ECOPLUS conducted rice planting workshop on May 23, 2020, at Tochikubo village, Minamiuonuma, Niigata. Considering national emergency on COVID-19 situation, only Niigata locals joined the program although every year many participants from metropolitan area joined the program.
Total nine participants from university students to aged local ex-farmer stepped into the rice paddy with bare feet feeling warmed soft soil. We used old wooden framed to make marks on the soil so that young seedlings could be sit on each crossing section.
ECOPLUS will conduct a snow camp in a mountainous village, Shimizu, in Niigata from March 20 to 22, 2020. The area is know as the deepest snow area in Japan which has 4 meters of snow in mid-winter. Even in March, we expect more than 1 meter of snow. Participants will enjoy snow and learn the ways of living in snow. English language support available.
TAKANO Takako, the executive director of ECOPLUS, who travelled over frozen Arctic Ocean and other remote areas in the world will organize the project. With the strong support from the local people, participants will learn the knowledges and skills of the mountainous village and will enjoy the beauty and power of the snow.
Participants: Youth over 15 years old, like his school and college students. Junior high students may be joined based on the situation.
Program : Camping on snow, Hiking with Japanese snow shoes, dynamic snow sliding, Cooking, Snow toilet, Making snow statues, Sledging, and any other creative activities on snow.
Assembling; 10:50 am, March 20, at Shiozawa Station, of Jyoestu Line. Toki 309, departing Tokyo at 8:52 has easier connection at Echigo-Yuzawa station.
Break up: 15:30, March 22, at Shiozawa Station, of Jyoestu Line. (tentative)
Fees: 23,000 JPY including food and tent accommodations, programs, insurance. Travel cost and rental gears are excluded.
ECOPLUS held organic rice farming workshop called “Tanbo no I-ro-ha” or “ABC in a rice paddy,” on 8-9 June, 2019 at Tochikubo village in Niigata, Japan, having 35 students from Waseda University in Tokyo.
Time Lapse Video shows great progress. 時間短縮ビデオで見る学生たちの草取りパワー
Since we had very limited rain falls in May, some areas of rice paddies dried up and it helped weeds to grow seriously specially at our non-chemical, totally organic paddies. Students waled into the paddy with bare feet and used fully opened hands like as rakes to clear weeds.
Paddies were filled by water thanks to the rain since Friday evening but in most of the paddies the soil was so solid because of long dry condition that it was difficult to push fingers in the soil and we needed to pull out each weeds. Started the work at 9 am on Sunday, it took 4 hours and more to finish two rice paddies which size is over 1,000 square meters.
Talk by a villager, 村人がここで暮らすこと、を語ってくれました。
A farmer’s lecture of rice farming now and then. 農家の一人が、米作りの過去と現在を説明してくれました。
Machines and chemicals are just introduced in past 40 years or so. 機械や農薬が導入されてまだ4-50年のことです。
Beside weeding in rice paddies, villagers gave them lectures, and a specialist conducted nature tour. Through those students had a chance to feel the relationship between nature, life and community. They left comments like, “I strongly leant the true meaning of to live”, “I understood the hardship of farming”, “I should have more appreciation on food”.