As I write this, I’m sat in a dark room full of boxes, typing as quietly as I can on a mechanical keyboard so as not to wake up our 9 day old baby daughter.  

Our house is sold (but for the legal agreements), our flights are booked (despite KLM cancelling on us with little notice) and we’re trying to sell or donate anything that we aren’t taking with us to Japan.  

The last stress (hopefully), is the race against time to try and get our new daughter’s Japanese passport in place before the flights, and also a few minor loose ends to tie up with regards to our dog (who is coming with us).

We have just 12 days until we move out of the house and live like nomads for two further weeks, then all going well, we will be in Japan, in my wife’s parents house and trying to shake off jet lag.  Shortly afterwards, we will be checking out the new rental house we have lined up and then going shopping for a bed, probably other things too but for this insomniac, the bed is the single most important piece of furniture before we move into our home for the next few years.

This is the void between our recent past lives and our future.

This blog post is the first of a (hopefully frequently updated) journal of our new lives in rural Japan, and our experiences in the 地域おこし協力隊 (Rural Rejuvenation Cooperation) programme in Hidaka-mura (日本語), Kochi prefecture in beautiful Shikoku.  My wife and I both successfully applied to the programme and I start my contract on the 1st of June.  

Though I hope the focus of this blog will be fairly generalist and not solely focussed on my attempts to create a business (not in depth anyway), I intend to establish a small craft beer brewery in the next 2-3 years and it was on this basis that my contract was offered.  

I am quite interested too in perhaps having a writing side gig so this journal also is an attempt to get back into writing regularly and to establish somewhat of a portfolio!

Emotionally, I am a bit of a mixed bag at the moment!  Raising a new born baby as well as a 3 year old excited big sister is somewhat tiring, as you might expect, and we’ve had numerous setbacks and obstacles to overcome and it has been the most stressful period of my life but aside from this I am exceptionally excited to start our inaka life, though I will miss Scotland hugely and so for that reason I am slightly apprehensive.

I wrote a Japanese article on note.com (日本語) called シンプルライフ (A simple life) which summarised my hopes for the next chapter of our lives, and the essence was that I hope to focus on three core facets of life:

1. Family - More time and focus on my wee, growing family. This also extends to community, both our village and the Shikoku craft brewing community.

2. Food - Both my wife and I love cooking and our 3 year old daughter is also very interested in cooking, so we want to cook more often together and to support that desire we are going to grow our own fruits, herbs and vegetables.  I also want to promote vegan food options and possible even do some pop up vegan kitchens on occasion.

3. Drink - The primary conduit for this will be my brewery, but its not just about making and selling beer, its about education and collaboration.  I, of course want to make delicious beers, but in addition to that I want to enjoy drinking with friends and family.

As well as these core fundamentals driving our new lives, I want to write about it!  I think rural rejuvenation is an awesome idea, and I am excited by the opportunities to contribute to our village’s future successes, and those of neighbouring villages of course.  I’d like to encourage others to give such schemes a try.  I had no idea I qualified for such a programme, and so hadn’t given it much thought until a friend (who I met through my mother-in-law) from the programme encouraged us to go for it.. and well, Caledonia-exit apprehension aside I think that following through on the inkling of an idea, might be the best decision I’ll ever make!

PS: The blog title The KyōryokuTimes is a play on kyōryokutai which is pronunciation of the final part of the programme name, the full name being chiikiokoshikyōryokutai or 地域おこし協力隊.  Hey, I like it, OK :P