I can already say: hello again. Because I’ve now lived in Japan and worked at Obubu for 8 months 🙂
I remember how, in my fifth month, I already started worrying about the end of the program, because I was halfway through it. I’m now at the point where my photo gallery is nothing but Japan, tea, my international friends, and work-related screenshots. I actually open it every time I write one of our quarterly Assistant Manager blogs, just to remember what has happened to me.
Of course, the most important event, which prompted a lot of reflection, was the arrival of the next group of Assistant Managers.
It’s not the same as welcoming a new group of interns. These people are our successors and the future leaders of the areas each of us has been working on for the past 8 months.
There are 3 former interns in the new group, and I’ve crossed paths with all of them before. Lotte was a Slot 4 intern in 2025, while I was a Slot 3 intern in 2025. I welcomed her to our Obubu house, but graduated a week later, so I only got to follow Lotta’s journey through a screen.
The other two, Katy and Kenji, I met during my time as a manager. In spring, they were interns, and by autumn, they were already managers.
I’m also happy to see those who are just beginning their Obubu story in the new group: Arthur, Katie, Allison, and Giana.
I’ve started spending more time at the Hojicha House because I really love our morning or evening conversations while we drink tea or eat together. I feel completely understood and happy to have 7 more wonderful, versatile, and funny people around me.
We also welcomed the Slot 4 interns in September. The last slot of 2026. This group will graduate together with our Assistant Manager slot. I can officially say that these 7 people are the most stylish personalities I’ve seen on the farm (not counting Akki-san’s unique style and Hiro-san’s choice of footwear).
I would call this stage a transition, almost like returning to reality outside Obubu, because I’m now doing less myself and spending more time passing on the knowledge I’ve gained here and watching the next generation of people take on a sense of ownership.
I won’t lie, I often feel sad.
Sometimes I feel like those characters from Toy Story when their boy grew into a teenager and stopped playing with them. But then I remember that, out of all the Cars movies, my favorite is the third one. In it, Lightning McQueen passes on his knowledge to a new model of car built for the modern style of racing. At first, he feels rejected, his ego is hurt, but then he experiences one of the most complex human feelings: passing on knowledge and seeing how it makes someone else’s journey easier.
Moving away from the topic of the team transition, I also had a 6-day vacation over the past few months.
We traveled around Nagano Prefecture. It was a good getaway because summers are cooler in this prefecture, and there was a chance to see lots of waterfalls and mountain ranges, and try their signature dish, soba.
It was funny to see buckwheat plantations. In Japan, buckwheat isn’t eaten as a grain, but is used to make tea or flour. In Ukraine, however, buckwheat is a staple side dish. And the sight of flowering buckwheat fields reminds me so much of home.
This quarter was quite cozy because it wasn’t harvest season. But today, most of the team is cleaning the factory before the harvest begins, so things are about to get louder and busier.
Two final important updates: spider lily season in Kyoto has come to an end, and our Assistant Manager slot finally took a group photo (after 8 months of living and working together).
But as you can see, we look more like people standing in line at a konbini at 10 PM: very different, but with something in common.
See you in my final blog in December.
Bye-bye!