I first came to Yugawara during COVID because I needed to get out of Tokyo. The city felt dangerous in the most immediate way: too many people, too much pressure, too little room to breathe. Yugawara was close enough to reach by train and far enough away to feel like a release.
At first I came on weekends and stayed at a share house. The work started with an abandoned farm that had almost disappeared under weeds. Clearing it was exhausting. We won back one section you could see, and there was always more beyond it. Nobody took a before-and-after photo and went home feeling virtuous. The land needed people to cut, carry, dig, come back and keep going.
Bamboo was the centre of that education. I learned to judge a length by eye, then measure, cut, split, tie and lash. We made lanterns, lattices, tools, huts and treehouses. Bamboo stopped being scenery and became a material I understood with my hands.
The clearest memory is climbing into a treehouse I'd helped build. I felt relaxed and a bit proud. I'd come to Yugawara looking for a safer place to spend a weekend, and now I was sitting inside something that hadn't existed until we made it.
By October 2020 the weekends had become my life. I moved into the share house and stayed until late 2023. Yugawara made me healthier. I lost weight, worked outdoors, and felt safe, useful and happy.
I went back to Tokyo for work in the end. The opportunities there are real, but so far none of them has been worth the daily life I had in Yugawara.
The farm was never finished, and neither was I. Yugawara didn't hand me a neat transformation. It gave me real work, good people, stronger hands, and weekends that quietly became home.