Encountering "a region where we want to live together"
- How the Kamiyama Satellite Office was Built, Part 1 -

Kamiyama satellite office completed

Monosus has completed construction of a new base in Kamiyama Town, located in the mountains of Tokushima Prefecture. It is called the "Kamiyama Satellite Office." This is Monosus' fourth base, following Thailand and Osaka.
It was completed in November of last year, but it was quite a long journey to get to this point.

In this episode of "Monosus-Style DIY," we'll look back at the beginning of Monosus' relationship with Kamiyama, and tell the complicated (?!) journey to creating the Kamiyama satellite office, in two parts.

What is the Kamiyama satellite office like?

The satellite office is located in the center of town, in an area called Jinryou, where the town hall is located. Jinryou is also home to Yorii Shopping Street, one of two shopping streets in the town. The office was renovated from a rented row house located almost halfway down the street, where grocery stores and photo studios are lined up.

Nearby is the Yoriiza Theater , which was built at the end of the Taisho era and served as a place for the people of Kamiyama to enjoy movies, Joruri puppet theatre and theater until the 1950s (it is still used today to exhibit art works and other items).

The Kamiyama Satellite Office is located in the center of this district, which is filled with shops and cultural facilities.
Perhaps because it faces the street, neighbors and acquaintances who pass by the store pop in to say hello, creating a relaxed atmosphere not found in Tokyo. In the office, which makes plentiful use of Kamiyama cedar, a local specialty of the town, seven members of the creative department, including staff who moved from Tokyo at the beginning of the year and those who became Monosus staff after attending Kamiyama Monosus Juku, have started web production work.

Operations team members working at the Kamiyama satellite office

Why Kamiyama?
Towards a relationship of "a region where we want to live together"

It all started in 2012,
Encounter with the "Town of 5,000 People"

Monosus first became involved with Kamiyama Town in 2012, five years ago.
It all began when CEO Hayashi was invited by an acquaintance to visit Kamiyama and was so enamoured with the place that he immediately returned to Kamiyama with two other people from the company who seemed like they had the potential to start something new (Manabe and Yamauchi from the production department).

During my first visit, I visited an old house that had been renovated into a satellite office for an IT company.

During a group visit, the three of them worked on a bench next to the cottage, listening to the sound of the river flowing.

At this time, I met Shinya Ominami, the representative of the NPO Green Valley, which works to attract satellite offices and support relocation, and Hirotomo Kedouin, the representative of Relation Co., Ltd. , which runs the "Kamiyama School" to support young people who want to take on new challenges. ( Click here to read about how Kedouin and Monosus met.)

Kamiyama Town was originally suffering from serious depopulation, but with the concept of "creative depopulation" it has slowly transformed itself into a place where businesses and people gather, and has attracted attention from across the country.

When Hayashi first visited, he heard Ominami's story of how he was behind this change, and he felt that "even in a small town of 5,000 people, if you can make steady progress over the course of 20 years, that movement can spread throughout Japan."

At the time, Hayashi had been running Monosus for seven years, and he began to think, "If I could spend 20 years making this small company into a truly good one, perhaps I could bring about some positive change in the world."

On the other hand, Mr. Kidoin started Kamiyama Juku with the desire to "create a new community where young people and the countryside can come together." In addition to the school, he has also launched other projects such as the rice terrace restoration project and the NABE Summit . It seems that many young people continue to live in Kamiyama even after the six-month school ends.

Ominami's approach to town development efforts and Kidoin's activities connecting the local community with young people have much in common with what Monosus wants to be as a company, and a desire to continue to stay connected with this place and have connections with Kamiyama began to take root in the woods.

This encounter would later lead to one of Monosus' themes: "Working with people you want to live with."

Let's start with "satellite families" instead of "satellite offices"

They visited Kamiyama several times after that, and eventually in 2014, Manabe from the Production Department, who was one of the members of the second visit, moved to Kamiyama with his family. He became involved with the town as a resident, searching for new ways of living and working, including finding a project he wanted to try (which later developed into the Food Hub Project ) and raising children.

The children of Manabe have begun living in Kamiyama as satellite families.

Experiencing Kamiyama through work: Discovering diverse ways of working and living

The following year, in 2015, our work began to expand, including the introduction of a cloud system to the NPO Green Valley and the website renewal of the Kamiyama Town Hall.

Takeda (then in the Production Department), who was mainly in charge of these tasks, stayed at WEEK Kamiyama when he visited Kamiyama town on business trips and teleworked from the co-working space complex . He met locals as well as people from outside the town who had moved there or moved back, and was deeply inspired by the way each of them was trying to do something new. Having experienced the appeal of Kamiyama through the "work" and "places" in Kamiyama, he became someone who spread its charm to those around him.
(See Takeda's article " I want to make my place more interesting. I want to connect people, I want to be connected. ~Looking back on my relationship with Kamiyama~ ")

A tour of Kamiyama with 20 employees, Kamiyama Monosasu Academy...
Gradually the Kamiyama movement begins to take shape

And in the fall of that year, about 20 Monosus staff members visited Kamiyama Town. (For more details, see this article .)
The theme given to the members this time was "See the town as if you were living in Kamiyama." Takeda guided the group as they brainstormed what they could do and what they wanted to do if Monosus established a satellite office in Kamiyama.
Through this inspection, Kamiyama, which had previously only been the domain of a select few employees, became much more familiar to us, and it became the catalyst for the feeling throughout the company that "Kamiyama is really interesting!"

Monosus staff enjoying Kamiyama

Shortly after this, the first session of the Kamiyama Monosasu Juku started. It was a five-month employment-based vocational training course to develop web engineers, and staff from Yoyogi stayed in Kamiyama as instructors and administrative staff, further strengthening the connection with Kamiyama.

Meeting various people in Kamiyama and changes in the members of Monosus.
To find a connection with the area (Kamiyama Town) where I wanted to live together.
Taking their time, they got to know each other and let others know them. Little by little, each person made changes, and their ties with Kamiyama Town deepened, and the movement to create a satellite office began in earnest.

Deciding on a satellite office concept

In December 2015, the Satellite Office Committee was finally formed to realize the satellite office. The members were Takeda, who had a lot of work connections with Kamiyama, Maruyama, who was a lecturer at the Kamiyama Monosasu Juku, and Kurihara, who participated in the site visit. The committee was formed to realize the ideas that came up during the site visit.

First, decide on the concept.

You will be working in a completely different environment from our headquarters in Yoyogi.
At night, most of the shops are closed except for one convenience store.
There are no trains either.

What kind of place should it be, and what kind of experiences should it provide?

Takeda, who was one of the members who visited Kamiyama frequently, found that while telling those around him about the great things about Kamiyama, he found that his interests, horizons, and connections with people had expanded, and he wanted everyone to feel that same "expansion."

After much discussion, the final concept they decided on was "a place to broaden one's horizons."

• We will meet and expand relationships with people who live in Kamiyama and professionals with top-notch skills who work remotely in Kamiyama.
• Since we are not in an environment where we can get anything we want at any time, we have to be creative in how we balance our work and life.
• Set aside time to focus on honing your skills and think about how you can create your own life-work balance.

If you stay in the same place for a long time, you may not even realize that you have many options, even though you actually have many.

Rather than suddenly changing your environment, try getting away from where you are now for a while, rethinking how you work and live, meeting people, and having experiences you've never had before.
At first glance, this may seem like an inconvenient place with not many options, but by thinking and acting on your own from scratch, you will naturally open up to options and broaden your horizons that you never thought of before.

The concept of "a place to broaden your horizons" was born from the desire to become a place that could serve as a catalyst for such things.

In the next issue, we will talk about "The journey to the Kamiyama Satellite Office: Creating a place of gratitude and hard work," and will describe the process of actually building the satellite office.
"Building an office" was the largest of all the DIY projects we have undertaken so far. We would like to share with you the various things that the committee members and others worked hard on over the course of several months.