The life of Mayo Ichihara of the “Oishii Mirai Kenkyujo” is made up of the synergy of work x childcare x exploration.

I started digging into food after having a baby

Celeina (MC): Ms. Ichihara joined TABI LABO Inc. in 2014 while still in college, where she was in charge of media launch, marketing, and corporate communications. 2018, after the birth of her first child, she launched TSUMUGI, a living community that experiments with a “co-feeding and co-farming” system in which fields, rice fields, and homes are cultivated as shared assets. In 2021, he will launch the general incorporated association “Oishii Mirai Kenkyujo” and lead a project for co-creation through industry-government-academia collaboration, among others.

You have a very rich profile. I understand that you also have two children.

Ichihara: I have two children, ages 5 and 3.

Takano (MC): They are adorable. But it must be a tough time for you, isn’t it?

Ichihara: It really is the peak of their lives, so it’s a very hectic time. I have been thinking about how to live happily in the midst of it all, and as a result, I have come to my current job and lifestyle.

Takano: I have heard from Ms.Ogawathat you are a “super hyper-mom,” so I would like to hear about that as well.

Celeina: Did the actual birth of your first child change your life significantly?

Ichihara: After the birth of my child, I began to focus on eating, which was a big change. Witnessing the process of human development through drinking my own milk, I realized that although we are made from the food we eat, I did not even properly know where and how the food I was eating was made and delivered to my dining table. The wisdom of grandmothers, which is usually passed down through three generations, is also unknown to those who grow up in urban nuclear families. I founded TSUMUGI, a living community with my friends as a mechanism to explore and incorporate such wisdom and a better life for ourselves and the earth into our lives together.

Takano: So you started digging into food after you had a baby?

Ichihara: Until then, I had been working hard at a start-up company, so it was a big change.

Takano: It must have been difficult for you to have a baby while you were working so hard.

Ichihara: During the busy season, I was so busy that I had to pick up the children and put them to bed once, then take over and go back to work. But I wanted to spend time around the table with my children, so I decided on a menu for the next two weeks and prepared everything on the weekends. I used various hacks to streamline my life and never wasted a minute.

Celeina: If you could give us one specific hack that you have done to improve your work efficiency, what would it be?

Ichihara: I think it was great to make a habit of combining the time of day that suits me best with the content of my work. For example, I am a morning person, so I decided to get up at 4:30 a.m. and go to bed at 9:00 p.m. with my children at night. I would get up in the morning, do the work I wanted to concentrate on before the children woke up, have meetings during the day, and go to bed gracefully at night. I think there are probably people who are night people and people who are morning people in terms of the time they can concentrate, but I think it’s a good idea to set up your time according to your own waves of concentration there.

The birth of my second child that changed my life to a life of work x childcare x exploration.

Celeina： That’s a good lesson to learn. It’s important to analyze yourself, isn’t it? I heard that when you gave birth to your second child, your life of work + childcare + exploration changed to a life of multiplication.

Ichihara: During my maternity leave for my first child, I started TSUMUGI, and my theme changed to an exploration of ways to enjoyably multiply child-rearing, work, and exploratory activities in this era of busy co-workers. I was also experimenting with what I could not do on my own, and wondered if forming a community or inheriting what already existed would bring me closer to the worldview I desired. But with the birth of our second child, there was no room for anything else. I realized that I had to change the equation, and in order to make work, childcare, and exploration multiply rather than add, I changed my work to be more closely connected with exploration, childcare, and the food and lifestyle that is connected to all of this. In this way, I was able to create a cycle in which my life as a mother is connected to my work, and the results of that work are connected to my own exploration.

Takano: I see. So you naturally sought a synergistic effect between the two.

Ichihara: That’s right. It was with our second child that we changed all of our hours to be connected.