สวัสดีค่ะ こんにちは。Hello, my name is ‘Poon’ from Thailand. I join VSA outgoing program with NICE organization in Japan for 6 weeks since 11 May – 26 June 2015. My campsite is in Kasahara area, Kurogi town, Yame city, Fukuoka prefecture, Kyushu Island. This area has been damaged by heavy rain in 2012, after that local farmers retired and didn’t want to do agriculture anymore because the price of agriculture product are decline and young people go to work in the town not living in this area.

In this project we are 7 volunteers from 7 countries (Thailand, Japan, Vietnam, USA, France, Italy, and Mexico) and we work with local NPO name ‘SANSONJUKU’ that work for promoting an organic agriculture and forest management. This area have many rice paddy field and green tea. Because we came here in summer so our main work is helping Sansonjuku prepare field for planting rice such as removing grass, cutting grass, removing mud in gutter, and etc. and another thing is we have to cut fires wood for Sansonjuku to sell and use in boiler of our accommodation.  Sometimes others people join our activity such as every two weeks, other organization call ‘Takarabako’ which work with Autistics people join cutting grass with us at once, we went to elementary school to talk about our country and exchange some culture with children that very fun because kids are very active and keen.

Normally local farmers use machine to planting rice but Sansonjuku have event that invite everybody (mostly kids in the city) to plant the rice in old style by human hand. I think this event is very good because it promote kids from city to learn about agriculture and having fun in the same time. Sometimes we help local farmers to harvest tea leafs, planting summer vegetable such as cucumbers, tomato, potato, harvesting plum, and harvesting onion. All these activity are hard but they make me enjoy in the same time. Before I come here I live in the city and I rarely do anything in agriculture, but after I did agriculture work I found that I like it. It not hard but it use a lot of physical fitness and farmer’s income is not much that why new generation don’t want to do this kind of job and not only Japan have this problem, Thai also Europe have this problem too. So, I think having this kind of project is very good to remind young people that agriculture is very important for human and to brainstorm idea for make better way of agriculture.

For accommodation, we lived in an old elementary school that is community center now. Name of this center is ‘Egao no mori’ that mean smile forest. Living in this accommodation made me smile like its name. We slept on futon in Tatami room, cooked in a huge kitchen, take a bath with shower and hot water (but we had to make fires to boiler by ourselves), and there was Wi-Fi in dining room. Also lived with new friend from many countries was very fun, we talked, worked, played, cooked, ate, slept and took a bath together. I learned many things from here. I understood Japanese culture more than read from internet or book, I exchanged culture with many people from many country, I learned an organic agriculture ways and I even learned and could made compose. Now I have attention that when I go back to Thailand, I will make my compose and grow something so I can have good product to eat and hopefully I can be a part of good thing to make our world better. どうも ありがとうございます。