Hitoshi Morimoto: Embraced by the Nature of Minami-Izu

My wife and I run a family-oriented BBQ nature experience lodge at Yumigahama, located at the southernmost tip of the Izu Peninsula. I guide activities such as Blue Cave SUP tours, pier fishing, and insect collecting.

After graduation, I joined SECOM. Following a period of study in the United States, I was assigned to the planning department at the headquarters. However, I began to question a life plan centered on corporate employment, and as my physical and mental health suffered, I voluntarily resigned at the age of 36.

After that, wanting to build bonfires, I secluded myself in Mount Takao during the severe winter and began a life as a forestry worker and charcoal-making apprentice earning 5,000 yen a day. Living in a single tent, cooking three meals over a bonfire, bathing in a drum can, and returning waste to the earth by digging holes in the snow—in that primitive lifestyle, my body and mind gradually revived. I felt the joy of simply being alive, and the breath of life filling every cell in my body.

My body and mind, exhausted, were revived by being embraced by nature. I realized that this was the kind of business I wanted to do; this is my starting point. In the summer of 1999, I used a vacant shop owned by a friend in front of Yumigahama in Minami-Izu to open a charcoal BBQ beach hut restaurant. Partly due to its novelty, people lined up, and sales for that one summer reached 2.2 million yen. Using that as capital, I visited the National Finance Corporation daily to persuade the loan officer, eventually securing an 8-million-yen loan. The following year, I built three new log houses and began my restaurant and vacation rental business.

At my beach hut restaurant back then, if you ordered yakisoba, the customers had to build their own bonfire to cook it, and many people were surprised and ran away. For me, it wasn't that I wanted to sell yakisoba; I wanted them to experience making a bonfire through the process of making yakisoba.

It is the same with the lodging business. For insect collecting, I start by explaining the risks and countermeasures for entering the mountains: ticks, leeches, hornets, pit vipers, wild boars... Quite a few fathers and mothers run away at this point. But just like with the yakisoba, I don't want to sell stag beetles; I want them to take home the mindset and etiquette for facing nature, and the lifelong memory of the excitement of a family working together to find a treasure. Perhaps because young parents today have little experience playing in the countryside, it is actually the fathers born in the Heisei era who get the most excited when they find a large Miyama stag beetle.

Well, I am 65 years old this year. I want to continue living while enjoying the pleasure of bonfires. I would be happy to share a drink while singing "Wakaki-chi."