Bamboo Crafts with the Locals 🎍

How do farmers spend their time during the slow season? Making bamboo crafts! 😆 (Always creative in the countryside.) A few years ago, I met a group of farmers in Higashimiyoshi who grow soba together, and made a mini documentary on the community experience. (See it on our YouTube channel! ✨) Let’s see what they’re up to now, in the off-season of soba! 

These guys gather throughout the year, not just to farm soba together, but also to clean up the community. The nearby Kurogawara-dani River, running parallel to Minoda no Fuchi, is home to expansive bamboo forests and also a favourite spot for fireflies in June, as long as the river is pure. Since this is also a camping spot, trash can build up in the river, so for the sake of the fireflies the locals clean up the river regularly. The bamboo forest also needs consistent trimming--bamboo is fast to grow and pretty hearty--so the team ends up with a ton of harvested bamboo.

What do they use it for? Just about everything! Since ancient times in Japan, bamboo’s unique tube-like shape and flexible yet firm consistency makes it perfect for crafting all kinds of tools, like baskets, vases, fishing rods, brooms, and even instruments. From my Canadian perspective, the versatility of bamboo is a bit mind-boggling... 😵‍💫 (Needless to say, bamboo doesn’t grow naturally in my home country!)


Anyway, these bamboo craft masters deemed themselves “Chikuyuu-kai” (竹友会) which translates to “Bamboo Friendship Group”--love the name! They regularly gather to just chill and come up with new bamboo projects. Though many of them were making complex baskets and containers, I had the chance to try my hand at the easiest piece--a bamboo-woven keychain. They give these keychains to people who join their events and clean-ups, and it’s cute and looks simple to make, but is surprisingly complicated! Mine turned out… well, let’s just say there’s room for improvement. 😅  The rest of their projects they keep or sell at local Mino & Mikamon Roadside Stations.

Thanks for having me, Chikuyuu-kai! ✨

Reel video @ Hidden Tokushima 

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Find their creations for purchase at:
🚗 Roadside Station Mino

🚗 Farmer’s Market Mikamo

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Written by Bethany

January 2026 | Higashimiyoshi, Tokushima

徳島県東みよし町