Nice to meet you, hello.
My name is Maki Yamada.
It has been three months since I started working as a designer in Suo-Oshima.
As for what kind of person I am,
I'm from Osaka, 24 years old, like to talk, dogs and babies like me, my pressure points have gotten shallower recently, I like anything to do with food, and I like eating and drinking, that's about it.
"Where are you from?"
"I'm from Yokohama. I'm originally from Osaka though."
This is a phrase I've been asked often and have often answered since coming to Suo-Oshima.
If you say, "I moved to the west," most people in the area will recognize you.
He pointed out how to plant the flowers in my garden, taught me what to plant and at what distance, and I became friends with an elderly man in the neighborhood while talking about his life story. The last thing he said to me was, "If my son was younger, I would have wanted him as my wife." I'm glad my son isn't young now.
The story so far
He majored in Chinese at university.
I thought that Chinese would become more important in this day and age, and although I wasn't good at English, I thought I might be able to do well in another language, so I chose Chinese.
When I first started school, I had trouble counting, and I remember having to count on my fingers and visually work out what number I was on at any given time, and understanding the numbers.
My main purpose in going to university was to study abroad. My department had study abroad included in the curriculum, so it was inevitable.
I started living in China in September of my first year of university, and lived in a dormitory. There were parties every night in the room next to me, shared by a Kyrgyz girl and a Dutch girl, and at the entrance to the dormitory, students from all over the world were drinking, singing, and dancing. I remember feeling more unsure about whether I would be okay after I arrived than before.
Student life
At first, I chose a middle class according to my level, but it was still hard to keep up. Still, I studied steadily, and when the classes were changed six months later, I was placed in the top A class, according to my test scores and my ability, or rather, I stretched myself a little. The most surprising class was the Chinese composition, which we distributed to all our classmates and then corrected together. Even now, when I think back on it, it was really scary and embarrassing.
That's because my composition had corrections not just on every page, but every line. The teacher would call out the sentences, check them, and make corrections over and over again...I was pretty exhausted after the first class, and it was a traumatic shock, so I started to feel depressed about my weekly composition classes.
What I realized was that I hadn't really thought about literary and colloquial language separately. It may have been like I was writing a composition in Osaka dialect.
After that, I started rereading various textbooks, attending classes seriously, and when I had free time, I would watch Chinese dramas, stopping to look up any words I didn't know, and writing down notes.
Thanks to this, I can now joke and argue in Chinese, and I can even understand Chinese movies to the point where I am moved to tears.
After I returned to Japan after finishing my studies abroad, I got hooked on traveling abroad and went to India, Philippines (Cebu), Indonesia (Bali), Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, South Korea, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. I spent almost all of the money I had saved up from working multiple part-time jobs during my university days on traveling. It was fun.
My university graduation trip was in March 2020, and the coronavirus was gradually gaining influence around the world. I remember feeling like I was being chased when I saw the news that the Louvre Museum, which I had visited two days earlier, had been affected and was closed.
After that, I joined a trading company specializing in machinery as a new graduate, and worked in the technical, sales, and general affairs departments, creating documents. During that time, I remembered that I had been doing POP design work as a part-timer, and while thinking about what kind of work I wanted to do, I learned that there was a job called web designer.
As I researched it, I remember coming across words with the nuance of "something that is created with thought, not just taste," and finding that appealing.
I immediately started researching how I could achieve this, found a school that suited me, visited the school on the earliest possible date, and decided to enroll the next day.
Web School
After I enrolled, I would pack my lunch every morning to be ready for when the school opened at around 11am, get on the train, sit in front of the monitor and study, eat lunch around 3pm, study again until 8pm, go home, eat and go to sleep - a routine I repeated almost every day.
Strangely, I never got sleepy while studying, and every day I would wake up and realize it was already night. I liked the puzzle-like feeling of coding, and seeing elements with the same name change all at once made me feel even more intrigued.
The school focused mostly on coding, but I wanted to do design, so I collected designs I liked online and looked them up in books, letting my imagination run wild with what I wanted to create, and even went so far as to create a design for an imaginary website.
That's when I thought to myself, "Design is so much fun!!!!!!" It's hard to imagine given the speed at which I work now, but it took me just under two weeks to create a design for just one page.
I took photos, changed the layout many times, considered fonts, and added and removed decorations. I wondered if this was really the main color, and also considered the copy on the site, thinking, "Will this be the kind of users that will view this?", and consulted with friends of the same age group as the users, and finally completed one design.
It may be difficult to find time to think that deeply at work, but I really enjoyed those moments, and during those two weeks my desire to become a designer grew stronger and stronger, so I began to aspire to become a designer if possible.
A fictional site I created
Monosus, which I discovered while job hunting
As the end of school drew near, I started looking for job openings for coders and designers on various job search sites, but I just couldn't find a company that really captured my heart.
I came across Monosus while browsing through "WEB Kanji," a website that companies seem to use when requesting web production, including companies that make websites related to food, an area of interest to me, and companies that focus on UI/UX.
To my surprise, some of my favorite sites were listed among their past projects. I looked at the name of the person who designed the UI, looked at Monosus' other projects, and then looked at the people involved in the production. I thought, "Oh, it's the same name again. That's nice. I'd like to work with you."
I immediately searched for them on Wantedly , and was already impressed that I got a hit. However, I felt sad for a moment because it seemed like they were only looking for experienced people, but I also thought that I couldn't back out now, so I spent a few days reading articles on Monosas and looking at their production track record, and after taking a while to see what kind of company they were, I applied, thinking that I would be happy to get in no matter what form it took.
I have a strong preference for cities, so I was quite surprised when I heard I would be working in Suo-Oshima, but to be honest, I didn't really understand it because I wanted to work for Monosus and working in the countryside was not something I would have chosen on my own.
I knew that I liked cities, so I moved to Suo-Oshima as soon as possible before I got used to commuting to Yoyogi. Looking back, it was a pretty big decision.
Starting work and life
I, Yamada Maki, live on Suo-Oshima Island, and I find the occasional cooking at the office to be a lot of fun.
The reason why I love food is, first of all, simply because I get really excited when I eat something delicious. Food is something that you really enjoy with all five senses, and even before I eat it, I can already taste the aroma and feel that it's delicious.
The fun appearance, the sound and aroma of the meat being grilled, the texture when you pierce it with your fork... No matter where you look at it, it feels like there's happiness in it.
The more difficult or time-consuming the dish, the easier it is to forget about everything except the food in front of me, which may be one of the reasons I like cooking. Other than cooking, I also like crafts, but the problem is that they leave a tangible mark, so I feel uncomfortable giving them to others. In that respect, cooking is easy to share with others, and since it's gone once you eat it, I feel like it won't be a burden to me in the future.
When I cook at the office, I feel like it's more refreshing because it takes longer since there are other people eating besides me.
However, I feel like I am becoming a cooking mom of Suo-Oshima or a cooking school teacher...
Recently, I had a curry party and made keema curry, butter chicken curry, tandoori chicken, and naan.
We started making the curry at the end of work the previous day, behind the people who were still working, and created the curry in a grand food terrorism session.
On the day, with a little help from others, we kneaded the naan dough, adjusted the flavor of the curry, and grilled the tandoori chicken that had been prepared a few days before.
Everyone who ate it seemed to enjoy it, and I felt like I could become a curry restaurant just for the weekend. I was very happy.
To tell the truth, I've been pretty busy ever since I joined the company in February and started working in Suo-Oshima, so I haven't really felt any emotions other than, "I have work! I'm happy! It's fun!" When asked about my daily life, I gave vague answers like, "I'm having fun right now" and "I don't seem to be having any problems."
Looking back now on the two months since I came to Suo-Oshima, I am feeling that they have been unexpectedly exciting.
I never thought I would be able to survive in the countryside, but I've been able to live there for two months now, so I'd like to give myself a pat on the back and say how great I am.
I haven't had much time to talk about work, so I'll end by talking about my attitude towards work.
These words are placed where you can see them every day.
"Ah, this is getting fun"
It's fun to embrace all the tingling, tingling, restlessness, and squishy sensations that suddenly come over me while I'm working.
I feel like if I'm not enjoying myself, the strain will suddenly take over, so when something happens I feel like, "Wow, things are getting exciting! I'm so excited," and I want to feel that way, so I always feel that way.
I've only talked about the past. I would be happy if we could talk about the present and the future someday.
YAMADA Maki