● 7月21日 （７万尾のどじょうの稚魚、順調に育つ）
● 8月4日 （納豆工房「大きな豆の木」の記事）
● 8月9日 （九州農政局長 イモリ谷見聞録）
● 8月16日 （イモリ谷の盆）
● 8月16日 （九州農政局長 イモリ谷見聞録の英訳文）
How are you doing? Summer heat has hit us day after day. I think summer vegetables such as cucumbers and eggplants help us overcome the heat. Let’s eat our fill of them.
The other day I visited a very energetic hamlet called Matumoto Imori Valley in Ajimu Town, Oita Prefecture.
The valley looks like a water lizard (imori in Japanese), so the people there have come to call it that way. Sorry to admit, though, very few children nowadays may have seen the animal.
Matumoto Imori Dani (valley) has opened its hamlet Home Page in the Internet, which is, I think, unique in Japan and worth clicking on. It’s sure to give you energy.
The hamlet is in a village in a typical hilly area, which we can find anywhere in Japan. The people cultivate their own kind of rice and its alternative crop soybean, and grow grapes on the surrounding hills.
They have had a deal with a tofu maker in Oita City for the soybean they produce. The tofu made of their soybean is said to be very tasty. We can enjoy a fine scenery and refreshing wind coming over green rice fields in the valley.
Come and take a look, and you’ll be fascinated. You will, also, be attracted by the atmosphere and the way the valley seems to other people.
The secret of the energy of this place lies in its people, I believe. A lot of people from cities moved into the hamlet and have been carrying out new things. And not just those new comers but the indigenous men and women also have the vitality and eagerness to try new things.
A lot of people capable of being leaders are found among those people around my age (in the 50s), elders and women. They have the intention of bringing up their successors. What intersts me more, those able men and women are not
different from the other people in the least. The hamlet keeps going on in a harmonious relationship, because it is open to the outside.
As is the case with the Home Page, the hamlet denizens think of their place from various incentives received through the interchange of ideas and people with other places They try hard to execute new ideas from the outside, and then people from the outside support them?they are moving in a wonderful circle.
Perhaps they don’t know where their Imori Dani will go, but I keep looking at their trail with interest.
Written by Mitsunori Itami,
Chief of Kyushu Agricultural Office
英訳はイモリ谷出身 元高校英語教員 藤垣 英夫氏の協力によるものです。
