". If it's a camping site or a rental hut, there will be managers to help you, and there would be more opportunities for cultural exchange.

This looks suspiciously like a thread from last year. At that time I pointed out that if you were going to be isolated for a year, you don't need to be in Japan to do that, you could be anywhere if real isolation is what you are after.
Aside from that, you would not be allowed to stay for a year (immigration says so), and building random structures around the place is not cheap, even if small.

Is it possible in Germany to do something similar? I guess the answer is no. Then the answer would be "no" for Japan too.

I might just add that while Working Holiday Visa is like Temporary Visitor visa in the sense that it allows you to be a tourist, the difference being that you get the opportunities to earn pocket money through casual work to help with travel expenses, so when you apply you do need to have some kind of plans for your stay. “One year in the mountains” would not really do.

https://www.japan-guide.com/forum/quereadisplay.html?0+173564
And there was another thread last year discussing spending a year meditating in isolation.

This is actually one topic that has been thrown around from time to time but there are a lot of issues with it as well. Of course, you will have to buy the patch of land that you want to work on because this is not your typical buiild a house and then it's yours situation. There are people who need to buy the patch of land that you want because nothing is particularly remote enough to warrant that anymore. I know that this is your interest and I support it but you have to go through the proper channels first before you can pull off creating a mountain hut that will be regularly used.