Corner Grocery Store (4): Micoto-ya on a Trip to Japan
A Midway Turn on the Farming Path
"Actually, we originally wanted to be farmers." So says Suzuki Teppei, his face covered in a beard, wearing round black glasses. Beside him is his partner Yamashiro Toru, dressed in a hoodie and a down vest. No matter how you look at them, these two seem more like clothing store clerks in Harajuku or Shimokitazawa, yet four years ago they opened a yaoya (vegetable shop), "Mikotoya (Micoto-ya)," selling naturally cultivated fruits and vegetables, additive-free seasonings, and processed goods.
They had originally wanted a self-sufficient life, but after studying agriculture for a year in Chiba, the two discovered the problems with Japan's agricultural distribution. "Japan's shipping standards for vegetables must be the strictest in the world. Only when we really started learning farming did we discover that a lot of the vegetables we happily ate in the fields simply couldn't be shipped." Because the price of vegetables was even lower than the cost of harvesting them, many farmers simply didn't harvest, letting them rot in the fields. "Seeing that made us feel it was such a waste!"
And the reason the two became interested in agriculture and food had to do with a trip to Nepal.
(From left) Yamashiro Toru and Suzuki Teppei, friends since high school, along with recently joined Sato Shigekazu.
([Japan Correspondence] series articles are funded by a project grant from the Cheng Chen Environmental Education Foundation, but it completely does not interfere with news topics or interview writing, ensuring journalistic independence.)