Working for the Ky David Caprara (Nara)
JETs living in Japan in the Reiwa era are there during a period of extreme downsizing that is reshaping the face of the country and its foothold in the world. Many of you reading this live in small towns and villages with faded signs and long-ago-shuttered businesses that give a hint of a time decades ago when these areas were thriving and economically viable. A few decades from now, many villages that JETs call their Japanese hometown will be abandoned and cease to exist. From 2012 to 2014, I was a JET in the rural village of Kawakami-mura in the hilly Yoshino region of Nara Prefecture. Kawakami is a village with unbelievably clean water, access to great hikes, and a rich history, but it is as deep in the sticks as one can be in Japan. The village is comprised of a string of hamlets peppered within a river valley connected by a single road. There are no trains or convenience stores. On the first day that I arrived in Nara, the JTE who picked me up from the prefectural
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capital to drive me to Kawakami found his own description of where I’d be living to be hilarious. “Where you live,” he said laughing with a huge grin on his face, “No people! Only animals!” I remember vividly that he spent an awkwardlylong portion of our one-and-a-half-hour car ride to Kawakami making animal gestures and growls, imitating the range of creatures that I’d be living amongst in my village. My JTE wasn’t completely wrong. However, the people that I did form bonds with throughout the two years I lived in Kawakami ended up becoming more or less family. This was particularly true with my taiko team members and another group of bikers that I rode motorcycles with. After my time with JET, I pursued a career as a journalist and spent years chasing writing assignments and producing documentaries for various international media outlets around the world. I climbed into the Nepali Himalayas to create a documentary for VICE on hallucinogenic honey hunters, who ascended
