Hello. I am Wada, who graduated from Kamiyama Monosasu Juku and joined the production department in April.
Why did I, a teacher in Shiga, choose a completely different profession? I would like to look back on my journey from Kamiyama to working at Monosus in Tokyo.
My life in Shiga - Searching for a way to work that is not tied to location -
I was born in Kyoto and moved to Shiga when I was in elementary school. I grew up in a place surrounded by nature, with Lake Biwa right in front of me and Mount Hiei towering behind my house.
Mount Hiei in particular is a place that I have a special attachment to. This is because when I was in high school, Mount Hiei was the training ground for the track and field club I was a member of. It was my daily routine to run to the top of the mountain or up the mountain paths and stone stairs.
The view of Lake Biwa from the top of the mountain is also exceptional. Also, when I had a day off from work or wanted to refresh myself, I would often go to the shore of Lake Biwa and listen to the sound of the waves.
I love Shiga Prefecture, with its mountains and lakes.
After I started working, I was a junior high school teacher in Shiga. Since I had licenses to teach both social studies and Japanese, I had a somewhat unusual way of working, teaching two subjects at once.
Lake Biwa spreads out before your eyes. You can swim here in the summer.
Then, someone who changed my worldview appeared. That person is my current partner. My partner is an immigrant who came to Japan from Brazil. I heard many stories about Brazil from him.
For example, we learned about how Brazil is a multi-ethnic country that respects diversity, and about Brazil's magnificent nature and climate, etc. For someone who grew up in a small country like Japan, these were all new and grand-scale stories.
As I listened to these stories, I began to want to see a wider world and to go and live in Brazil in the future, and I naturally began to think about how I could live a life that wasn't tied to a place. Then, the idea came to my mind that if I worked in the web industry, I would be able to work from anywhere.
I've always loved making things, and I was interested in working in web production, writing blogs and customizing the appearance.
However, I have no experience in web development.
However, I wanted to hone the skills I was interested in and apply them to my work. And more than anything, when I thought about my future life, I thought I had no choice but to give it a try.
Just then, I discovered Monosus' job page on the website " Nihon Shigoto Hyakka ." I was touched by the idea of "Decide for yourself how you live your life. Create people who have their own standards," and felt that our values and feelings matched, so I applied.
Interview at Monosus and then to Kamiyama
In the job interview, I talked about my vision for how I want to live and work. It was the first time I had talked so much about myself and my future lifestyle in an interview. I came here because I wanted to be able to work from anywhere and do a job that I was interested in, but deep down I was anxious about whether I could do it with no experience.
Soon after, I received an email informing me of the results. I opened it hesitantly, and it said that they would not hire me this time. Thinking that it was a no-go after all, I read to the end and found a sentence that continued with "However...". It said that they were opening a cram school to train web engineers in Kamiyama Town, Tokushima Prefecture, and if I was interested, I should apply.
I was very surprised, but also very excited.
Learning web technology in an unknown place like Kamiyama was a challenge I felt was worth taking on, as I had always wanted to be able to work from anywhere.
I applied to Kamiyama Monosasu Juku and decided to move to Kamiyama from Shiga Prefecture.
Life in Kamiyama ~ Experimenting with anywhere work ~
The parking lot of a convenience store in Kamiyama. The mountains are so close.
About the house you live in
Kamiyama Town, as its name suggests, is a beautiful mountain town where gods seem to live.
The Monosasu Juku course lasted for five months, so I needed a place to live during that time.
The first place I stayed was Kamiyama Ski Land Hotel ( Facebook ). I lived together with people from the Kamiyama School run by Relation Co., Ltd. , who were taking part in the same program at the same time, for a month.
My first experience starting a fire in the wood stove at Ski Land Hotel.
At first, I was very nervous about living with strangers in an unfamiliar place.
However, when I actually arrived at the Ski Land Hotel, some people from Kamiyama Juku, who were already staying there, asked me if I wanted to have dinner with them, and I remember my anxieties immediately disappearing.
After the coding class, we had a delicious dinner with the students from Kamiyama Juku, cooked by a mother from Ski Land, and talked about what we are doing now and what we have done in the past. It was very encouraging to know that we have friends who are working hard in the same Kamiyama, even if we are doing different things.
After finishing my communal life at the Ski Land Hotel, I was having trouble finding a new place to live. Then, by chance, a local person introduced me to a house that had recently become vacant. It was a two-story house right next to the building where I was taking classes. It was convenient to get to classes, and the owner said I could use the home appliances, so I was able to start living there right away.
For the first month, I shared a room with Akane Saito (a student at Monosasu Juku and a member of the administrative staff, currently part of the Check Team). The house was spacious, but we liked the 2-tatami room (which may have been the hallway) and used it as a place to eat meals, watch TV, and relax.
The two-tatami room that I liked and called the old-style cafe
Even after Saito moved out, we would have dinner together in this room after class. We had a lot of vegetables in our diet, so we often used them to make hotpot, curry, or stew.
For lunch, they ate Saito's homemade bento boxes, which she made for six people every morning.
Saito's colorful homemade bento
People living nearby invited me to come pick mandarin oranges and gave me lots of shiitake mushrooms; that's the impression I got in Kamiyama: food and people are very close to each other.
Everyone in Kamiyama was extremely helpful when I moved and with all the paperwork after I moved. I was touched by the warmth of the people in the town, and although it's not exactly convenient, I felt that it was a very livable town, with connections to people that don't exist in city life.
Everyday lessons
The web coding classes were intense every day.
In the first semester, I learned the basics of coding. I was vaguely familiar with the names and roles of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, but I was taught the basics in detail, including their clear roles and the way of thinking when writing code, and this has become the foundation of my current coding.
In the second semester, I took classes on the application of what I had learned so far and the techniques necessary for practical website creation. When I got stuck while coding or had even the most trivial questions that came to my mind, I was able to take the classes with ease.
I am very grateful to my instructors, Ito and Maruyama, for teaching me so much.
In addition, outside of class, students held study sessions to discuss their everyday questions and concerns, try out new technologies, and share their daily coding knowledge.
The existence of this study group was a great source of support for me and also sparked my interest in coding. I am very happy to be able to work together with my colleagues who have worked their way through Monosasu Juku together.
To Monosus Headquarters in Tokyo ~ What was there beyond the location ~
I graduated from Monosasu Juku and came to the Yoyogi office in Tokyo in April.
I was assigned to the production department and have already been put in charge of web production work.
Life has changed completely from Shiga and Kamiyama. There are convenience stores, supermarkets, bookstores, and everything nearby, making life very convenient. I can get anything I want right away, and there are so many things around me that it's hard to choose. However, even though my life has become more convenient, I want to remember the feeling of living in Kamiyama with only the bare necessities, and being grateful for what I have now.
The shopping street near my house is always crowded with people.
Tokyo has an overwhelming number of people compared to Shiga and Kamiyama. As a result, the density of human relationships tends to be weak, but it is also a place with many communities where it is easy to find people who sympathize with the same things. The reason I wanted to work at Monosus was because, among the many web production companies, I sympathized with the idea of "having your own yardstick."
What I realized after actually working there is that the people at Monosus are diverse and talented, and each of them lives their own way. I myself am now able to work in my own way. Shiga, Kamiyama, Tokyo, each place has its own merits, but I realized that how you live in that place and "what you do" in the place you choose is important.
Connections between people are very important. Where you connect, who you connect with, what kind of community you join, or even if you create a community, it's all up to you.
I joined Monosus by chance, but this was also my choice. What can I do from now on? Now, I have met people with different standards. I intend to treasure these connections and take on various challenges.
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