Tillmann
Before we arrived in Toyomi we have seen many big cities in Japan. When you stay in Tokio,
Kyoto, Hiroshima or Osaka you see thousands of faces every day. You see
thousands of houses every day and thousands of cars, shops and streets. This is
different in Toyomi.
By train it takes 1,5 hours to get to Toyomi from Niigata but it feels like another world. Toyomi lays in a steep valley surrounded by
trees and mountains. The valley was formed by a smaller river that still flows
today. In Toyomi it widens to a
lake. There are no more than 25 people living in that little village. And still
there is a train station, a small shop, a post office and of course family Sato.
While the bigger cities have many rules you have to follow in Toyomi it feels like less of these official rules apply.The people and the place make their own rules. It feels like a lot more freedom. This provides the possibility to express your own style o living.
As Wwoofers we are only guests here for a limited amount of time but we are welcomed by Kentaro-san and Makiko-san almost like a distant part of the family. We work for the plans and ideas of those two persons and try to understand them. We learn a lot and do many things the first time in our lives while beeing part of the hard live on the japanese country side.
I feel grateful for the chance to be here and to make these expirences. Also I hope to bring some of these new experiences back with me to my home country. Small villages that struggle with the probems of the demographic change appear all over the wolrd - also in Germany
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