I run the Bikan Historical Area blog "Kurashiki Tocotoco." My name is Toi Kengo, also known as Chee.
In this article, I'll introduce the following about our site "Kurashiki Tocotoco," looking back on my own past:
- The background and reasons for launching it
- My feelings toward Kurashiki
The content described is information as of the article's publication in September 2018. Please note that it may differ from current information.
I'm a blogger living in Kurashiki City
Online, I've long used the handle name "Chee," and have shared information through blogs and events.
My blog mostly covers things I like, such as gadgets like iPhones and idols.
There's almost nothing about Kurashiki.
As of September 2018, I'm 39 years old, and I was born and raised in Kurashiki City. Aside from four years at university and about three years for work, I've lived in Kurashiki the whole time.
That said, it's not as if I had a particularly strong "love for Kurashiki."
The blogging community "Okayama Blog College (Oka-buro)," which I've held once a month since April 2017, often uses shops in the Bikan Historical Area as venues, so
I kept thinking I'd like to someday make a Bikan Historical Area blog together with the Oka-buro members
but it was always a "someday" thing, without any concrete plans.
It was right around then that the disaster struck.
Okayama Prefecture's Kurashiki City was also hit by the July 2018 Heavy Rain
The July 2018 Heavy Rain affected a wide area of western Japan, including Kurashiki City in Okayama Prefecture.
In particular, the situation in Mabi, Kurashiki City, where most of the urban area was flooded, was widely reported nationwide.
Okayama Prefecture had long been free of disasters, so awareness of disaster preparedness, including my own, was surely low.
It was shocking when a disaster occurred so close by. I myself wasn't affected, but many people close to me—friends, coworkers—were.
Isn't there anything I can do, anything at all……
That's what I was thinking, when someone reached out to me, and I ended up getting involved with the Kurashiki City Disaster Volunteer Center.
My job was as a systems engineer, but I was planning to leave the company I'd worked at for 10 years in July 2018.
As it happened, I had a lot of free time, so I helped introduce a system for accepting volunteers and supported the "IT-ification" of the volunteer center.
After the disaster struck, it wasn't just the people at the Kurashiki City Council of Social Welfare, which runs the volunteer center—truly so many people were working to support the recovery of the disaster-stricken areas and the affected residents.
Learning this changed my own awareness quite a lot.
Tourist numbers plummeted in the Bikan Historical Area
It was around that time that I heard tourist numbers in the Bikan Historical Area had plummeted.
This photo was taken in mid-July 2018, but I've never seen the Bikan Historical Area this deserted.
Seeing the state of disaster-hit Mabi and the Bikan Historical Area, I felt a sadness that even surprised myself.
For the first time, I truly felt the "love for Kurashiki" I hadn't thought I had.
Kurashiki City is a tourism town.
I want to do what I can for Kurashiki
When I thought about it that way, I decided to use the knowledge I'd built up from years of running a blog to create a "web media sharing information about the Bikan Historical Area."
The concept of "Kurashiki Tocotoco"
This is the background behind the birth of the Bikan Historical Area blog "Kurashiki Tocotoco."
In terms of category, I suppose it falls under what's called a "local blog," but given the background described above, I don't intend to focus solely on information about the Bikan Historical Area.
I've positioned it as A web media sharing Kurashiki today, centered on tourism information.
For this reason, we share the following kinds of information at the same time:
- Tourism information, mainly about tourist facilities and restaurants in the Bikan Historical Area
- The situation in Mabi
In particular, as time passes, news coverage of the disaster-hit areas will decrease, and memories will fade.
But it will take years for Mabi's recovery and for the affected residents to get their lives back to normal.
Since Kurashiki City is a tourism town, I think the demand for information leans mostly toward tourism information.
With the 'hope' that by also sharing the situation in Mabi alongside that, people outside Okayama Prefecture might come to know about it too, I created "Kurashiki Tocotoco."
From the Writer
Kurashiki Tocotoco opened in September 2018, just under three months after the July 2018 Heavy Rain disaster.
I have various feelings about this, and since I intend to keep running it long-term, I imagine a lot will change as we continue.
But I wanted to record, in this article, what I felt at the time of its founding.
Thank you for your support of "Kurashiki Tocotoco."
What would you like to know about Kurashiki?
Enter a search term to find articles on this site
