Naoko Tomita often refers to "waku waku," conveying the excitement in her heart. Currently, her waku waku is relocating to a tiny house in Tateyama, a rural seaside town in Japan.
Change our inner way of thinking
Nick: You love this word, waku waku. So would you like to touch on its meaning and how you interpret waku waku?
Naoko: Well, it represents the bouncing of your heart and bouncing of your excitement. Like, maybe this kind of body language in my head or something. I have waku waku every day, ever since when I was little.
But the current work that I have, I just talked about my well water. But last year, I moved to a tiny house in a rural seaside town called Tateyama. And I want to show you where I was living before, I was living here before. Right in front of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building, surrounded by skyscrapers. And now I have moved and now I'm living here.Nick: Oh, wow. That's such a contrast. There's only one building or one small little house.
Naoko: Yes, in the field. So I'm talking from the small buildings, small house, right now. And this is Tateyama in Chiba prefecture. It's about two hours from Tokyo by car. And we have electricity, but no public water system, and only well water.
And it's like 700 meters away from the Pacific Ocean and surrounded by abandoned farmland. Isn't this waku waku?
Nick: I think so. Yeah, it would be for many people. And it must be so beautiful to have fresh air and no manmade noise, just the sounds of nature. And I bet the water tastes good as well, yeah?
Naoko: Actually, not really. The mountain waters are more tasty, often tasty, but we have hard water. So it has too many calcium and magnesium in it. So I have to purify this water. Many things we have to do, but many things I can learn.
And it really was a life shift for me, because I only have experienced drinking tap water. And so I didn't know that there's such soft and hard water. And if I only have hard water, I'm learning so many things every day.
But anyway, by studying SDGs, there are so many things that I wanted to try, such as off grid from the power supply, regenerative farming, or like passive house construction and others. So I don't have to use much energy by living like the heat and air conditioning.
So there's so many things that I wanted to do. And I also found that the inner development will be key for the sustainable transformation. So I don't think we can achieve the SDGs go just with our mindset, the current mindset. So really, we have to change our inner way of thinking.
And I heard from someone that the consciousness changes our daily lives, and our daily lives changes our consciousness. So if I could transform myself by having a different daily life, I thought I might find a clue to transform the world as well. So this is a huge experiment for me.