I first came to Yugawara during COVID because I needed to get out of Tokyo. At the time, the city felt dangerous in the most immediate sense: too many people, too much pressure, too little room to breathe. Yugawara was close enough to reach by train but far enough away to feel like a release.
At first, I came on weekends and stayed at a share house. The work began with an abandoned farm that had almost disappeared beneath weeds. Clearing it was exhausting. We reclaimed one visible section, but there was always much more beyond it. The work never resolved into a tidy before-and-after. This was not one of those cheerful volunteer activities where everyone takes a photograph and goes home feeling virtuous. The land did not care about appearances. It needed people to cut, carry, dig, return, and keep going.
Bamboo became the center of that education. I learned to judge lengths by eye, measure, cut, split, tie, and lash. We made lanterns, lattices, tools, huts, and treehouses. Bamboo stopped being scenery and became a material I could understand with my hands.
The clearest memory is climbing into a treehouse I had helped build. I felt good. Relaxed. Accomplished. I had arrived in Yugawara looking for somewhere safer to spend a weekend. Now I was sitting inside something that had not existed before I helped make it.
By October 2020, the weekends had become my life. I moved into the share house and remained based there until late 2023. Yugawara made me healthier and more active. I lost weight. I worked outdoors. I felt safe, useful, and happy.
I eventually returned to Tokyo because of the allure of business. Tokyo is very good at making ordinary activity feel major and important, as though something consequential must be about to happen. So far, nothing there has justified giving up the daily life I had in Yugawara.
The farm was never finished. Neither was I. That is part of why the memory remains so alive: Yugawara did not hand me a completed transformation. It gave me real work, good people, stronger hands, and weekends that quietly became home.