This Monosasu Juku started in the middle of summer.
I will also be spending half a year in Kamiyama Town, both as a member of the secretariat and as a student.
Now, I will tell you about the first day of the entrance ceremony.
What will we learn in the second term of Monosasu Juku?
The second term curriculum is a new attempt to teach two skills: HTML coding and web writing.
Attracted by the slightly unusual combination of "living in Kamiyama Town" x "coding" x "writing," a group of unique people from all over the country gathered. They spent the first month living in the same accommodation, during which they found a house to live in within Kamiyama Town and were to support themselves until mid-December.
Entrance ceremony. All the people involved introduced themselves.
The school principal, Kurihara, greets the audience with a nervous (?) look on his face.
Perhaps the students enjoyed the principal's speech, as their tension was relieved and they all smiled.
The entrance ceremony was held in the conference room of the Rural Environment Improvement Center, where we will be visiting every day from now on. Principal Kurihara, Monosasu Juku management office members, representative Hayashi, Relation 's Sugi-san, Maeda-san, and Green Valley 's Takeuchi-san were also in attendance, and after an explanation of the overall curriculum, a greeting from Principal Kurihara, and a speech from representative Hayashi, there was a freestyle self-introduction time of about 3 minutes per person. In the end, not only the students, but everyone present introduced themselves, and the entrance ceremony ended in a harmonious atmosphere.
Listening to a lecture by Shinya Ominami, chairman of the NPO Green Valley
Next, we all moved to WEEK Kamiyama . WEEK is a lodging facility for people who are staying and working in Kamiyama Town. The dining hall, a renovated 70-year-old traditional Japanese house located on the same premises, was the venue for today's event.
On this day, a lecture was being given to a group of people who had come to inspect the site from Rikuzentakata Town (including Mr. Hasegawa from WoodLuck , who has ties to Monosasu), so all of us from Monosasu Juku decided to join them.
The theme of the lecture was how the Kamiyama Town revitalization project, which has attracted attention from all over the country, is progressing. Apparently, there are a lot of people wanting to move to Kamiyama. However, rather than accepting everyone who wants to move just because they want to increase the number of residents, they are instead welcoming people with jobs that are necessary for the town's future through reverse nomination, which I thought was a cool idea! I listened to the lecture thinking that.
As the lecture drew to a close, preparations for dinner began in the dirt floor leading to the dining room. The sound of bowls clinking and the delicious smell of something being fried tickled my nose, making my stomach rumble in response. What's more, a baby brought by a WEEK staff member was crawling freely between the crowd... In this free-spirited and generous space, the 90 minutes flew by as I listened to Ominami's gentle yet passionate talk.
While listening to Ominami-san's story, dinner preparations are underway...
The evening will be filled with excitement at the welcome party (with karaoke included).
The students drank and sang while eating a meal packed with seafood.
CRT TV + Laser Disc Karaoke!!!
For dinner, we moved to a restaurant in the town. A welcome party was held in a tatami room. The students were a little nervous at first, but they soon opened up, and halfway through, many of them started singing karaoke, creating a great atmosphere. By the way, the karaoke was a "laser disc." It was a nostalgic system that involved finding songs in a book and manually inputting the numbers, which is something that people of a certain age or older will find very nostalgic.
Naturally, the songs on it were all old. I was amazed at how the students managed to sing along effortlessly despite the old songs. I wonder where they learned them. However, no one knew how to operate the laser disc, so the owner of the store was always there to help us, loading songs and adding echo.
And the night in Kamiyama deepens
Leaving the banquet hall, only the principal and the students ran through the pitch black night streets and returned to the lodgings on the mountain. It felt like Kamiyama Monosasu Juku was really about to begin. The students, still full of energy, bought some alcohol and snacks and gathered in the room. They started playing the "name-remembering game," perfect for the first day of meeting. Sitting in a circle, students remember the names of the people between them and the first person, and then say them in order. As the names were repeated many times, it was surprisingly easy to remember the names and faces of the ten people present. Once everyone's names were memorized, they moved on to the "Werewolf" game. The first night in Kamiyama drew on.
Thus began the adventure of the Kamiyama Monosasu students. For the next six months until mid-December, the group of 10 will be living in the same house, cooking and eating meals together, and studying together while helping each other out. What they will discover and experience in Kamiyama may be revealed in their own words in due course. Please look forward to it!
FURIHATA Yukari