To the point where everything feels normal
~Spending a year in Kamiyama~

Hello. I'm Gotanda from the Creative Department's Kamiyama team.

I just tidied up my office and placed a vase with a single flower in it on the table for the first time in a while. It was a vase that I had on my desk when I first started working at the Kamiyama satellite office. It was lovely, but I had put it in the corner of the room for a while because it was prone to tipping over.

Time had passed so that such small events now felt somehow nostalgic.

The street between the tenement houses that I always walk through on my way to the office...
The pleasant scent of cypress in the office...
The road through the rice fields from the office to the convenience store...

Time passed and every aspect of my life now felt like a natural part of everyday life, and before I knew it, just under a year had passed since I came to Kamiyama.

Involvement with Kamiyama

I first came to Kamiyama in July of last year to help with a lecture at the Kamiyama Monosasu Juku (vocational training), which was also held the previous year.

After a short period of time, our department's team was set up at the Kamiyama satellite office, so I returned in January of this year as one of the founding members, and I'm still here today.

Before my first visit to Kamiyama, I thought it had nothing to do with me. To be honest, I had no desire to live or do anything in the countryside, and I was full of anxiety.

Still, I now think that there must have been a reason why I ended up working in Kamiyama by chance and have been able to make it my base of operations here for just under a year.

Life in Kamiyama

I live in a tenement house very close to the Kamiyama satellite office.
It's within commuting distance of the office, taking just a few minutes.

When I worked at the Yoyogi office in Tokyo, I used to commute for almost an hour and a half, so it's unbelievably close. No, it's a little too close... So close that I don't even feel like I'm commuting (laughs).

The tenement houses only have the bare necessities, such as a kitchen, a bathroom, and a toilet, and no television. However, the internet connection is good.

The tenement houses and offices are located in the Yorii district of Jinryou, Kamiyama Town. There are shops and a hospital on the main street, and a convenience store just a few minutes' walk away; the area is known in Kamiyama as "Tokyo's Ginza Street."
( For an introduction and photos of the Yorii area, please see our previous article .)

That said, compared to the city, there are fewer shops and it's dark at night...so when I first came here, I honestly felt it was a bit inconvenient.

Still, when in Rome, do as the Romans do, and now I feel that such things are a part of my daily life, and it has become natural for me to talk to the old ladies and gentlemen who live nearby. They don't remember my name very often (laughs), but they say hello when they see my face.

I am often asked what differences I feel between life in the city and the countryside, and I think that one of them is neighborhood relationships. When you live in the city, you don't know what kind of person your neighbor is, and you don't really care. I think that in the countryside, the community is small, which is why communication is born there.

Clockwise from the top left of the photo: "Being taught how to play gateball by the uncle next door," "Spinach given to me by the old lady who lived next door," "Edamame beans grown by myself in the backyard," and "Green onions grown by my old lady."

Also, for someone who had never lived alone before, living in Kamiyama, where there are few restaurants, forced me to start cooking. At first, everyone taught me how to cook. But when I was a little busy at work, I couldn't do it.

A photo of the food I cooked. The okonomiyaki was pretty popular with everyone in the office. The way I sprinkled the bonito flakes on it was inspired by Moco's Kitchen (lol)

How to experience the four seasons in Kamiyama

Recently, on weekends and other days off, I've started driving to Tokushima city to do some shopping or go to a day spa. I guess I'm starting to miss the city life a little.
However, they occasionally participate in events held in Kamiyama and go to tourist spots within the town.

I would like to briefly introduce Kamiyama as I have experienced it through the four seasons over the past year.

winter...

Winter is cold wherever you are, but the first winter I spent here felt especially cold.
When I first arrived in Kamiyama in January, it was exactly that time of year, and I couldn't bear it without a kerosene heater. It was really cold when I worked until the early hours of the morning.
When I was in the city, the air conditioning was enough to heat me, so the trouble of putting kerosene in the stove was a new experience for me.

I was also impressed by the frozen waterfall at Jinzu Falls in Kamiyama Town. I remember going there with some members and being interviewed and featured in the Tokushima Shimbun newspaper.

spring...

Kamiyama Town has many famous cherry blossom viewing spots, and many people visit from the city during the cherry blossom season. There are cherry trees all over the mountains in the town. What impressed me the most was a hidden cherry blossom spot that I had never seen before. It is located in the Shimobun area of Kamiyama Town, but it is not featured on guide maps. I heard about it through a friend and was able to visit. The weeping cherry blossoms seen from the top of the mountain were truly magnificent.

summer...

Summer is all about weeding rice fields. Last year, as a Monosasu Juku instructor, I participated in weeding a rice field, and the members still joke about how I was weeding at an incredible speed...
*I hate bugs, so I found it hard to be in the rice field, and I just wanted to get it done as quickly as possible. But I did manage to mow it properly (laughs).

This year, we are growing Monosasu rice again and for the first time, we even participated in rice planting.
Even there, I hate bugs, so I went to plant rice in my socks and long pants, but one of my socks got buried somewhere due to the strength of the muddy soil in the rice field. I wonder if I'll be able to harvest my socks when the rice harvest comes in the fall (lol)

In addition, there are many summer festivals in Kamiyama. One of them, the Tanabata Festival in Shimobun, had beautiful Tanabata decorations and night sky. I wonder if the wish I wrote on my paper strip, "For all the Kamiyama satellite members to grow up," came true.

autumn...

It's a very comfortable time of year. In particular, when I leave the door open in the office, the breeze passes through and it feels really nice. The sunset I see from the path to the convenience store I always go to is very beautiful.

Tokushima is also famous for its Sudachi citrus fruit. Kamiyama Town has the highest harvest of Sudachi citrus fruit in Japan. I also experienced harvesting Sudachi citrus fruit. I learned for the first time that Sudachi citrus fruit is very difficult to harvest because of the thorns on its branches. I felt the preciousness of Sudachi citrus fruit again.

The Sudachi orchard near Yakisanji Temple (left photo) and the rice paddy path to the usual convenience store give a feeling of autumn (right photo)

Member's birthday party

Looking back over the past year, one of the things that made me very happy was being able to hold birthday parties for all the members of our satellite offices.
This is not something that can only be done in Kamiyama, but I think it is possible because of the environment where it is easy to hold parties with a small number of members.

It may become more difficult to hold the event in the future if the number of participants increases, but I was very happy to be able to spend this kind of time with the people I work with.

Someone once said that there is a saying in Kamiyama that goes, "Just do it," and when you want to do something, people who will support you or help you do it together will appear. I think that may be true. I think it's a blessing to be able to hold a birthday party when I want to do it and people will easily cooperate with me.

We made a homemade cake (center photo), bought a cake at a shop near the SO (535), and gathered in the kitchen of the SO accommodation building. The homemade cake took half a day to make because we had to make the dough from scratch.

Working and living in Kamiyama

What I think now about the theme of this article, "work and life."

It just means that you may never have seriously thought about your work and your life before.

Up until now, working and living in the city has always suited me, so I may not have even thought about it.

However, the people around me in Kamiyama are giving serious thought to their own work and lifestyles. Listening to the stories of the various people around me, I hear that some want to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city and live closer to nature, while others want to try more things outside of work. They came to Kamiyama in search of the work and lifestyle they had considered in the course of their lives.

Listening to the stories of the people around me in this way gave me the opportunity to reexamine my own work and life, and it felt refreshing.
I think there are good things about both city life and country life.

I believe that the new experiences I have had since coming here that I would never have had in my everyday life in the city have been beneficial to me.

lastly

I believe the reason I was able to live in Kamiyama for just under a year like this is because there were so many people who truly supported me.

This was due in part to the support of the people I worked with, as well as family and friends who lived far away.
I have been supported not only by my band members and my family, but also by the new people I met in Kamiyama, and I feel that meeting people I would never have met if I hadn't come here is a lifelong treasure.

Also, for some reason, maybe because I've had more opportunities to communicate with various people since coming to Kamiyama, I feel like I've become more able to interact with people from other parts of the company more naturally than I did when I was in Yoyogi. This may not be because of Kamiyama, but it may be because living here has changed the way I communicate.

Before I came to Kamiyama, I wondered, "What's so good about country life?" But now I've come to think that living close to nature like this might be good. After spending about a year in Kamiyama, I've come to the point where I "take everything for granted," which is a valuable experience for my life.

Both myself and all the members are still growing.
From now on, I hope to use my valuable time and experiences in Kamiyama to explore ways of working and thinking that are unique to Kamiyama, and to grow as a person.

Like picking sudachi citrus fruits, the process of reaching your goal is by no means easy, but I hope to be able to harvest one fruit at a time...

bonus···

When I came to Kamiyama, I realized that it was actually not so good compared to life in the city.

"I won't walk..."

People often say that if you live in the countryside, there are mountains and nature, so you probably walk a lot more than you would in the city, and while that may be true for people who have set aside time to exercise, for those who don't, you basically get around by car, and you can walk to your local shops, so you probably don't walk as much as you would in the city... or because you don't commute by train.
So, I would like to tell people who are planning to live in the countryside that if they don't make time to exercise, they will end up not getting enough exercise (laughs).

"I enjoy surfing the web"

Simply put, there is little entertainment, so the way people kill time is by browsing the Internet. In particular, there is no television, so the only way to gather information about the outside world is through the Internet. Also, considering the trouble of going to the city, many people shop online.

I receive so many packages every day that I've never received so much mail before, and I think this is a result of the changed lifestyle I've had since living in the countryside.