Hello. This is Sugie from the Production Department.
Six months have passed since I started working at Monosas. It's gone by so quickly.
In fact, apart from my work at Monosas (where I go to clients' offices and do tasks related to marketing activities), I am also involved in a few other things on my own. One of them is helping with the activities of the Ibaraki Migration Project .
I'm often told that I can do things with "work plus a little extra". I wondered why that was, but I couldn't put it into words and was feeling frustrated. Then I received an offer to write this article. Since this is a rare opportunity, I'd like to organize my thoughts by putting them into words.
The confusion in response to the question, "Where are you from/where are you from?"
My father was transferred a lot because of his job, so I was born and raised in different places. I was born in Sado City (formerly Ryotsu City, Sado Island in Niigata Prefecture), and in order of the places I grew up, I went from Niigata City to Chiba City (I moved to a different ward within the city two or three times?) to Mito City to Chiba City (a different ward from the one I lived in before). After I started working, I started living alone, from Kawasaki City to one of the 23 wards of Tokyo.
It's common for people who transfer for work, but when you move a lot, it's hard to have a sense of belonging to a place. Whenever the topic of "hometown" comes up, I'm actually quite confused about how to answer. So, every time I'm asked, I hesitated, but I always said "Sado." The reason is that it's my own interpretation of "the place where the body came from." However, since it's the hometown of my mother, who gave birth in her hometown, I don't have a strong attachment to the place... I feel uneasy about this indescribable sense of incongruity.
I was talking about this at a drinking party. The people in the group were elementary school classmates. They had a commonality in that their parents were transferred for work and they moved here when they were in elementary school, and they had a similar sense of belonging to the land mentioned above. So I decided to look up the definition of the word again.
I learned that although there is no clear definition, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism had previously defined "place of origin" as " the place where you lived the longest until the age of 15 " and collected statistics based on that definition. Based on this, it seems that my hometown is Mito. I transferred there halfway through elementary school and stayed there until I graduated from junior high school.
At first, I didn't really accept that I was from Mito. After all, it's not where I grew up (laughs). However, until then, I had only had the feeling that I had "just lived there," as if I was looking at a map, but once I started to pay more attention to it, even the most trivial things started to be remembered in connection to my experiences in Mito.
Mito in Memories, Mito Now
Plum blossoms in Kairakuen. They were still in bud at this time.
In spring, the plum blossoms at Kairakuen are more beautiful than the cherry blossoms.
In the summer, I went to the fireworks festival at Lake Senba.
In autumn, stir-fried potato husks (dried taro stalks) were often served at the dinner table.
In winter, it was common for there to be ice on the route to school.
I didn't like always wearing hand-me-downs from my relatives, so I went to the flea market at Art Tower Mito hoping to find clothes that suited my taste somehow.
For some reason, the act of going to Mito Station was referred to as "going to the town." (What is a town?)
What I feel with each season.
The act of buying clothes.
A way of expressing going out.
It was a strange feeling to have come to see something that could have been summed up in one word in this way. However, my daily life was mainly in the southern Kanto region. I almost never visited Ibaraki Prefecture except for the occasional reunion.
So, in the spring of 2017, more than ten years after I left Mito, I found out that an exhibition by an architect I was interested in was being held at Art Tower Mito . There had been many exhibitions that interested me up until then, but a friend living in Kansai who was interested in the architect happened to be coming to Tokyo at the same time, so we decided to go there by car for the first time in a long time. It was the first time since I moved that my purpose was something other than a class reunion.
The tower of Art Tower Mito. Looking up at this blocky structure at this scale, you really feel like you're in downtown Mito.
Art Tower Mito itself is just as I remember it from when I used to go there often when I lived there. The distinctive symbolic tower. The dignified yet calm atmosphere surrounding the pipe organ inside the building. The open plaza outside.
However, the area around the museum had changed completely. Even though it was a weekend when I went there, there were hardly any people around. This may have been due to the fact that the department store nearby had relocated, but it was quiet. I was also surprised at how much less cars were passing by on the road from Mito Station to the museum.
There were so few stores open that I guess this is what they mean by a "shuttered shopping street."
(No, no, the town wasn't like this.)
Maybe my memories are too romanticized?
(No, no, maybe this is normal after more than 10 years have passed since then...)
Even though it was a city I was supposed to live in, I felt a sense of alienation, as if I was visiting for the first time. I never expected to feel this way, and it has remained in the back of my mind ever since.
Mito ==> I started thinking about Ibaraki
In the fall of that year, I learned that my old acquaintance, Takaaki Suzuki, had started an activity called the Ibaraki Migration Plan. It all started with an event on Facebook called " How do local design examples and methods fit into Ibaraki? "
When I looked at the details, I came across a statement that read, "Have you ever felt like you often hear negative rumors about things like they're getting run down, going bankrupt, etc?" This really resonated with the feelings I had when I visited the art museum, so I decided to participate.
I remember being shocked when they mentioned at the event that the area had ranked last in the national attractiveness rankings for five years in a row. (This is a regional brand survey published by the Brand Research Institute . As I was writing this article, the 2018 edition was announced, and it seems the area has now broken the record by coming in last for six years in a row .) I never expected it to rank highly, but I never expected it to come in last...
This event was the first opportunity for me to reconsider what the appeal of Ibaraki is.
That day, there was an announcement for recruiting members for the Ibaraki Migration Plan, but I went just to listen to what they had to say, so I had no intention of becoming a member. I had just quit my previous job, and I was visiting various places, following my instincts and impulses, and it was just one of those places.
However, it was also a time when I was asking myself again why I had been doing the work I had been doing up until then (related to advertising and marketing). Looking back, I remembered that my roots lay in my desire to be involved in the process of things/things that I thought were wonderful being properly recognized to the extent that they should be, from my experience with NGO activities during my student days. At the same time, I suddenly came to my senses and was shocked.
From there, I had a vague feeling that "I don't know what I can do, but I'd like to contribute something," so after consulting with Suzuki, I decided to start by getting involved.
Looking back, I remember that I was unemployed when I first started to get involved in the Ibaraki relocation plan! I was fearless and jumped right in because I was unemployed (?). I feel strange looking back at my past as if it were someone else's, realizing that I am a person who acts on impulse. That's also the fun of the act of writing things down. Yes.
The following year I joined Monosasu, and in the second part I would like to talk about how I was involved while working and what I am doing now.
SUGIE Natsuki