Showa-mura, Fukushima

Far, far away in the hills of the Fukushima prefecture in Japan lies the village called Showa-mura that created many lasting memories for me. After spending one day in Tokyo the contrast could not have been bigger when I arrived in the village far off any cities and surrounded by rice fields and forest. Ten days I would spend there together with a small group of foreigners like me and Japanese who all decided to do voluntary work.

The group of volunteers

Showa-mura suffers the fate of many villages in Japan: the youth moves to the cities leaving the elderly behind and without anybody to take over their farms. Without knowing any specifics about the Japanese pension system, many of the elderly seem to continue working past the retirement age and struggle to take care of their farm work. In order to help the locals and to give young people from the cities an insight into the life in the countryside, yearly work camps are organized. The labour of voluntary workers participating in the work camps is offered to the locals for a cheap price or even for free if the people in need are past a certain age. While for some of them the work is a great help, others are simply happy to have some young people around to talk to. The group of volunteers in my case consisted of 5 foreigners (including me) and 4 Japanese. Especially for us foreigners the trip to the Japanese countryside allowed us to experience Japan in a way that not every tourist has the opportunity to.

Practice using the grass cutters

In exchange for their efforts the participants in the work camp are provided with free board and lodging. We stayed in a school building that due to the lack of children in the village was no longer in use. Apart from the work some social events were held including a visit to a hot spring, a museum, a wonderful lake surrounded by mountains as well as meetings with locals. Everybody was extremely friendly and happy to have us young people around and I truly enjoyed the Japanese hospitality.

A junsai field

The work was of agricultural nature. Specifically, this included cutting grass, transporting and cutting wood, weeding rice fields and planting junsai. A typical work day would start from around 6 am and last six hours until 12 pm when the heat would make it difficult to work in the fields. The work was pretty hard indeed but as the volunteers consisted mostly of girls I should not complain. However, after a job done the appreciation by the locals and the good feeling of accomplishment you are left with are absolutely worth all the sweat.

Weeding in a rice field (photo by Elsa Caron)

I made some great memories during my time in the work camp and I would absolutely do it again. In fact, I really want to do another work camp if I get another opportunity. I deliberately went with a short camp of only ten days because I was afraid I wouldn’t like it and at least ten days are easy to pass. And indeed they passed quickly, way to quickly in fact, and so my next camp should certainly be longer, maybe a month. I can wholeheartedly recommend participating in a camp to anyone who is interested. Just do it!

Bedroom in the school building

A Japanese house and garden

Our attempt at making a human pyramid