I live in Nagano Prefecture. Japan is an island country, but Nagano has no waterfront and is surrounded with mountains. Most people have lived farming on small lands or working at small factories.
But young people who finished schools move to big cities to get jobs and to enjoy more convenient lives. Many of them settle there. So, Tokyo is getting bigger and bigger, on the other hand, small villages and towns far from big cities have only old people. Their population is decreasing. We see a lot of abandoned places that were once rice fields. Our neighbor’s rice field next to our vegetable garden is now covered with tall ugly weeds.
Everyone is worrying about the future of our community; no young people, abandoned houses, fields with no people to farm…... Only huge cities are prosperous.
When I first came here to live, I didn’t like this place; no shopping malls, no concert halls, not many sophisticated people, harsh winter, nothing interesting, nothing exciting.… But now I feel I’m lucky to live here; we live in a pretty large house though very old, grow enough vegetables without chemicals to feed my family on the inherited land, I also enjoy gardening( too big for me to weed). I don’t need much now, so I don’t have to go shopping often. Many People are not very intelligent, but they know a lot about cooking and farming.
This kind of idea might come to me because I got old. While I was busy working hard, gardens or nature meant nothing. I understand the people who need to be in big towns
But recently some young people come to live in this town. They seem to know what I didn’t know until late of my life.