Rice paddies, tatami rooms, maybe a cute little garden. Something that screamed... I LIVE IN JAPAN! You know the house. You’ve seen it on Instagram - a traditional Japanese home with sliding doors and a pointy roof, surrounded by beautiful countryside. Maybe Mt. Fuji casually looming in the background. THAT was the dream.

So we started looking… and looking… and looking. I fell in and out of love with houses. I decorated every home we looked at in my head. We considered renovating and got contractor quotes. We changed locations, then we changed our minds. And somewhere during all of that, I realized something. I didn't actually know what my Japan dream was.

I knew what Japan looked like on vacation, but that’s different. When you’re visiting Japan, you want the Japan stuff. You want the beautiful ryokan, the tiny ramen shop, the shrine, the market, the perfect little alley, the paddies, and of course the tatami. You’re there to experience Japan, but we weren’t looking for somewhere to vacation. We were looking for somewhere to live even if it was only for a month at a time.

And suddenly the questions we asked ourselves were different.

Not: Isn’t this house beautiful?

But instead:

How far is it from the train?
Can my parents handle these stairs?
Do we need a car?
Where are we eating on a random Tuesday?
And, perhaps most importantly, how close is Lawson?

Now we’re asking the important “I-want-to-live-here” kind of questions.

For ten days, we toured houses primarily in Itoshima - a cool beach town about 45 minutes from Hakata Station. We even stayed in an Airbnb there so we could get a feel for what it would actually be like to live there.

One house in particular had everything I thought I wanted. Beautifully renovated, lots of space with a major Japan aesthetic. I could immediately picture what I’d do with every room. It would feel so Eden in the middle of a cute Japan neighborhood! In my head, it was a done deal. But then Bryson suggested we walk to the train station (we were getting shuttled everywhere in a car with strong AC by our realtor Tomo). “Sure, why not?” I eagerly replied. I was looking forward to shooting our new quaint neighborhood in the country - it would be so picturesque with the rolling rice paddy fields and mountain range in the distance. We said our goodbyes to Tomo then instantly got hit with the heat and humidity - it was late August after all. I couldn’t even shoot anything on my camera since my lens got fogged up and my hands were so clammy!

It was an 18-minute walk in the dead of summer to the station. No shade, through a rice paddy with no marked sidewalk and nothing to pop into on the way there. By the time we reached the station, I was drenched and didn’t shoot anything IG-worthy. Nope. We had to pass.

And that house wasn’t the only reality check. By day nine, after more than a week surrounded by the peaceful, green countryside I’d been dreaming about...

I was rice paddied out.

Remember, we were about 45 minutes outside the city, which meant I hadn’t done any Seria shopping, Donki wandering or train-station browsing. This is very unlike me. I was basically getting my Japan-shopping fix at Lawson and Drugstore Mori.

Then one night, we met friends for dinner at Hakata Station. After dinner, we all headed toward the trains to go home. Their apartment? One stop away. Ours? Twenty-seven stops. They would be home in about eight minutes, bocha’d and in bed by the time we finally reached Itoshima.

I looked at Bryson. He looked away. I’m pretty sure he recognized the look.

“Sooooooo...”

“Uh oh.”

“So... I have an idea.”

We were flying home TOMORROW.

“What if we ask Tomo to show us apartments in the city?”

And just saying it out loud made me feel lighter, happier and dare I say, FREE? Yes, I’m a city girl.

Instagram had told me country. YouTube had told me a “real” Japan house should have tatami rooms. Videos made those endless rice paddies look dreamy. And they ARE dreamy. Apparently my Japan fantasy was countryside, but my actual Japan personality was konbini.

A few weeks later, back in Hawaii, one of the friends we’d had dinner with at Hakata Station sent me a listing for an apartment right near theirs. It was perfect. So perfect, in fact, that we ended up buying it sight unseen. (That’s a whole other story.)

One stop from the airport. One stop from Hakata Station. Four minutes from the train. And the best part? There’s a Lawson, two 7-Elevens and a Family Mart within five minutes of our front door. Now THIS looked like my Japan life.

Then we actually lived there.

And this is the part I never could have learned from a real estate listing. I thought buying a house in Japan would make me feel like I owned something in Japan. Instead, living there started making me feel like I was part of something. What a different feeling.

Our neighbor invited us into his home, where his wife served us green tea and manju. At first we thought it was a “getting-to-know-you” sit down, but it was actually so he could teach us how to sort our trash! He stressed how important it is to sort properly - our error becomes a building error. We all work together to make sure we keep our building clean. I nodded the entire time. Our trash wasn’t just OUR trash anymore. We were part of a building, and everyone had to do their part.

Then there were all the tiny things I never could have learned from a listing. Our shower room dries clothes, our bathtub fills itself with the touch of a button, supermarket bentos get discounted at night. We learned the trash schedule, our neighborhood rhythms and where to buy what. None of those things made me want to buy a house in Japan. But they’re the things that made me love living there. Traveling lets you see a place, while living there lets you begin to understand it.

Sometimes we fall in love with the picture of a dream before we understand what the dream actually feels like. We think we want the dream job, the dream business, the dream house, the dream life. We can see exactly what it’s supposed to look like. And then, we actually live it and discover we want something different. That’s not the dream falling apart, that’s the dream finally becoming yours.

Turns out, I never really wanted rice paddies. I wanted a big table filled with people I love where we could share our Hankyu, train station and Lawson finds. I wanted a train nearby, a city outside my door and a convenience store thirty seconds away.

Instagram sold me the picture of Japan. Living there taught me which parts of Japan actually felt like me.

Now THAT is my Japan dream.

To be honest, he’s one of the nicest human beings I’ve ever met. Patient, thoughtful, always smiling. And yet... there I was, sitting across from him at lunch in Fukuoka wondering if I’d somehow become the main character in a Netflix crime series.

To be fair, he wasn’t exactly helping his case.

But before I tell you why I accused this very nice Japanese man of being an international criminal... I should probably tell you how we met and how we got here.

It started, like most things in my life do, with five little words: So... I have an idea.

What if we bought a house in Japan? We loved Japan, it was always our top choice when planning a vacation and we released an entire Japan tote collection for Eden, which brought us to shoot in Japan frequently.

Eventually our trips started turning into conversations about what it might feel like to actually live there. Buy groceries and put them in a refrigerator. Do laundry and dry my clothes in the wet room. Figure out the trash. Make new friends, hang out at the neighborhood park and know which train to catch without using Google Maps. That’s the life we fantasized about.

So we got serious and started researching. We watched every single YouTube video on akiya homes, followed all “Buying in Japan” Instagram accounts and even dabbled with a few Japan real estate sites. We were missing one very important piece though. We needed a Fukuoka-based, English speaking, licensed Japan realtor. There were tons of Fukuoka realtors but none that felt comfortable helping a foreigner in English. Or we met people who spoke English, but weren’t licensed realtors.

Then I remembered that my sister, who’s a wedding planner, has an assistant from Kumamoto, which is relatively close to Fukuoka.

My sister put me in a group with her and Midori (her assistant). I texted Midori: “Hi Midori, I know this is a long shot but I need help. I need to find a Fukuoka-based, English speaking, licensed realtor. I know, super specific. Know anyone?”

Midori texted me back: “Hi Tanna! I actually do. My parents work with an English speaking licensed realtor who moved to Fukuoka. He used to live in Hawaii (in the building you live in!) and wildly, he’s coming to Hawaii for a visit next week! Do you want an introduction?”

Do I???!

If you know anything about me or Eden in Love, you can imagine how many smiley, crying, excited hands, praying hands, hands up, flexing arm, teary eyed emojis I sent back.

“Yes please.” I said casually. Talk about fate. Or the beginning of an elaborate international real estate scam. Still undecided.

But before I accused him of swindling us...

Two weeks after meeting Tomo, we flew to Fukuoka and spent ten days touring houses with him. And thank goodness we did, because the Japan house I thought I wanted and the Japan house I actually wanted turned out to be two completely different things. I went into that trip dreaming about houses, rice paddies and a slower life outside the city. I left realizing that I missed buildings, crowds of people, the sounds of trains, coffee shops on every corner…. and Seria. LOL. Turns out I’m a city girl.

So we flew home to Hawaii without buying anything.

A few weeks later, a friend who lived in Fukuoka sent me a listing for an apartment right next to hers. I clicked on it and WHOA. It was perfect. 4LDK, four minutes from a train station, one stop from the airport and one stop from Hakata Station and smack dab in the middle of the city. It was fully renovated and I absolutely dug the dark wood floors and finishes, black accents and gray wall. It was literally calling my name!

Tomo went to view the apartment for us. He FaceTimed us and filmed it. He shot photos and walked the entire neighborhood to see what was around.

“Let’s make an offer.” We moved quickly on an apartment in another country that we had never stepped foot inside. Yup. WE BOUGHT OUR JAPAN HOME SIGHT UNSEEN. Even writing that now sounds crazy. But that’s how much we trusted Tomo to be our eyes on the ground. He wasn’t just showing us a listing, he was looking at it the way he knew we would look at it. Which makes what happened next even more ridiculous. Our conversations kept going something like this:

“You’re going to wire me the money.” Wait. All of it?

“Yup.”

“You don’t need to be in Japan for closing.” Excuse me? Why not?

“I’ll handle everything.” Everything?

“We’ll make you a hanko stamp. That’ll become your legal signature.” A stamp? Instead of my signature?! Sure. Seems normal. Not suspicious at all.

“You’ll also make me your Power of Attorney so I can sign documents on your behalf.” That was the final straw. I remember looking over at Bryson thinking... THIS IS CRAZY TALK. HE IS A CRAZY GUY.

There is no universe where this is how people buy a house. And JAPAN? The land of rules? How could this possibly be standard protocol?

Netflix really didn’t help.

Buying a house in Hawaii feels like preparing for surgery. There are inspections, escrow, stacks of paperwork, notarized signatures, initials, more digital initials. Someone explains every page. Then someone else explains what the first person explained. You sign so many documents with your long legal signature that your thumb goes numb.

But in Japan?

Apparently you wire money overseas...

Make a stamp...

Hand someone Power of Attorney...

And then congratulations! You’re a homeowner.

And then Netflix released Tokyo Swindlers. If you haven’t watched it, it’s about real estate fraud in Japan. Naturally, I binge watched the entire series, which did nothing for my anxiety. Now every text from Tomo sounded suspicious. Every phone call made me think, “Wait, is this guy SWINDLING us??!”

Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. We were having lunch together one afternoon in Fukuoka. I looked at him across the table and casually asked, “So… Have you seen Tokyo Swindlers?”

He laughed. “I don’t think so.”

I leaned in. “Are you swindling us?”

He laughed. “You met my family.”

To which I replied, “They could be actors.”

“I showed you a picture of us in the pool at Waihonua.”

“Yeah, I know about AI.”

He shook his head. “You are a very paranoid person.”

Then, he asked if I was swindling him! Touché.

The funny thing is, we already trusted him.

That’s the ridiculous part of this whole story. We had trusted Tomo enough to make an offer on a home we’d never stepped foot inside. I didn’t actually think he was going to disappear with our money. OK fine, maybe 3%. What scared me was how completely different the process felt from everything we knew. Tomo wasn’t asking us to trust a different real estate process. He was helping us understand a different culture.

He translated. He explained. He answered all of our questions. And there were a lot. Then he answered our follow-up questions. And the follow-up questions to the follow-up questions.

He helped us set up utilities and insurance. He introduced us to our neighbors. And somewhere along the way, Tomo stopped feeling like a random realtor from Fukuoka. He became part of our Japan story. He became the start of our Japan family.

And then something really cool happened.

A few months later, Tomo came to Hawaii. By then, something else had happened too. Every time we shared our Japan house story, people wanted to know more.

“Foreigners can buy houses in Japan?”

“How did you do it?”

“How does the process work?”

And, inevitably...

“Can I do it too? Would Tomo help us?”

LOL.

So we did something that felt a little crazy. We asked Tomo if he’d like to speak to our Japan Dreamers Club community. Nothing fancy. Just Tomo, me and a room full of Japan Dreamers. He asked me to keep it small. I said, “Of course!” and capped it at 40 people. Apparently Tomo thought “small” meant 6–10. Weeee! 😂

When the night came, I looked around that room and realized how surreal it all was. People were SO excited to meet him. They had questions, he had answers. They wanted to know what buying in Japan was actually like and wanted to hear from someone who lived there. Someone who understood Japanese real estate. Someone licensed. Someone who could speak to them in English. But more than anything? They wanted to meet someone they could trust.

I knew exactly how they felt because not long ago, that was me. I was the one sitting across from Tomo wondering if I could trust this person enough to help us do something that felt completely foreign and slightly insane. Now I was standing in Hawaii introducing him to a room full of people dreaming about doing the same thing. How crazy is that?

I used to think our Japan story was about buying a house. It’s not.

The house is obviously a pretty big part of it but the things I remember most aren’t contracts or keys. They’re the people. Our neighbors, our new friends and all the people who’ve sat around our table to atsumaru. And yes, the realtor I once accused of being an international criminal.

Buying in another country requires a lot of things… money, research, patience and a willingness to do things differently. But I think the scariest part is much simpler. At some point, you have to decide to trust somebody. We trusted Tomo.

A year earlier, I was desperately asking everyone I knew, “Does anyone know a Fukuoka-based, English-speaking, licensed realtor?”

And now I was standing in a room in Hawaii saying, “Actually, I know one. Everyone, please meet Tomo.”

Introducing him to a room full of dreamers looking for someone to trust too might be one of my favorite full-circle moments of this entire Japan adventure. And Tomo, for the record, I’m sorry I thought you were swindling us.

Although I’m still keeping an eye on you.

“I promise I’ll tell your story.”

I whispered those words to Chloe a few days before she passed. At the time, I had no idea what they meant. I wasn’t thinking about children’s books, Barnes & Noble, illustrations or any kind of book signing. I just knew I couldn’t let the world forget the funniest, sassiest little Chihuahua I’d ever known. The little brown dog who had quietly become the heartbeat of our Eden family.

If you had met Chloe, you would’ve remembered her. Not because she demanded attention. Quite the opposite. She had this quiet confidence that somehow made everyone else pay attention. She was perfectly groomed, weighed seven pounds, had floppy ears that matched her tiny head and carried herself like she owned every room she walked into. Especially Eden.

Customers thought they were shopping. Chloe thought they were coming to visit.

She traveled more than most adults I know. Las Vegas, New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Yosemite to name a few. She had beds in every room of our house, loved apple slices, hated wet grass and somehow always knew when Bryson and I were packing for a trip before we even started. The second a suitcase zipper opened, she’d quietly trot over and sit by the front door, ready for another adventure.

She followed me everywhere. Not because she was anxious, because we were a team. If I worked late, she worked late. If I was getting ready, she trailed me to the wardrobe room and curled up in her watermelon bed. If I walked into another room, she’d wander in a few minutes later, circle three times and scratch up whichever bed happened to be nearby, just to prove a point that she was in the room.

Looking back, I don’t think I ever realized what a gift that was. People ask what I miss most. It isn’t the routines or traveling together. It isn’t even hearing little paws clicking across the hardwood floor. It’s her company. With Chloe, I never felt alone.

She had this incredible ability to make me feel like I mattered more than anything else in the world. She made me laugh. She made me feel safe. Most of all, she made everywhere we went… home. And that’s why losing her felt so impossibly big. I wasn’t just losing my dog. I was losing the little soul who had quietly spent fourteen years reminding me, “We belong together.”

When Chloe was diagnosed with kidney failure, the vets gently prepared us for the worst. We were told we’d probably have a few weeks.

Instead, she gave us ten more months. We called it borrowed time and we celebrated every single day of it. Manapua lunches, bike rides, long lazy naps together, a museum wall dedicated to her in our house and walks where we just lingered - that was the best way to show her how much we loved her.

The morning Chloe passed away, Bryson carried her into the meditation garden behind our condo. She took one last peaceful breath in his arms before we even made it to the car. It felt exactly like something Chloe would do. Graceful. Quiet. Yet totally dramatic. That was Chloe. Somehow she managed to write her own ending.

At the vet’s office, they gave us a few more minutes with her to say our goodbyes. I played “La Vie En Rose” for her (it was her favorite song) and kissed her little head one last time. “I’ll see you on the other side. Wait for us at the bridge,” I told her as the vet took her body away. It was in that moment that I felt total peace and complete heartbreak at the exact same time.

A few days later, we gathered to celebrate Chloe one more time. Not at a church or a funeral home, but at The Eden House. It just felt right. The Eden House had always been filled with stories. Birthday parties. Business meetings around the dining table. Sunday night dinners. Friends coming and going. Laughter echoing through every room. And through all of it... there was Chloe. Curled up in the living room, jumping on a dining chair or following someone into the kitchen hoping an apple might magically fall onto the floor. She belonged there every bit as much as the rest of us.

So it only made sense that we’d celebrate her there too.

Our little Eden family gathered together. Bryson, Alyssa, Olivia, Karen and I each shared our favorite photo of Chloe. Bryson’s was Chloe completely pooped and happy after a major ball playing session, Olivia’s was Chloe staring at her at the Vegas house, perched on the sofa like the world’s tiniest security guard. Completely serious and completely ridiculous all at the same time. Karen’s pic was of Chloe napping with Roy on our sofa during one of their visits. Unbeknownst to him, she hopped up and cuddled beside him. Keeping him company during an afternoon nap, exactly as if she’d assigned herself the job. Alyssa had a pic of Chloe just being impossibly adorable. No explanation needed.

Then everyone looked at me. Mine wasn’t from a vacation. Or a birthday. Or one of her last days. It was Chloe sitting perfectly poised on our couch. Freshly groomed. Hair absolutely on fleek. Looking straight into the camera with the tiniest little smize that said… “Girl Boss.”

We all exploded with laughter. It was so Chloe.

Looking around that circle, something hit me. Every single one of us had chosen a completely different Chloe. Bryson remembered his little ball buddy. Karen remembered the quiet nap companion. Olivia remembered the hilarious supervisor who always seemed to be keeping an eye on things. Alyssa remembered her cute little sidekick she’d call “Sis”. I remembered the tiny shadow who followed me from room to room and somehow made every place feel like home.

Same dog. Six completely different stories. That’s when I realized something. Stories don’t keep someone alive because they’re extraordinary. They keep someone alive because they’re shared. I think that was the moment my promise truly began.

One by one, each of us held a small pinch of Chloe’s ashes before gently placing them into the ground. Olivia and Isaac planted a hibiscus to mark where her ashes were scattered and before Isaac laid the dirt, we took our final photo with the kids, holding a big photo of Chloe. Charlise is actually kissing Chloe’s ashes in that photo - it still makes me smile thinking about that.

A few days later, Bryson and I boarded a plane to Bangkok. We needed somewhere to breathe. The house suddenly felt too quiet without her. Thailand was always a good reset for us. Before we left, our dog whisperer called me to check in. She told me to “Look for the rainbows. That’s where Chloe will be.”

Perfect. I had a mission. I looked after every drop of rain, out of airplane windows, walking through parking lots, waiting at stoplights. I looked everywhere for weeks. Nothing. Not one rainbow. I remember saying to myself. “Seriously, Chloe? Where you at?”

But I got something else instead...

The morning I told my parents Chloe had passed away, we met at Starbucks. They were returning from a trip, and we were on our way to Thailand. In between the details of Chloe’s final days, I glanced down at my iced coffee and stopped. Could I really be seeing… a PAW PRINT? Floating in the bubbles of my iced coffee was a perfectly-shaped, little paw print.

Mom saw it. Dad saw it. We just smiled.

But as we stood up to leave, I noticed the song playing at Starbucks. No way, could it be…. “La Vie En Rose?” It was. Mom heard it. Dad heard it. Hearing that song stopped me in my tracks. I ran outside to look for a rainbow, that would have been fitting right? But alas, no rainbow.

Eighteen hours later, we landed in Bangkok. Exhausted. Heartbroken. Jet lagged. The butler opened the door to our cabana and guess what was playing as the welcome song on the TV? “La Vie En Rose.” Bryson and I looked at each other and started laughing. OK, Chloe….”

Here’s the crazy part. Every single time we came back to our room that week, there it was again. “La Vie En Rose.” Every. Single. Time. Was it the hotel’s welcome song? Probably. Was it still exactly what our hearts needed? Absolutely. Every time it played, we smiled. And in those first few days after losing Chloe, sometimes a smile is enough to get you through another day.

Bangkok wasn’t finished with us. One morning, the newspaper landed on our breakfast table. And on the front page, the main story all in caps read, “TAKE YOUR FURRY FRIENDS TO THE FLICKS.” Dogs going to the movies? Bryson held it up. I nodded and smiled because knowing Chloe, she’d be the first in line for a dog flick at a theater. Then later that morning, I accidentally knocked my iced coffee over. My entire calendar got soaked - every page wrinkled, every one - except one, the day Chloe passed away.

One afternoon in Bangkok, we went for a walk. It was unbearably hot. Bryson, of course, wanted to keep exploring. I was done. “I can’t do one more street,” I told him. “I’m walking back.” He kept walking. “Come on. Just one more block.” Reluctantly, I followed. I was so sweaty, but had no clue how to get back despite my empty threat. A few seconds later, I looked down and gasped. Pressed into the concrete was a paw print. I bent down for a closer look. Not dozens of footprints, not bicycle tires. Just one perfect little set of paws, forever frozen into the sidewalk.

I stopped walking. Bryson turned around. “What?” I just pointed. Thousands of miles from home on a random street in Bangkok. Looking at a tiny reminder that somehow made the world feel familiar again. Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe it wasn’t. Either way, it made me smile.

A few days later, we ducked into a little Thai spa to escape the afternoon heat. We waited in the lobby for our names to be called. They had a little gift shop that caught my eye so I meandered over and literally laughed out loud when I saw a package that read: THAI HERBAL BALL FOR SMALL DOGS. Bryson just looked over at me and smiled. Neither of us needed to say a word.

That evening, a tiny fruit bat with floppy ears visited the tree outside our cabana. The next night, he came back. “There you are again,” I’d whisper. The baby bat came back every night that trip, some nights with a little fruit he nibbled on imitating the exact motion Chloe would make when devouring her greenie. Were they signs? Coincidences? A grieving heart simply noticing the world differently? I honestly don’t know if Chloe traded her Chihuahua outfit for a bat suit. But every single one of those moments gave me exactly the same thing. Hope.

Not the kind of hope that erased our grief, but the kind that helped us carry it. They reminded us that love has a funny way of making itself known.

Sometimes through a song, a paw print pressed into concrete, a silly little massage tool meant for small dogs, through an iced coffee or a calendar that somehow stayed dry on the one day that mattered most. None of those moments proved anything. But together, they slowly began changing the question I was asking. Instead of wondering, “Where are you rainbow?” I started wondering, “What if I’ve been looking in the wrong place?”

That’s the moment this book was born. I didn’t want another little girl believing that if she never saw a rainbow, she had somehow been forgotten.

I wanted her to know what I had slowly come to believe. Love meets you right where you are. And if you’re lucky, it has a way of making even the farthest places in the world feel a little more like home.

Those little moments felt like hope.

They felt like love.

They felt like home.

One afternoon, I found myself sitting inside Susan Croissant in Bangkok with an iced coffee and my laptop. I wasn’t trying to write a book. I wasn’t trying to write anything. I just couldn’t stop thinking about a little girl losing her best friend. Because when your best friend is your pet, it’s a different kind of heartache. Then what if someone lovingly tells her to look for a rainbow. She waits. She searches. She wonders what she’s doing wrong because the rainbow never comes. That thought broke my heart because I’d been that little girl.

So instead of writing about Chloe, I wrote the story I wished someone had given me. A little girl named Leia searches everywhere for Mr. Rainbow after losing her dog, Coco. Meanwhile Coco has been finding her all along. The reader sees every little reminder. Leia doesn’t because she’s looking in the sky when really, love has been beside her the whole time.

Ninety minutes. That’s how long it took to write “Are You There Mr. Rainbow.” Not because I had been thinking about writing a children’s book, but because I’d already been living it.

I emailed the manuscript to Alyssa. A few minutes later, she texted me. “Oh my gosh... I have to illustrate this for Chloe.” There was never another option.

Whenever Bryson and I traveled, Alyssa happily babysat Chloe. They adored each other. This wasn’t just another illustration project, this was someone who loved Chloe and helped me keep a promise. She read the manuscript to Charlise who had just turned four at the time. She recorded the entire thing so I could feel her reaction to the story and it broke me. Charlise sobbed. Not a tearful cry, but the full-body kind of crying only children do. I cried all over again because in that moment I knew this wasn’t just Chloe’s story anymore. It belonged to every family who had ever loved someone enough to miss them. That was the story Chloe wanted me to share.

A year and a half later, I finally held “Are You There Mr. Rainbow” in my hands. It was surreal. A promise I had whispered to a seven-pound Chihuahua had somehow become a real children’s book. Watching Alyssa bring Coco, Leia and their family to life through her illustrations was one of the greatest gifts of this entire journey. Every page felt warm, hopeful and full of little details that invited children to slow down and notice what Leia couldn’t yet see. Somehow, she had captured exactly what I’d been trying to say all along.

I’m especially proud that we never tried to hide from the pain of pet grief. We didn’t pretend it wasn’t heartbreaking. Instead, we gently walked children through it and reminded them that love doesn’t end just because someone is no longer beside us.

Barnes & Noble believed in the story too. They published the book and hosted our launch at their Ala Moana Center store. I thought we’d read a story, sign a few books and head home. Instead, it became a day I’ll never forget. Kids sat cross-legged on the floor waiting for story time. Parents stood shoulder to shoulder at the bookstore. Friends, dog lovers and complete strangers filled the room. We colored little paw prints together. Families taped photos of beloved pets onto a giant rainbow that we took from the book illustration. The windows had hanging dog characters with cut outs from the book. The dogs sat on clouds, smiling. This was their story too. Everywhere you looked, there were reminders that this wasn’t just a book launch. It was a celebration of every pet that had ever been loved.

Then Charlise and I read the book from cover to cover. As I looked over at her, I couldn’t help but smile. A year and a half earlier, she had been the little four-year-old sobbing on Alyssa’s bed while hearing the manuscript for the very first time. Now she was helping me read that same story out loud to a room full of families. I don’t know if she realized it then, but she’d become part of Chloe’s story too. Oh... and because Chloe would’ve expected nothing less, Charlise and I practiced reading that book together at Barnes & Noble every week for three weeks before the launch.

Every page. Every pause. Every page turn. We wanted to get it just right. Not because we were afraid of making mistakes. But because this wasn’t just a book reading. It was our gift to Chloe.

As I looked around the room that afternoon, something quietly shifted inside me. People weren’t crying because they were reading my story. They were remembering theirs. One little Chihuahua had somehow created a room where complete strangers felt safe sharing the names and stories of the pets they still loved. And in that moment, I realized I’d finally kept my promise.

A month after we came home from Bangkok, our Eden gang was having dinner at my parents’ house. We were laughing, talking over each other, completely wrapped up in conversation. Isaac, Olivia’s husband, is the quiet, soft spoken one. In the middle of all the chaos, he quietly said,

“Look at that rainbow.” None of us heard him. Dinner carried on.

Later that night, he sent the photo he’d taken to Olivia. She gasped. “There she is.” Stretching across the entire sky behind me was the biggest rainbow she’d ever seen. And there I was. Sitting right in front of it, facing the other way, probably complaining to someone that I never see any rainbows!

I laughed so hard when Olivia sent me that photo. After spending weeks searching every rainy sky, every airplane window, every parking lot... there it was. There she was. She was there all along.

—

If you happen to own one of our Eden totes, take another look. You’ll find a tiny brown dog tucked somewhere into the design.

That’s Chloe. Alyssa kept her promise to her, too!

I’ve never been intimidated by a blank space. Actually... I think blank spaces are my love language.

Some people walk into an empty room and see four walls. I walk into an empty room and immediately start rearranging furniture that doesn’t exist yet.

“That wall should be Marshmallow White.”

“A 60” round gold mirror would look amazing over there.”

“Wait... can we hang plants from this entryway?”

Bryson has learned not to interrupt one of these mental design sessions. After 22 years of marriage, he already knows what’s coming next.

“So... I have an idea.” Every time I say those five words, he instinctively opens a new Excel spreadsheet.

Looking back, almost every meaningful chapter of my life has started the same way: a blank retail space, an empty house, a crazy business idea, a little spark that nobody else could quite see yet.

After we closed our last boutique in 2022, I expected to miss retail. I missed our customers, the products and the excitement of launching something new. But what surprised me most was how much I missed creating.

I missed walking into an empty space and imagining what it could become. I missed dreaming up clever little products that made people stop and think, “Wait... I need that.” I missed taking a really good “before” and turning it into an even better “after.”

For months, I’d catch myself redesigning living rooms in my head. I’d spend more time studying restaurant wall décor than reading the menu. I’d wander through IKEA or Nitori “just to look” which, if you’ve ever gone shopping with me is code for, “I’m absolutely buying something.”

Then one afternoon, our realtor sent Bryson a listing near UH (University of Hawaiʻi). The house was built in 1964. It had nine+ bedrooms, separate entrances and five dedicated parking stalls. My heart flipped. I’ve joked for years about creating an “adult dorm,” but I honestly didn’t think one existed. Then there it was.

Well... sort of. The listing photos were terrible.

The house looked abandoned, dark and a little creepy. The kind of listing most people would’ve clicked past after five seconds.

Instead, I zoomed in on every blurry MLS photo like I was solving a mystery. “There has to be something here.”

Bryson was busy calculating mortgage payments, renovation costs and ROI. I was mentally choosing paint colors. We each have our strengths.

When we finally walked through the front door, I remember thinking exactly what the listing photos couldn’t capture. This house wasn’t empty, it was waiting. The previous owners had rented rooms to college students back in the ‘80s, but after that it sat vacant for years. Most people saw an old house with peeling walls, worn finishes and a very long renovation list. I saw possibility.

I imagined students walking home after class. Late-night ramen around the kitchen counter. Parents helping their kids move in with French café music playing in the background. Birthday dinners under café lights on the deck. Roommates borrowing ranch dressing one day and somehow standing in each other’s weddings ten years later.

By the time we scheduled the showing, I’d already renovated the entire house in my head. Then something happened that changed everything.

One evening after one of our weekly walks, I showed the listing to Olivia. “Cool, huh?”

She looked at it for maybe ten seconds before saying, “Oh my gosh... would you rent it to me?”

Would I? Up until that moment, this had been another fun real estate idea. Suddenly, it became personal. Forty-five days later, we closed on the house, and Olivia and her family became our very first tenants.

Now before you picture me in steel-toe boots swinging a hammer, let’s all have a good laugh together. Everyone has a superpower. Mine is seeing what something could become.

Our longtime friend Roy has been building things alongside us for years, and if there’s one person you want standing next to your crazy idea, it’s him. Roy’s superpower is turning those ideas into reality.

For two straight months, Roy practically lived at The Eden House. Demolition, painting, building, installing, fixing... if it needed to be done, Roy was already halfway through it before the rest of us finished our coffee.

One night after another marathon workday, we sat down to sort receipts. Roy reached into his pocket, pulled out his glasses, put them on and started reading. Except, they weren’t his reading glasses. They were his bright yellow safety glasses! We laughed so hard we cried. The poor guy had been working so much that he grabbed the wrong pair without even realizing it.

And every Roy deserves a Karen. While Roy brought the vision to life, Karen somehow kept all of us organized. His wife has this quiet superpower of bringing order to absolute chaos... She’d fly in from Oregon, organize workspaces, install hooks exactly where they made sense, clean as Roy went and quietly make the entire renovation feel calm.

And then there was Bryson. While I was debating gold hardware versus matte black, he was making sure we could actually afford whichever one I picked.

Everyone stayed in their lane. Thank goodness.

Once the construction wrapped up, my favorite part began - the details. Every decision started with one question:

What would make someone feel at home?

The bedrooms came first. We custom-designed each room with floating shelves, college-sized desks, extra storage under their beds and a signature oversized gold mirror. We even measured the floating shelves around a full-size bottle of Tresemmé hairspray. Not the travel size. The big black bottle. We have standards around here! Then we placed outlets exactly where we knew our renters naturally needed them: next to the desk for laptops and overnight phone charging, and under the mirror where curling irons and hair dryers would inevitably live.

Tiny details? Absolutely. Those little conveniences are what make a space feel thoughtful.

The laundry room was another non-negotiable. There was no way I was making college students haul baskets of laundry to a laundromat every weekend. We gave up valuable living space to create a communal laundry room inside the house, complete with numbered shelves for detergent, hooks for hanging clothes and plenty of room to sort everything.

Then came the kitchen. People assume roommates argue over big things. Nope. They argue over eggs. And I get it, eggs are expensive! So we numbered every pantry shelf, refrigerator bin and freezer drawer. It felt slightly ridiculous while we were doing it, but I loved the idea that nobody would ever have to wonder if someone accidentally stole their yogurt. Or their eggs. College friendships don’t need that kind of pressure.

The communal bathroom may have been my favorite challenge. There was one full bathroom downstairs and a half bath outside for five people.

Gulp. Most communal bathrooms scream, “Please don’t look too closely.” We wanted ours to make people stop in the doorway.

French doors, a double vanity, hanging plants, warm lighting and mason jar sconces? Oh it was gorgeous. We leaned into boutique hotel vibes because if people were going to share a bathroom, we figured we could at least make it a show stopper.

Since we converted the original living room into the laundry room, we built a new gathering place outside. A deck with café lighting, outdoor furniture and a little garden. Before long, it became the heart of the house.

Birthday dinners. Study sessions. Easter egg hunts. Sunday night dinners. And yes... more than one dog celebration. (Yes... our dogs definitely celebrated birthdays and funerals there. We may have taken the whole “community” thing a little too seriously.)

Looking back, I don’t think my favorite part of The Eden House was designing it. It was watching people live in it. Watching strangers become roommates and roommates become friends. A place to live, gather, grow up, hang out and simply call home.

That’s what I’ve always loved about blank spaces. They’re never really empty. They’re simply waiting for someone to imagine what they could become. I may be the one who walks into an empty room and says, “So... I have an idea.” But ideas have never become reality because of one person’s vision. They become reality because Roy shows up before sunrise, Karen quietly makes every detail better and Bryson makes sure the dream still makes financial sense.

The Eden House wasn’t empty after all. It was simply waiting for all of us.

Before we begin, a quick introduction especially if we’ve never met. Hello, hi, aloooooha! My name is Tanna and I’m the owner of Eden in Love, a boutique that’s now in what we’ve lovingly dubbed our “Golden Era”. For most of my adult life, I’ve been building businesses, chasing ideas and dragging my team along for the ride. If you’ve been part of our Eden-verse for a while, you’ve probably seen parts of that journey already. If you’re new here, you’re jumping into a story that’s been unfolding for more than twenty years. Lucky for you, we’re starting at the very beginning.

For starters, there are five words that have shaped every chapter of my life.

“So... I have an idea.”

To most people, they’re harmless.

To my husband and business partner Bryson? They’re usually the beginning of a very interesting (sometimes unwelcome) conversation. Why? Well, sometimes they end with a healthy debate about our goals and vision for the business, but MOST TIMES, it’ll end with a major pivot, a lengthy list of things to research and if I’m lucky, a new business adventure.

I’ll be straight with you, sometimes our “So… I have an idea” conversations end with a plane ticket to a foreign country thinking we got duped or with a warehouse full of custom boots in the middle of the hottest summer on record in Hawaii. One time it ended with us standing in the middle of a completely empty store in Las Vegas wondering, “Oh pooh, what have we done?”

If you’ve followed me over the years, you’ve probably seen the finished version of most of these ideas.

• The Wedding Café

• Mint, an afternoon tea

• Fred + Kate Events

• Eden in Love

• Sri Lanka.

• Our giant Black Friday events

• Las Vegas

• Collaborations

• The Eden House on Waialae

• Japan

But what you haven’t seen is the moment before any of them existed.

The tiny spark. The crazy thought. The idea bubble that made absolutely no sense at the time.

I’ve spent most of my adult life saying yes to ideas that, honestly, sounded a little ridiculous.

In 2004, Bryson and I got married and bought a business at the EXACT same time. We had a 420+ guest wedding so we did what any scrappy young entrepreneur would do. We poured all of our wedding gifts into our first month’s rent for The Wedding Cafe in Manoa Marketplace. Looking back, I can’t decide if that was romantic or completely idiotic.

A few years later, I had another idea.

What if wedding planning could be efficient AND fun? What if we hosted workshops where brides could learn from photographers, florists, planners, DJs, and cake bakers all in one room - all at the same time? We filled our workshops week after week, and without realizing it, we built something much bigger than a wedding business, we created a wedding community.

Then came another idea.

What if we sold a little retail inside The Wedding Café? We started with earrings and necklaces, and slowly brought in a rack of dresses. Imagine customers having to try on clothing in our stockroom between mayonnaise bottles and tuna cans! We quickly had to build out fitting rooms and dub that tiny growing corner, Eden in Love.

Then came a series of ideas that kept pushing us further than we ever expected.

What if we adopted a village in Sri Lanka?

What if we started a wedding coordination company?

What if we opened three boutiques simultaneously, one of them in Las Vegas?

What if we closed them all during the pandemic?

What if we designed products for other brands instead of only ourselves?

Every chapter of my life seems to begin exactly the same way.

“So... I have an idea.”

Some of those ideas worked better than I ever imagined. Some challenged us spectacularly. Most taught me lessons I wasn’t ready to learn. All of them completely changed the direction of my life.

But every single idea moved me to a new place that I couldn’t have reached if I waited until I was completely ready.

That’s the funny thing about ideas. They rarely arrive looking practical. Most of them are costly, inconvenient or feel impossible. Sometimes they make the people around you nervous. Sometimes they make YOU nervous. But every once in a while, one idea quietly refuses to leave you alone. For me, those are the ones worth listening to.

The latest idea happened after what was supposed to be another work trip to Japan. We had been visiting for years - shooting products, taking our team to Hokkaido and Tokyo for our annual trips, eating every tamago we could find, biking through neighborhoods, riding trains and always collecting inspiration for Eden. Somewhere along the way, Japan stopped feeling like a destination and started feeling like home.

At a coffee shop in Thailand, I looked at Bryson and said the five words he knows all too well. “So... I have an idea. What if we bought a place in Japan?”

Not because we planned to move there. Not because we had some grand master plan to open an Eden in Japan. There was just something about the thought of LIVING in Japan that felt good. And guess what? Bryson didn’t debate me, he leaned in and started his lengthy list of things to research.

So in October 2025, we trusted that crazy idea and got keys to our apartment in Fukuoka, Japan. The funny part? Buying the home wasn’t the story. The real story is everything that happened after.

Friends started asking questions. Customers started asking questions. Complete strangers started asking questions. No joke, I was at a funeral and a coffee shop this past week and two random people said, “Hey you’re the lady who bought a place in Japan, right? How did you do it?”

By now, I’ve heard this question at least 100,000 times. At first, I thought they were asking about price, visas, financing or Japan real estate. But after enough conversations, I realized they were really asking something much bigger.

“If you did it, can I do it too?”

I’m smiling now because that question reminds me of something I’d almost forgotten. People never came to Eden just for a tote or a hair clip. They came because every product had a story behind it. They followed because they’re curious about our ideas, our wild adventures and the silly pivots we always take. The moments when we had absolutely no idea whether something would work, but we knew we wanted to try anyway. That’s the courage you build when you surround yourself with people who are willing to dream alongside you. That’s the story of Eden. So many ideas, so many stories, so much fun, so much love.

That’s what this newsletter is. Not a business manual or a travel guide. It’s a collection of stories - real stories that shaped my life, my business, my friendships and the unexpected places they’ve taken us.

Some of them will make you cringe, most of them will make you laugh. I hope there’s a few here and there that you apply to your next crazy idea.

And yes, one entire chapter will be about two people from Hawaii who somehow built a quiet life in Fukuoka. But that’s just one chapter. Because long before we bought in Japan, there was a wedding business, a tiny retail boutique that grew and grew…. There was a village in Sri Lanka and a ten-bedroom adult dorm we named The Eden House.

There were incredible highs, seasons when everything worked and seasons when nothing did. There were heartbreaking lows, uncomfortable decisions, the most amazing people we met along the way and more lessons in my 47 years lived than I could have imagined.

Looking back, I’ve realized I never built my life by having all the answers. I built it by trusting my curiosity, trusting the people beside me and trusting my crazy ideas just enough to take the first step. Every meaningful chapter has started the same way. “So... I have an idea.”

So if you ever catch yourself saying, “So... I have an idea,” just know I’m right there with you. Cheering. Clapping. Hooting and hollering. Because in my opinion, crazy ideas are where the magic happens.