Volunteer work in Japan: Giant Salamander Conservation Center
11th to 28th of May, 2025.
I think I’m getting good at not stressing too much about volunteer work places which don’t work out. Unfortunately, apparently I’m also getting good at attracting those place for myself.
The profile on Workaway was saying to help with the conservation of the Japanese giant salamander and some farming. It’s actually only farming and eventually, if you are lucky, to come along a tour for the salamanders and then that’s it. Perhaps in the past volunteers could help more with this project; perhaps that’s the goal for the future…
As I wait for the volunteers to come back home from the farm where they work, I use the Wi-Fi of the place (luckily it reaches the streets) to look into some Workaways in New Zealand. It’s all good until my battery runs out and I really need to pee. After two nice neighbours already had asked me if I’m OK just waiting there, a third one comes along, this very sweet seniour lady, and so I tell her I really need to use the toilet. She has just arrived from shopping in Yonago, and invites me to come inside her home. Her house is super cute and spacious, indeed beautiful and full of nice decoration. She offers me a box of almond milk and a bun filled with some cream, which is delicious. As I’m out of battery, I can not use the translator, which is just fine and actually reminds me how I don’t really need that to have a nice conversation with someone who I don’t know the language.
When the volunteers Kylie and Nils comes back, they show me the place and my bedroom. The house is very big, with spacious rooms and in good condition. My bedroom is big and the only one with an actual bed. It’s an actually a very nice bedroom and I like it a lot.
Our host, Richard gives us an allowance of 2000 Yens per week for food. Plus, he provides rice, oil, a box of fresh “vegetables” per week, and some seasoning. The small market nearby the house is more expensive than the big ones in Yonago, but still doable.
The biggest problem to be honest is the fact that we must drive to the farm everyday and I cannot drive. Of course, I told that to Richard during our chats and he said it should be fine as the other volunteers could drive. Unfortunately, a lot of things started to happen, and it became a snowball, added to the fact the Richard is away in a cycling tour which he’s promoting, so all the communication is done via WhatsApp messages, which always makes everything worse.
What happened was that, Kylie had done some extra hours in the past, added to the fact that we must go and look after the animals every single day, including our days off, which means that this extra hour in our days off accumulates and become another day off eventually, so she was all settle with her working hours according to the day she would be leaving. And then the other volunteer who came back from helping Richard with the tour, who was also already doing way more extra hours than he should, needed two days off to prepare himself for an important meeting. Altogether, this simply meant two things: 1) I would not be going to work for three days in a roll, which is not a big deal per se, as I could simply do all my hours later on, before I leave; 2) somebody else would have to look after the animals one day, and only this one day. It seems reasonably fixable, right? Not really a big deal. Well, it was for Richard.
He sent me a message saying untrue and unfair things, and in the end he basically said that things were not working and I would most likely have to leave. He did ask me to tell him my thoughts about it. Well, luckily I didn’t do it immediately. As I was exploring Yonago that day, and received his message after I was walking for hours and hadn’t had anything to eat, I got very angry with it, and realized and I didn’t want to keep on working with someone so disrespectful and ungrateful. But I waited. I ate, I came home, I talked with Kylie, I took a shower and I rested. Then I messaged him.
I have only one more week here before I have to hitchhike towards Tokyo to catch my flight. If I leave now, it means I will have to keep travelling everyday, camping here and there for seven days, and then go to the airport. I have just done that, a week ago, as Miles and I were travelling and camping for over ten days. So I decide that I will tell Richard all about his wrong and unfair attitude, but still be reasonable and explain to him that we can fix this situation. And it works. He doesn’t apologizes per se, but he says that it was all miscommunication and that he’s looking forward to meet me and talk in person about my travels and all. I honestly don’t think I can trust him anymore, after what he has done, but I’m willing to coop with it, just for now. Because even though one might say that he had his reasons, that the messages confused him, I think that nothing justify to simply kick out a person like that out of nowhere, without even talking properly? He could’ve called me and try to understand, but instead he called Kylie and even had an argument with her. What’s the point?
The work is looking after the chickens and collecting their eggs. Then looking after the two goats, Pekan and Lilly, and give them some food and love. Last but not the least, look after and do some training with the two pigs, Rony and Ray.
For the time I was here, the other task we have is building a bamboo fence, and it’s some hard work. In another area, we chop off, with machetes, a lot of bamboos and then clean them, to finally pile them up to make a fence. It’s supposed to be an experimental thing, as nobody has done it before, neither did Richard. Again, due to miscommunication, it ends up not being exactly what Richard wanted. What a surprise!
I go for my daily walk by the sea. The house we are staying is only some hundred metres from the sea, and there’s a lovely and long path alongside of it. It’s the best part of this whole thing.
I start doing a jigsaw puzzle, but couldn’t finish for one or two days only.
Richard comes back only a few days before I leave. I meet him at the farm, and all he does that morning is complain about our work. What ever we did or did not was not good. Everything kind of was against us as well, as the unstoppable rain for the past two days, which made the goat’s place look unattended, simply because they didn’t go out for this past 48 hours, and did all their necessities inside. But as Richard was in the mood for not liking anything, I decided not to say anything, or try to explain things for what they were. Francis, the other volunteer, did the same. So we did a big clean job altogether, we talked a little bit, and then Richard gave me a lot of t-shirts to folded for the remaining hours of the day. Honestly, this was the most enjoyable task I’ve had here.
Next day, as we should not come to the farm on Mondays (don’t ask why), I cleaned the whole volunteers house in order to look decent for the new volunteers arriving, a couple from Germany. Normally, it shouldn’t count as working hours, but as I had already cleaned the house a little bit during the past two weeks, and all by myself, I thought it wouldn’t be fair if it didn’t count as working hours, also because it would be a big job cleaning the whole house, plus preparing the new arrivals’ bedroom. Apart from that, it took me another two hours to finish folding all the t-shirts, as they were almost two hundred in total.
This same night there is a tour for the salamanders. I considered not coming, as I had planned to do other things, but as this is kind of a unique opportunity, I asked Richard if I could come, because there are only three tourists doing. He says I can come so I joy them.
The tour is nice. We capture and study one salamander, and after go looking for others in a different place. As I help Richard with some stuff, he even says that I’m the best assistant ever. Just a bit too late for compliments, mate. We wear proper clothing to walk on water, like fishing costumes, as we will be walking through the streams and rivers for hours. We see about eight salamanders and they are all super cute. On our way back we hike through the jungle which is awesome! Having a head torch is super cool and the fact that you know that nothing can crawl on you or into your trousers, as you are wearing this fishing costume, is very encouraging.
On my last day working, Richard and I show the new volunteers some stuff at the farm, but mostly Richard. Before we going to visit the place where we built the bamboo fence, we make a quick stop at a local Japanese man, who’s an artist working with wood. He builds everything you can imagine, and it’s all gorgeous. He’s not only a brilliant artist but also a very smart man. The reason why we came here is to collect some wood beams which Richard will use as poles for the fence, a completely different concept of what he had told us previously.
Even though he’s not happy with the fence, he’s kind of happy with my efforts. He tells me he wishes we’ve had worked together for longer, so he could use my skills in a better way; and if we’ve had communicated more directly things would’ve been better. Agreed. I guess that was his way of apologizing.
One my last night, as I hear something which looks like an ambulance coming and going, I wake up thinking – Stupid ambulance driver who doesn’t know how to use GPS. I get up with the volunteer girl from Germany, telling us that there’s a fire. It was not an ambulance I’ve heard but the fire brigade.
As we walk outside the house we can see the fire in a distance. It’s really not far from us, only about three or four hundred metres, and it’s big. I mean, it’s only in one house but we can see the flame up high. The neighbours are alert but don’t seem to be panicking, neither the fire fighters. I am still a bit cautious and go upstairs to my bedroom and finish all my packing before put on some clothes to go and take a closer look at the fire.
In some twenty minutes or so everything is under control and we all go back to bed. Still, due to the whole commotion and the adrenaline, I struggle to go back to sleep for the next two hours, meaning I have very little rest before having to get up.
I leave the house later than I planned as I had to wait for my working clothes to dry properly before packing them, simply because I could only wash them yesterday later afternoon, after coming back from the farm. That’s when I realize that, in the end, after all the injustices committed here, and all the misunderstandings, I’m the one who got more badly affected by all this. It’s so unfair…
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10 Years Around the World 