Havana Club and 俊’s Bar in Omori: An exchange between two towns

In today’s article, I want to introduce you guys to some friends of mine from Kamiyama-cho, Tokushima-Prefecture- Kanzaki-san and Daisuke-san!

Before writing about their recent visit to Omori, I think we should start with a little background to how I ended up meeting these two. 

---

So, I think it was around last December when I first started visiting Kamiyama-cho. I first learned of this town from doing research for my graduating thesis at Berkeley. It was one of these towns which had a very unique and innovative style of town development, making them an ideal case study for my research into alternative lifestyles in the Japanese countryside.

Specifically, the town was a center for satellite offices and various programs such as artists in residence, which created a flow of people who would use the resources of the town in new and creative ways. In many cases with the Japanese countryside, the townspeople may not be as  proactive to having an open flow of people who end up using their skills to energize the local community. However, Kamiyama-cho was particularly proficient at this all to the efforts made by Mr.Ōminami-san, the Director at the town NPO called Green Valley.

As a student, Ōminami-san had the chance to study in Standford where he was inspired by the Silicon Valley’s role as a hub of creativity and innovation for technology. Taking this model, Ōminami-san applied it to his hometown of Kamiyama-cho to set a direction for the town. Today, Kamiyama-cho is a town which has become, in my opinion, a fantastic model for a rural town that creates a flow of creativity and innovation from the exchange between insiders and outsiders facilitating various sustainable town development projects that are both managed and designed professionally. If you get a chance to visit, I definitely would recommend!

Back to my little aside about last December, I visited Kamiyama-cho because I was feeling doubts about my work and lifestyle here in Omori. Most of my blogs are about the positives of living in Omori, but it’s not always sunshine and rainbows. There are times when I get anxious, mostly by my own self-doubt, about my work in Omori and what sort of future challenges I needed to overcome to better myself. It was during this time of self-doubt and uncertainty that I decided to go take a trip to Kamiyama-cho to get some perspective and perhaps hints to overcome some of these challenges I was facing. To be honest though, it was my dad who really pushed me to get out of Omori to get a different perspective on things, so gotta give some credit to the ol’ pops. 

---

While I was in Kamiyama, I was staying at this inn called WEEK which is where Kanzaki-san is the owner and the cook. WEEK has this concept behind it which is “Everyday work in a different place”, meaning it’s recommended for people who can do remote work. WEEK is located on the edge of a tall bank overlooking a majestic looking river with clear turquoise waters that runs through Kamiyama. The rooms have these signature windows where an entire wall is one large pane of glass, giving the guests a dynamic view of the town and the nature surrounding it. 

While staying at WEEK I had a chance to talk to Kanzaki-san about my recent challenges and vision for my work in Omori. Much to my surprise I found out that we both had similar thoughts and had a similar vision for the current and future role the inaka should play in both Japanese and global society. Oh, and when I say similar thoughts, we were using similar words and concepts in our conversations and did not have to explain ourselves but rather building off of each other. I think its these moments when you know something clicks. 

---

After leaving Kamiyama, feeling refreshed and ready for new challenges, Kanzaki-san sent me a message saying he wanted to come visit me in Omori and stay at Abeke. While at WEEK, Kanzaki-san and I were talking about the necessity for exchange between different towns in the Japanese countryside. We both felt that the next step these rural countryside towns should take is to create a network to exchange information, to gain hints and ideas we could apply to our own towns. As such, Kanzaki-san ended up coming to Omori and we had a mini-exchange where I had Miura-san and Suzuki-san (from my office) come join for dinner in hopes that we could all share our perspectives and thoughts on our work and lifestyles. That night we had some butterbur tempura as the main dish, since we had a bunch of it growing in the mountains during Kanzaki-san’s visit. (I also got the stomach flu that night…lol) 

---

That was last February, and I had the chance of visiting Kamiyama-cho once again this August, which is when I met Daisuke-san. Daisuke-san is the head baker at a company called Food Hub Project. Food Hub Project’s main mission is to educate and create a new generation of farmers in Kamiyama. They got their inspiration for their name from the term

 Regional Food Hub: A business or an organization that actively manages the aggregation, distribution, and marketing of source-identified food products primarily from local and regional producers to strengthen their ability to satisfy wholesale 

If people are interested in learning more about Food Hub Project here is the link to their website. 

In Kamiyama, Daisuke-san bakes his own style of Japanese Shoku-pan that has a San Francisco twist to it! Unlike typical shoku-pan which is square, light, fluffy and has sort of a dense crust, Daisuke-san’s shoku-pan is sourdough based. As such, the bread itself is quite dense, has a mochi like texture, a pleasant sourness, and a flaky crust. Really love putting butter and honey on the bread for breakfast whenever I have a chance to get my hands on one of these loaves.

 

While I stayed at WEEK again, Daisuke-san came over to come talk to me, and we had a chance to share each other’s experiences and thoughts on working and living in the inaka. As we conversed, it became clear to us that we need to turn this discussion into some type of action, and myself, Daisuke-san, and Kanzaki-san decided we should plan another exchange. All of us were wanting something that was beyond just business or private life, where you didn’t have to separate these compnents. We felt that so much of our lives are compartmentalized into categories instead of being umbrellaed under a common theme, which we felt constricted new possibilities created through the intermingling of the various “pieces” of our lives. 

Also the title is called Havana Club and Shun’s Bar because Kanzaki-san and Daisuke-san decided to call their two man group Havana Club, after a bottle of gin they saw when they were trying to think of a name for their group. 

---

After a couple of brainstorming sessions over Facebook Messenger, the three of us came up with 2 parts of our exchange in Omori. 

1.     Have Daisuke-san come bake bread with Hidaka-san 

a.     Bring flour harvested in Kamiyama and recreate his signature shoku-pan in Omori 

2.     Have a dinner party with the young generation of Omori 

a.     Not just Gungendo people, but also invite the residents of the town 

b.     Everybody brings a dish in a potluck style

 On the day of Daisuke-san and Kanzaki-san’s arrival, I was just coming back from a 俊‘s Bar event from Tokyo and so we didn’t have much of a chance to really hash out what we were going to do the next day, so it was mostly left to careful improvisation… 

Since I was working that day, I didn’t get much of a chance to see the whole baking process and interaction between Hidaka-san and Daisuke-san, but when I went over to the bakery there were about a dozen or so freshly baked Kamiyama Shoku-pan waiting inside of a orange carrying tray. We decided to bring them to Gungendo to sell them to the employees, where the bread completely sold out in mere minutes. It was nice being able to share this with my co-workers, but I think next time I want to open this up to the townspeople more. It’s easy to have people from your company to take part in an event or have them buy stuff, since you already know you can rely on them. However, I think it’s harder to have the town involved because it involves so many moving parts (time, invitations, number of things to sell, fliers, etc.). I think it’s also more fulfilling for the guests to be able to feel like they did something the town appreciates rather than for a single company as well.

---

Moving further into the afternoon, I was able to gather about 20 or so people a good amount being people from Gungendo and a few being young people from the town. Although I would’ve wanted more people from the town to join us, I was glad the event didn’t turn out to be just people from my company. I say this because even though we live in Omori, a lot of the events I do seems to revolve around the people who you work with, when there is a whole population of young people you haven’t involved in the town. So, it was a plus for me that I had other young people of the town come join who weren’t in Gungendo. Next time though I definitely would like to involve more of them in these events. 

The food was really fantastic, and I have to thank everybody for doing such an amazing job bringing together a great variety of dishes for the dinner. We had boar sukiyaki, homemade ramen, various simmered vegetables, these little tapas my friend Riki made with figs and maitake mushrooms. I think there is something really special about sitting at one table surround food that is served on large plates. Passing the food around, asking the person next to you to get a dish next to them, recommending something you thought tasted really good to the person in front of you, getting your friend another serving of something because you were also going to get some as well. The interaction created through a family-style meal is something I would like to continue to explore in my work. 

---

One thing I would like to work on next time would be facilitating conversation, specifically to skillfully switch from free to more discussion-based conversations. To be honest, I think Kanzaki-san and Daisuke-san wanted to have more discussion and opinion sharing while at the actual event it was mostly free talk. Now, I’m all for discussions but having in-depth talks for 2 hours can be tiring for many people and not their cup of tea as well. People all have their own levels of passion for certain topics and it can be a little intense for some when the conversation is at a constant 100 percent passion level. However, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have more in-depth conversations at dinner events where we have a larger pool of people who have different amounts of passion for certain topics. I feel like I should have done a better job facilitating a conversation that fluctuated from being like passion level 60% to maybe a passion level 20%. In other words, guiding the conversations from complete free talk to mini structured conversations with a theme. Another thing I should have used better is the nijikai which in Japanese means the second event. Usually after the main event, some people stay afterwards and have more drinks and open snacks to talk more. If you are organizing events, I think this nijikai is a really useful tool to use so that you don’t have to do everything all at once. Dividing up the event where each part has a use with different types of people coming and going, I think is ideal. It keeps things fresh and dynamic throughout and it lets people make a choice to take part or to leave, talk more or just listen. We did have a nijikai after the main dinner event, but I think I should have advertised it a little more to people.

Although I’m currently having sort of a “looking back what I could’ve done better session” by myself, I think it was a really important first step to the beginnings to some exchange between Kamiyama and Omori. That first step is always the hardest, but you tend to learn the most by going to the actual location. Reading and talking about something is one thing but going and experiencing and feeling the place is always the better choice. I think I’m trying to write about how I could’ve made this better because I want to get better at these things since it’s going to be that means to an end to more interconnectedness of the countryside. So this is a form of a follow up for me, where I’m not just being satisfied with doing but me wanting it to lead somewhere. You can’t always just feel good about yourself for planning and doing, it's the check and the action afterwards that is also crucial. (yeah I’m talking about you PDCA cycle!) 

 

Nevertheless, I want to thank Kanzaki-san, Daisuke-san and their families for visiting me in Omori and doing this event. It’s always just such a pleasure when people come visit me in Omori, I love being able to share the lifestyle, culture, food, and the people of this town to my guests. I hope this exchange will lead to something else in the future between Omori and Kamiyama and Havana Club and 俊‘s Bar!