Spring greetings! Please find our project update since January 2008 below:

-Kobunaki Ecovillage First Stage on the Move
-Participation in the Eco-Products International Fair 2008

[Kobunaki Ecovillage First Stage on the Move]

The land development for the first construction area of Kobunaki Ecovillage has finally been completed in this March. This first area covers 107 house plots as well as community center, park and farm stand. The 107 house plots were released onto the market in October 2007, receiving a favorable reputation. Those who already decided to buy plot and house in Kobunaki Ecovillage are mainly young families in their thirties, followed by families in their late fifties and forties, as well as late twenties. Inspired by the Ecovillage concept, they have high environmental consciousness or keen interest in vegetable gardening.

In time for completion of the land development, we held a two-day on-site debriefing event on 19 and 20 April, and about 400 families visited the Kobunaki Ecovillage site. The main purpose of the event is for potential Kobunaki residents to feel and experience the lifestyles of Kobunaki Ecovillage and the community appeal of the Omihachiman area. The event was situated in the place where to be a community park, and was lined with about 30 stalls. These include housing equipments such as photovoltaic generation panels, compost facilities, and rainwater tanks, as well as tasty local food such as ice cream, bread, Japanese bracken-starch dumpling, and organic vegetable grown at the 100 Seeds Theatre, a farm next to Kobunaki. Also, visitors enjoyed hands-on ecological activities to try on bamboo dyeing or driving bio-diesel fueled go-cart.

We would like to plan more community activities to prepare for move-in of Kobunaki residents starting this summer.

[Participation in the Eco-Products International Fair 2008]

We participated in the highly successful Eco-Products International Fair 2008, held on 1-4 March at the My Dinh National Convention Center in Hanoi, Vietnam. The event was initiated by the Asian Productivity Organization (APO) in 2004, and this is the fourth time to hold the EPIF in APO member countries, which aims to accelerate the expansion of green markets by promoting environment-friendly products and services. In 2008, the Directorate for Standards and Quality–Vietnam Productivity Centre was the central organizer of the EPIF 2008 in conjunction with its partners.

We are now considering Vietnam as one of the potential sites for next ecovillage project. This was triggered by various relationships made during the process of realizing Kobunaki Ecovillage; such as a civil engineering consultant, which draw master plan of Kobunaki, has been involved in revision projects of urban development plan in Vietnamese cities, or university researchers, who contributed to apply a new construction method, has been implementing Japanese ODA related project in the midland of Vietnam.

Taking the opportunity to join the EPIF, we organized a project team named “Eco-Community for Asia” in cooperation with researchers from various fields. At the event, we exhibited the concept of our ecovillage project, current activities and related techniques and wisdoms. According to the organizers, 98,469 people visited the four-day exhibition, which turned out to receive many more visitors than past EPIFs. I wonder if that is because Vietnamese people are very interested in Japanese high-tech products like electronic appliances or smart automobiles, rather than unalloyed interest on “eco” or “sustainable” products. Among other exhibitors, we might offer unique way which is focused on systems building of sustainable community development. As a result, we were very happy that we were able to receive more than 2000 visitors at our booth and discuss with some of them what kind of Eco-community they want to live or create in Vietnam.

Vietnam has a rapidly growing economy, but at the same time, there is concern that the country is facing the serious health and environmental problems as Japan has experienced in the past. It might take some more time for us to starting up an ecovillage project in Vietnam, but with the experiences from this trip, we feel that there seems to be a key to propose how to handle the immediate problems in their daily lives such as water or air pollution, as well as to appeal the importance of dealing with global environmental problems.

Editor's note
Now is the midst of holiday-studded week called “Golden Week” in Japan, Recently, I heard that there is a movement to call “Green Week” instead of “Golden Week”, spending time off with less carbon dioxide emission. For example, joining eco-tour, having home party with organic food, go out without car but with bicycle or train, and more and more ideas. It might be nice to go for cycling around the Lake Biwa. (Tomomi Takada)