I have just returned from my Satoyama Trip to Hida-Furukawa and the Noto Peninsula in Japan. It might be too quick to pen down a Trip Memoir, but knowing I will have to plunge back into office work starting tomorrow, I thought I should note down the most important points. I will however, allow myself the time to savour the every memory and moment from the trip, and will therefore take my time over the course of the next few weeks to share some amazing photographs from my trip buddies Sze Wei and Kaiyi, and even some ‘travel-documentary styled’ videos from Kaiyi!

So what is Satoyama, and why was it a trip fulfilling my dreams?

Satoyama, or 里山 in Japanese, stands for village in the mountains. Since young, I have often mentioned that my dream is to be a farmer in a rural area. My dream rural farm however, was neither the completely mechanised high-tech megafarms, nor the backwater, run-down rural village, lacking in basic sanitary, electricity, and water facilities. And in Japan, my dream become reality in front of my eyes. Each village had small padi fields managed by individual households. Not one, but all four villages I had the chance to stay in, had homes with toilets. Not the usual toilets though, but those with heated toilet seats, and ‘wash-your-bum’ sprays after a dump. All rooms were well-lit, not just with the usual lights, but those which had ’3 degrees of brightness’ to which the user could manually switch to his liking. We remained completely connected to the outside world with Wifi, or modem internet access. And I had the chance to take a really satisfying hot bath.

Beyond the villages themselves, I had the opportunity to experience so many rural activities. I learnt how to fell a tree from a master carpenter, and fell my very first tree with a chainsaw. We carried buckets down to the sea to collect the seawater, before learning how to splash it evenly over a sandbed to make the seawater concentrated before it could be boiled into seasalt. We used walnut oil to polish an hundred year old traditional house to maintain the wood in durable and reflecting quality. We collected and drank natural spring water from springs in the villages. We walked around the mountains surrounding the village and learnt from the village chief which were the herbs that could be eaten. At the end of it all, I finally could tell myself, I had at least experienced a teeny-weeny bit of rural life!

But while the above two points were important on a personal level, they were minor in the overall context of our trip. And to explain this, I go back to the word Satoyama. As our guide Taku Yamada told us, Satoyama should not be defined just as a place or geographical location where human activities meet nature, rather, it is a concept. I would go a step further and call it a philosophy-in-practice. This philosophy, is one in which, humans and nature co-exist and complement in the fluorishing of each other. It is true sustainability.

Sustainability is not squeezing humanity into densely built-up urban areas, and then leaving the rest of nature untouched. Human beings have always been a part of nature, and we will only achieve sustainability, when we find our place back in it, not artifically seperated from it! If we play our part in contributing towards biodiversity, nature rewards us with bountiful blessings.

Dr Akaishi Daisuke from the Satoyama Satoumi Nature School shared with us, that the really delicious konomitake (coral mushrooms) fluorished best around young pine trees. Hence, with the underlogging in rural Japan as logging ceased to be economically attractive, lesser konomitake mushrooms sprouted from the ground as most of the trees were old, with little space for few young ones to grow.
Taku also explained the good Satoyama forest as one in which the forest had been maintained with suitable logging, allowing sunlight to penetrate the ground of the forest, and allowing the existing trees to grow well, and new biodiversity to fluorish.

Kimura-san inspired us by telling us how he planned to grow trees upstream of the river such that the quality of the fresh river water would improve, and hence, improve the quality of the oysters he farmed. The area where the oyster farm was located was a convergence point between freshwater rivers and the Japan sea, and under this convergence provided the oysters with the nutrients and conditions to fluorish in. However, while oysters could be left alone to grow in the past, climate change and temperature differences meant that he would have to lower the oysters into the sea during summer as the surface temperatures would be too warm, and then bring them up during winter. Furthermore, by looking at the type of flowers that bloomed, or the birds that visited, he knew when it was time to grow and harvest the oysters. It is only through such mastery of the natural conditions, that we could enjoy the oi-shi oysters we ate!

Kaiyi asked Matsui-san, the master carpenter who also grew rice and chicken, opened a homestay, and made charcoal, why it was that Japanese charcoal did not emit smoke when burnt, as compared to those made in Malaysia. Besides the type of wood used to make the charcoal, Matsui-san explained that smoke being emitted from charcoal meant that the charcoal had not been fully burnt during the production process and still had water content within. It was important for the charcoal maker to control the air (oxygen) content and temperature within the charcoal klin to produce top quality charcoal.

Our first dinner in Hida-Furakawa was in a restaurant where our guide Hisa introduced us to an assortment of herbs, eaten both boiled and tempura (fried) style. Did you know that tempura pickels were very delicious, and eaten with good sushi rice alone can make an excellent meal. And yet, tempura pickles were only an invention that came about during winter when the ultra cold temperatures in Hida meant they could not be soaked as the water would freeze. So the locals had tempura pickles in winter. The mountains provided an abundance of food for the locals, with spring bringing an assortment of natural herbs, and autumn the fresh mushrooms. (Note to all vegetarians: Please visit Japan to try their vegetarian food. Jap restautants in Singapore are an insult to the heritage.)

And perhaps, Satoyama extends to also the rural-urban relationship. We visited the local rice mill and miso shop in Furukawa town. And it was refreshing to learn that farmers from the nearby padi fields could bring their harvested rice to be milled. We learnt from Kyoko that besides money exchange, sake was a common exchange denominator between neighbours. ‘No sake, no life’ indeed!

These are yet few examples of the true sustaibaility that are the Satoyamas. Yet, for such wonderfully beautiful places, their existence is in critical threat from an aging population. The most stark case study was in Kanekura village, where in a population of 120, there were only 2 teenagers, and 1 person in his 20s.
The rapid industrialisation and economic growth of Japan throughout the 60s/70s had accelerated an exodus to the cities in search of attractive jobs. Even Matsui-san, a master carpenter who led a team to build an incredibly beautiful traditional wooden house without any nails, did not encourage his son to learn his trade. Taku told us that the research work done by company Chura-Boshi had identified hundreds of traditional farmhouses in Hida that were already or would be vacant within the next ten years.With no one in these homes, their conditions would deteriorate rapidly. Without anyone to tend to the padi fields and the forests, they will soon return to wilderness. Our beautiful scenery of padi fields, straw-tatched houses within the mountains would be lost forever. More critically, this path towards sustainability, these skills and knowledge passed down over generations, all would vanish.

And yet, all is not lost. I end my note with optimism, optimism from having met a far-sighted group of individuals in Hida-Furukawa, led by Taku & Shiho Yamada, who started their company Chura-Boshi, and try to protect the rural areas and allow them to fluorish. Taku told us as he drove the car, ‘I worked in Tokyo and felt that this was not the way to live. Coming to Hida-Furukawa, I found the values of the traditional life, and the lifestyle attracted me. However, I soon realised that if nothing was done, all these would soon disappear with the aging problem, and I decided that something had to be done.’ With this simple objective, the team catalogued the empty farmhouses and sought to find new use for them, such as renting out for traveller stays, or even converting them to office use – attracting offices from the cities to relocate to the countryside, but losing none of the virtual connectivity.

It is however, the vision of Chura-Boshi that left me in marvel. Alot of times, people create a dichotomy between environmental and economical sustainaibility. Alot of environmental related work are thus carried out by NGOs, universitites, Government etc and rely on funding. Without funding, projects cannot go on. Such vulnerability shows an inherent problem in the setup. True sustainability, cannot be seperated from economic viability. Just as humans cannot be split from nature, economics cannot be split from any discussion on human nature. To attract the young back, rural areas must be economically attractive and provide opportunities. Taku showed us a diagram of his company’s virtuous cycle: Research was done to examine the current resources in the rural areas. At the same time, the value of their environment was shared with the locals to increase their self-confidence in themselves and the potential of the villages. Cycling tours, guided walks, renting out farmhouses, then became an economic driver to fund further research, and to be an actual demonstration of the potential of rural areas. The Chura-Boshi model, is one which is built on the pillars of sustainability – environmental, economical, social. I would encourage everyone of you who have managed to read this far, to check out their website: www.satoyama-experience.com

And so, my dream of the ideal rural area may exist, but the road to protect it is still far and, thus, I guess, the journey doesnt end, but only begins… A big thank you though to those that got me this far – my travel buddies Ge Pat and Siu Chiu, our wonderful guides Taku, Kyoko, Hisa, and the many amazing people we met and learnt from on our trip.