Kamiyama is a large town, and the different villages are very spread out so the majority of children commute to school by school bus on weekdays.  On weekends and holidays, their guardians help them to travel from one place to another and for this reason, the options for places to play are quite limited. To begin with, we spoke with some parents of nursery school children, elementary school students and middle school students to hear about how their children spend their after school hours at the moment.

Let’s meet Chie Nakagawa, a founder of parenting group “WakuWaku” and Hirotaka Watanabe, a professional dancer who is working for the Foodhub Project.We heard about the family dance lesson they started this year. We paid a visit to meet them in the gymnasium of Agawa’s former elementary school.

There are two elementary schools in Kamiyama – Hirono and Jinryo. The Gakudo (after-school childcare) centers are adjacent to each school building. For this interview, we invited the headmistress of Hirono Kids Club, Mika Sakamoto, and Yui Kawano, a childcare worker from Sudachi Kids Club to Nishibun House.

There are two Junior Sports Associations in Kamiyama. Head coach, Norimitsu Takahashi, and coach Tsuyoshi Abe, of “Kamiyama Rookies Youth Baseball Club” and head coach Yusuke Sasaki, and coach Kenji Abe, of “Jinryo volleyball club” , were all born in Kamiyama. I spoke to them at Jinryo elementary school where both team are based.

It is their mission to create a place where people can be immersed in books as well as make an environment that is beneficial for reading in Kamiyama. This is “Hon no Hiroba”, the micro library. In this episode I spoke to Sadako and Kazue at the Kaizen community center where their activities for “Hon no Hiroba” began.

Join “Mikke Trail Club” every Monday after school at Akuigawa Common for trail running and to enjoy the beauty of nature around Oawayama mountain. Naoki Ueta and Mio Matsuoka accompany children on their run through the natural landscape of Kamiyama.

Akuigawa Common, is a place dedicated to improving childcare support by providing a safe place for children after school and on holidays, as well as a better reading environment for them too. For this episode, I spoke to three people who work at Akuigawa Common: Daisuke Motohashi, the organizer of the monthly “CoderDojo Kamiyama” and two staff members at Common, Ayano Miyoshi and Megumi Futo.

Over the 6 series of interviews, we spoke to different people to find out about activities and after school time for children of Kamiyama. For the last interview, we met some more parents with children from different age groups to ask about their thoughts on this series of interviews.