Kikuchi wants to experience agriculture, however, “I want to be a fisherman after graduating from high school”.
Fellow schoolmate Tokiya Ogasawara, 16, hasn’t decided what he wants to be.
“But there’s nothing outside agriculture that I want to do,” he said.
Kikuchi, Ogasawara, Masaki Endo, 16, and 17-year-old Yuya Kikuchi were on a programme for second-year students of their school who do farm stays to experience farming.
The farm-cum-bed-and-breakfast where they stayed is run by retired Tono city area revitalisation section manager Noriyasu Sasaki, 63, and his 62-year-old wife Manako.
Besides rice, the Sasakis grow blueberries, chestnuts, persimmons and wasabi (Japanese horseradish). Their house used to be a barn with their former house, built 70 years ago, next door.
But the old house was cold in the winter so the Sasakis renovated their barn to make it their home. Their former dwelling became a dormitory for their bed-and-breakfast business.
This municipality of 28,750 in a heavily agricultural area of Japan stands both as a leader and a successful example of green tourism.
In all, 140 farming households here welcome tourists who can stay overnight and experience farm work while interacting with locals.
About 2000 people a year, including students on school trips, have been experiencing rural life by picking berries, fruits or vegetables and making meals together with residents.
Tourists from Singapore, Taiwan and the United States have also participated in the programme.
The goal of the exchange between city and rural residents is to stimulate the local economy and to have local residents feel a sense of accomplishment and pride by hosting tourists.
Many delegations from other prefectures’ governments have come to observe the success of Tono’s initiative.
Japan is divided into 47 prefectures. The capital, Tokyo, is not a city but a prefecture.
Home stay activities here started about 20 years ago but a boom came because of the Great East Japan Earthquake of a magnitude of 9.1 on the Richter scale.
The earthquake and resulting tidal wave up to over 40 metres high devastated the coastal areas of Iwate and of the prefectures of Miyagi and Fukushima, all in the Tohoku region, the northeastern part of Japan’s main island of Honshu.
The city of Kamaishi next to Tono was among the zones hit by the tidal wave.
“Many volunteer were staying in Tono,” Masayuki Tachibana, tourism section supervisor at the commerce, industry and tourism division of Tono City Office’s Industrial Promotion Department, said.
Traditions are still strong in this area and they are still passed on, which is why green tourism works so well here, Tachibana said.
“We can still feel the old Japan here,” he said.
But modernisation has long reared its head even here and older people’s knowledge is in danger of being lost, Shin-Ichi Kikuchi, president of the Tono Natural Life Network (TNLN), an NPO founded in 2001, said.
“We want to energise Tono so city people can know about this life,” Kikuchi said.
Green tourism is common in Europe but new in Japan, though a network of such activities has been established throughout the country.
“We have visitors from the city as well as high schoolers, corporate personnel and foreigners,” he said.
Foreigners can be welcomed in Chinese, English and Korean.
“We have an app for other foreign languages,” Kikuchi said.
To promote the city’s green tourism, an agency working for the TNLN holds promotional events in Tokyo. The NPO also counts on word-of-mouth and its website is also in English, French and Portuguese.
“I have visited Taiwan to do promotion myself,” Kikuchi said.
One night, breakfast and evening meal costs 8000 yen ($109). Student home stays, which include lunch, costs 9180 yen ($125).
In the case of student home stays the relevant office sends out advance information on guests so appropriate matchings can be made in consideration of individuals’ allergies and dietary restrictions.
“We are planning to effect directions to farmers’ inns for general tourists by taking their needs into consideration as much as possible,” TNLN coordinator Akiko Asanuma said.
Japanese rice wine or sake is well-known throughout the world. Very little-known is doburoku, a simple type of sake made by fermenting rice, koji (yeast) mold and water.
Many households in Japan used to make doburoku but since home brewing was banned in 1899 under liquor tax laws, it was produced only in secret as bootleg moonshine.
However, as part of the efforts of the administration of former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi (2001-2006) to loosen regulations and stimulate regional economies, doburoku special economic zones were established allowing for restaurants and bed-and-breakfasts to micro-brew their own doburoku.
In 2003, the city of Tono became the country’s first doburoku special economic zone.
Restaurant owner-chef Yotaro Sasaki decided to begin making doburoku.
“I didn’t like it when I first tasted it,” Sasaki said.
After over 10 years of trial and error Sasaki learned by himself how to ferment and age doburoku and developed an original recipe using organic rice from his family’s rice field.
Traditional doburoku keeps barely three weeks in the refrigerator before developing a bad taste and smell, mainly because of the yeast’s weakness, Sasaki said.
But Sasaki’s doburoku can keep four years in the refrigerator.
“The yeast keeps fermenting,” he said.
Sasaki produces 8000 to 10,000 liters a year of doburoku, earning him 12 to 15 million yen ($163,865 to $204,831).
“My doburoku is sold in 30 stores throughout Japan,” he said.
In the city of Hanamaki neighbouring Tono, the Sato Budo En vineyard grows a very big varieties of grapes to make juice and raisins.
The vineyard was started 54 years ago by Kenichi Sato and is now run by his son Hideaki, 65, and grandson Toru, 32.
Grapes are pruned to no more than 60 a bunch so they will not press upon each other, necessitating a quick harvest, Toru said.
“By staying on the trees longer, they get sweeter,” he said.
The raisins are certainly expensive, with a 140g package selling at retail for 5000 yen ($68). They were chosen as gifts to the world leaders at the 2016 G7 Ise-Shima Summit.
Juice is sold in 500 ml bottles for the retail price of 1500 yen ($20) and 1700 yen ($23) for the higher quality, more mature juice.
A gift box of a bottle of juice and raisins costs 7000 yen ($95).
