At the beginning of this activity, we asked the question, “Will you be living in Onagawa 10 years from now?” About 80% of the children answered “no.” When asked why, many answered “because I live elsewhere for work. There were also many who said, “Because I want to live in the city. After hearing these opinions, we asked, “If you had a job you wanted to do or a restaurant you liked, would you want to live in Onagawa?” and most of the children said they would like to live in Onagawa.

After that, Dr. Suzuka and I went online and introduced some practical examples of community development in Tokushima. We then turned our attention to our own hometown, Onagawa, and proceeded in the direction of rediscovering the charms of Onagawa. 10 years later, we worked in groups to think about what kind of town we would like Onagawa to be. The activities were facilitated by an online connection with a university student from Shikoku University. Each group put together their ideas for community development into presentation materials and presented them to each other. Some of the groups planned activities such as a zipline ride across Onagawa Bay (Miyagasaki to Kojonohama), an underwater restaurant, and a bus tour combining Onagawa’s food and sightseeing in the disaster area.

The original plan was for the students to present their ideas for community development to the adults in Onagawa and the town office, but unfortunately, due to the outbreak of the new coronavirus, the online presentation did not proceed as planned, and the students only presented their ideas to each other in the classroom.