The Japanese society functions with a purpose of blending in, not standing out. If you play strictly by their rules, perhaps life is easy. Else you are always the outsider gaikokujin, who is looked at suspiciously very instinctively.
And perhaps life really is easy. But as someone mentioned in the thread, spending $100-200k USD to renovate a property AND to basically change your career to a farmer is completely out of the question for 99.9% of the population.
At beast you would get some incredibly wealthy hobbyists who adore Japanese cultural heritage, but judging their success realistically, it doesn't look like there's many takers, so my point still stands.
Maybe the downvoters should put their money where their mouth is and go spend a few million on restoration of these properties.
The population will continue to age and shrink, so cultural norms will have to make way for that to ever change.
Maybe it's harder for them because they look Japanese and don't get the leeway given to foreigners.