Tokyo Vegetable Life

I am a business person working at a Tokyo office of a global financial company. I have a lot of exciting and stimulus jobs every day. Also, it meas that they are often too exciting and too stimulus to make me exhausted.

So, I love to visit the countryside of Japan. The landscape of mountain, sea, or old town is wonderful (see the sample pictures below).

<Mountain side: Nagano pref>

<Local foods in Nagano>

 <Sea side near Mt. Fuji>

Moreover, I like to eat fresh fish, vegetables, and fruits growing up in the country, which are more delicious because the food is fresh and water and air are clean. Recently, I dream to live somewhere around the countryside though I cannot decide which is better of the sea area or the mountain area now.

As a preparation of country life, I wanted to learn farming and fishing. Then, my wife found a farming experience program in my town offered by the ward office to promote local vegetables and fruits. The program offers small area of a field (3 x 5 m = 15 m^2, approx 140 ft^2) with cheap price (4,000 yen per a month!!!; USD 40). Also, the field owner provides a cultivation plan, which all users have to follow, and guidance whenever necessary (I ask various questions about vegetables with the old expert farmer so often).

You may not believe that there are a lot of vegetable fields in Tokyo special wards. But, you will see a lot of green areas in Tokyo when you see satellite maps such as Google Earth. Because historically there are many green parks and a lot of vegetable fields in Tokyo.

40-50 years ago, there were crowded areas only in Tokyo central area. In the surrounding areas like my town, there were still many vegetable fields. After that, many residential areas have been developed to follow Japanese rapid economic growth. On the other hand, vegetable fields and farmers have been decreasing. So, the ward offices protects and promotes the local agriculture. As one of the promotion and protection, our ward offers the experience program.


My wife and I have participated the program since 2013. In the first year, our knowledge was very poor and made various mistakes but the vegetables were very strong and grew up. As a result, we learnt that fresh vegetables are incredibly delicious even though amateur farmers (my wife and I) made them with various mistakes.

Through the blog, I would like to show such wonderful experience for you guys living out of Japan.

Thank you.