the last night I had dinner with a few graduates from Waseda University. Ogawa and SHIMADZU are all my students in the early rice fields. Now they have become social workers and work in different companies.
the reason for dinner in the evening is to congratulate them on going to the countryside to become a farmer. They set up an agricultural company to start farming in Nagano Prefecture.
in fact, they are not the first batch of farmers in the early rice fields. Two years ago, I had also sent 4 students away from green wood, and 4 of them ran to Niigata county to rent a barren farmland, planting strawberries and sheds and vegetables.
leaving Tokyo metropolis, actually ran to the countryside to start a business. What is it? Two years ago, green wood once said that his own home in Xiongben County, from a small habit of living in a small city, in Tokyo reading and working for a few years, always feel lost in the city, can not find the sense of existence in this city. Although Tokyo is an international metropolis, the night and night are bright and green, but it feels that the city does not belong to itself, and there is a sense of floating without root; and it is real to go to the countryside to start a business.
the Japanese college student
this is the reason why green wood and his partners left Tokyo two years ago. So tonight, when I talked with Ogawa about entrepreneurship, I asked them a question: why not stay in Tokyo to engage in the Internet economy, but instead go to the countryside to cultivate land?
Ogawa's answer made me somewhat surprised. They said: "Japan's Internet industry has been very developed. Last year, its contribution to the economy has accounted for 3.7% of GDP and the market size is 20 trillion yen. Therefore, it is more and more difficult to start the Internet business, and the risk is higher and higher. We can not touch it. When
Ogawa talked about the Internet economy, Japan's search engine market has been carved up by YAHOO and Google. Internet banking has been carried out in Japan at least 10 years, new means of payment is not a single such as Alipay, even many people worry that the account is stolen, no Internet banking. The most powerful online games are software developers and game developers, not ordinary young people. The "dripper taxi", which originated in the United States, tried for 3 years in Japan and finally dropped out, because the Japanese taxi industry association and the economic and industrial province thought it was the culprit to destroy the order of the taxi market and lead to the flood of black cars.
so, in general, the Internet economy in Japan, either in some areas, is already ahead of the world, or in some areas that too much emphasis on fair competition prohibits disorderly competition, and young people are unable to stir up this market.
from the whole social sense, the Japanese are eager for universal employment, and the employment rate of university graduates is as high as 94%. It is not surprising that Japanese young people are willing to leave Tokyo for farming in rural areas.
in the hearts of young Japanese people, there is such a idea: "you can't ask your parents for money, you can't borrow money from your friends, you can't add trouble to others." Young Japanese sit behind the sea facing the setting sun. They will not tell the truth, but will say, "I worked hard today."
Ogawa and SHIMADZU are going to go to Nagano Prefecture tomorrow. They have a dream: renting old farmers' abandoned land into orchards, introducing rare fruit varieties from the world, building an orchard into a tourist site, opening online stores and selling their own products on the Internet. Although farming in the countryside, they will make full use of e-commerce to achieve the most perfect combination of the real economy and the Internet economy.
compared to young people in Japan, some young people in some countries are more admired for "starting a business today and going on the market tomorrow", but it's hard to say which one of the young people in any country is wrong. For young people, dreams are beautiful.