Cultural and tourism attraction in workaway projects as a sustainable agriculture development attempt in rural area: A case study of a Workaway Project in Yufuin

Industrialization and the attraction of the city have generated urbanization from the villages to the big cities. The downgrading scheme can be seen through the agricultural sector which suffers several serious problems toward the increase of a mass urbanization, ageing society, and the decline of the young farmers’ population. The data of this research is analyzed with qualitative methods using content analysis of the literature studies. The explanation will be provided by analyzing what aspects which could make Workaway projects sustainable, including the cultural exchange form and the tourism attraction aspect. The projects mainly tend to focus in finding the workers using counterurbanization attraction of the tourism magnetism around the place. There are approximately 60 projects which are related to agriculture projects around Japan. The purpose of this research is to identify and explain how Workaway Project in Yufuin can provide the network between the local community and the international society to contribute in helping the local farmers. This research found that the project is helpful in solving part of the problems in Japanese agriculture in rural areas.


Introduction
According to Ministry of International Affairs and Communication, the declining of Japanese population is becoming one of the big concerns of Japanese international relation with the other countries. As population is declining, the agriculture under the traditional production approach will be forced to cut production in line with falling demand. This will affect food security and make the agricultural development difficult. According to this, Japan needs to switch its agricultural production through the dependency on domestic products to import more agricultural products from foreign countries [1]. However, there are some options to attempt the increase in agricultural products, one of those is getting the workers for the agriculture sector from other countries. This option also has a drawback if we count how much the money that Japan should spend for bringing the foreign workers in and what kind of deal that the country should set with the other country(s) which agreed to send their citizens to work as a farmer in Japan. Related to this, another way of bringing the worker in is occurred in this era. It is not through an international political and economic relations which are conducted by both of the governments that have agreed to negotiate the cooperation, but by the local community which attempting to cooperate with the global society that is linked through the global network connection like websites and social medias.  Figure 1 shows the population projections for Japan in the next 30 years. The estimation of the productive society population is becoming equal with the population of the elderly society. Hence, Japan will need more people to take care of the elderly, with using the family members, public sector, or private companies. This means Japan needs to figure out the solutions to solve the labor problems, because the competition in finding the human resources in Japan is getting hard year by year. Each sector also should show its own attractions to attract Japanese people to make a decision to work in those sectors.
The problem that Japan is facing now is the impact of the globalization and the technology that already can be reached easily, even in rural areas. It makes the people in rural areas could see what is happening in the big cities, and as a result the cities attraction is pulling them to migrate to the city (related to urbanization). Specifically, the farmers in rural areas which have a quite good income could send their children to continue their study in the universities, mostly those which are located in the urban areas, and because of the attractions of the city (entertainment, high salary jobs, the better facilities, etc.) the farmer's children are no longer wanting to continue their parents' job as a farmer in rural areas. This conducts to the decreasing numbers in today's farmer's population in Japan, especially the young farmers. In addition, Japanese government's attempt for solving the labor problem in agriculture sector has been started since 1984 through the "training scheme" of foreign young farmers (including the Indonesians) to join a course in Japan for 8 to 12 months. Furthermore, there are also some similar type of projects which are conducted by the local governments in Japan and also the private companies in agriculture sectors. However, these projects need a huge amount of money for the fund of their accommodations, transportation fee, travel and health insurance, and visa expenses, while for the small-scale agriculture, the volunteer-based workers are more suitable in helping the local farmers to sustain their productivity.

Method
The type of project like what we will discuss in this writing, Workaway project, is trying to turn over the "urbanization" phenomenon which is mainly caused by the pull factors in the city that had already mentioned above, with the "counterurbanization" theory. Counterurbanization is a demographic and social processes whereby people move from urban areas to rural areas [3]. There are the "push factors" and the "pull factors" which become the reason why people in the city migrate to the villages. The push factors are like the traffic congestion, noise pollution, lack of garden; open space and parks, higher crime rates, parking shortages, and the air pollution. These things usually considered as "negative" because these things make the urban people decide to move to the rural area and leave the city. While on the other hand, the pull factors are considered as the "positive" cause because those factors are the good things that make people are attracted to move. Those pull elements are the larger house with garden, pleasant scenery, lower crime rates, safer for children (not so many big roads and huge vehicles), the improvement of the rural facilities (including the internet connection and the transportation tracks), and less pollution (noise and air).
In analyzing the data that the authors found by doing a participant observation, the authors use the newest interpretation of counterurbanization phenomenon. Clare J. A. Mitchell assumes the phenomenon of counterurbanization are values and ideology reflection in the preference of each person's living style thus taking into consideration. There are some types of motivations, for instance the people who are forced out of the city in consequence of some factors such as: the incapability to find work, the increased cost of living, or disaffection and/or the disputes with the culture of the urban society. Also, those who decide to leave and also forget the culture and the lifestyle of the city. The absolute decision to move away from the city for this type of counterurbanization is usually a step toward to the rejection of materialism and the spiritual growth [4]. Therefore, for the people who adopt this values and ideology, rural migration seems like an ideal option to escape the urban areas. These points of counterurbanization refer to those who will move from the urban areas to then live for a long time in the rural areas. However, the idea that the authors will convey in this paper is a counterurbanization theory with a short length of time. In other words, the theory refers to the people who choose to go to the rural areas because of the push and/or pull factors of the urban and rural areas for a short stay-to travel, not leaving the previous place to live for a long time in the other place.
This writing theoretical basis related to the research objectives focuses on two sectors which, in this era, become interdependent by one another: tourism and agriculture. In this case, both of those sectors are interconnected through the internet system. The tourism sector needs the contribution of the agriculture sectors in providing the basic food products supply for the tourists. Even if the tourism attraction and promotion succeed in bring more tourists in to come and stay longer, there will be more demand for the basic food products that will be requested to the agriculture sector. Similar to this, the agriculture sector nowadays could get the positive impact from the tourism attraction near the agriculture area in the rural places to bring the volunteers from around the world to help the farmers which suffer from the lack of labor in the agriculture sector. One of the programs that conduct the voluntary workers to work in the farm is Workaway. In order to understand what aspect that the authors will observe in this research, the authors use the understanding of cultural and tourism relation with the needs of agriculture sector in rural area through the "network theory". The network theory has been used to analyze the reality of Japan and the kinds of feedback to this theory, this is because the network theory includes a variety of activities which is related to the human relations that are compiled in anthropological studies. The most important thing that should be emphasize here, related to the network connection is the language. Language creates an environment in which it is possible for people living anywhere in the world to communicate, provided they are proficient in that language [6][7][8][9].
Within this, the authors will focus on the participant observation research the authors have personally carried out into the communication networks of young people in Japan. There are two main reason why the authors focus on young people. The first is because young people considered to be the age group at a stage when they are expanding their human relations. Second, due to the declining of Japanese population, the future of what the current young people in Japan will be is becoming the interesting thing to be discussed because they are the next generations which is going to bring Japan to the top or even in a contrary. Researchers discovered human relations among the youth as a subject matter for research [10]. Our research is about the importance of voluntary project which in this case in an agriculture sector, which has a relation with the attractiveness of the local tourism in the rural area, and also the cultural exchange offer. The object of research is the interaction among the youth in the Workaway project in Harappa Cafe, Yufuin, from July 26 th to August 3 rd , 2019.

Japanese youth nowadays
Social capital theorists such as Robert Putnam considered voluntary associations to be capital that brought about a variety of benefits to a community. The Japanese have often been described as a group-oriented people, but as we have seen, present day young Japanese people would best be described as relation-oriented or perhaps network-oriented people. As we shall see later, this attitude has appeared in the mode of usage of the "Social Media Networks" (SMNs) that have spread dramatically since the latter half of the 2000s [8]. Nowadays, Japanese youth has been changed time to time. Before SMNs become popular, the social contact with the strangers to discuss and/or organize something together directly or indirectly were rarely happened. On the basis of this background, it is possible to examine why does current young people sustain such intense networks, and what effect do these networks have on the formation of the youth's self-awareness? Is it for this reason that the phenomena of the interconnected among young people are selected as the specific subject material when overviewing the development of network theory in Japan. This relates to the community in rural agriculture society in Yufuin which was formed by breaking free of geographical restrictions through the SMNs. The youth human relation maintained on the Internet are not limited to those with the kind of close friends that one meets every day.

Tourism and cultural exchange in workaway program
Workaway is an organization which has a program that connected the tourism attraction and the volunteering abroad projects with the travelers in around the world through a website: www.workaway.info. This organization has already been contributing in a tourism sector since 2002, under Volunteer Exchange Network (VEN ltd.) Company which has the head office in Hongkong. The pull factors that could bring the people in around the globe in to join the program are not limited to the type of the projects and the location (i.e. experience farmstay in Japan), but also the variety of offers that the host or the contributor of the project offers. Some offer the availability in getting paid if the volunteer, or in this case they call it "workawayer", has a residence permit that officially allows them to work there-like a foreign student which has a student visa, a person which come from the same country with the country he/she chooses, and also the "working-holiday visa" -while some others only offer the "free bed and meals". Residence permit allowing travelers to undertake employment (and sometimes study) in the country issuing the visa to supplement their travel funds.
An interesting question is the degree to what kind of people which is attracted to the working holiday project. To answer such question, we need to look into what the program offers. The program offer the exchange of culture and skill in various projects such as NGO projects (Non-Governmental Organization), cultural exchange, teaching projects (mathematics, certain skills, and languages-especially English), guest house or private house assistant (to be the host for the customer or to help with the cleaning services), animal care, children care, the environmental sustainability projects, cooking, cruise and fishery, and farmstay (something related to agriculture and forestry projects). While the voluntary workers contribute in helping the project, they could get the accommodation facility to stay and eat for free during they working days there, excluding the transportation fee from and to the location and also the meals on the day-off. The rules and facilities depend on each project leader or host family which are written on the page of each project in details. Many of the recent tourism development are also likely to adopt the "bed and breakfast" type of service like this. The importance of bed and breakfast accommodations to the domestic economy has been recognized otherwhere in the past time. However, what the authors found in Workaway Projects scheme in 2019 is not only "breakfast" but more than one meal, there were three meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner).
"Many islanders provide bed and breakfast accommodation in their own homes, which provides extra income in the tourist season." (Ennew: 1980: 56) [11] In other word, the type of tourism like Workaway set the "budget traveler" and the "voluntary job seeker" as its target. Those who are not only travel to relax but also to do something useful for themselves and others with a minimum budget. Moreover, the fact that such holiday could help the world problem that are mentioned in SDGs, such as poverty, literacy, and even the lack of labors in some important sectors, especially in rural areas.

The volunteering aspect in workaway program
The development of a tourism industry in the local economy led to the development of new forms of social relations between the host and the visitors. In the home page of the website (www.workaway.info), there are some explanations about the projects, the places, and also the videos about a glimpse of what kind of program Workaway is. Also, there is the instruction on "how to apply" as the host (contributor that set a project or more) and/or volunteer (workawayer). There are already 180 countries which join the program, and in total there are approximately 40213 locations in around the world with a different background type of help. In Asia, there are about 2813 projects, and in Japan itself there are 193 projects throughout the country-60 projects are related to agriculture projects [12]. If we look at the Figure 3, although the number of community-based farm cooperatives is increasing steadily, but in the past ten years, the number of community-based farm cooperatives is larger than the corporations' share. This indicates that the agriculture sector  To apply as a workawayer and/or the contributor leader of the project (that is arranged by the applicant), the applicant needs to fulfill a complete personal data of himself/herself and also pay the annual account fee for about $42,00 USD and if the applicant want to buy an e-book of Workaway Guidebook, he/she needs to pay more for $8.50 USD through Pay Pal with the Credit Card or other money transfer services. To ask more about the payment, the applicant could contact the VEN through the email: payment@workaway.info. The money is not only to secure the account and the applicant itself during the one year contract of the account activation, but also to be shared to the areas that need the funding, such as to the school construction project in Vietnam, art and creative organization that focusing to the people with disabilities to also unfold and extend their creativity in South Africa, also a small orphanage in Southern Nepal, near Chitwan. The information about these donation projects can be seen on www.workawayfoundation.org. Furthermore, talking about the security system for both host and workawayer, the Workaway team has written some points of suggestions of the precautions and also the guarantee for them that they could always report any suspicious or abusive behavior of the host or the workawayer to the Workaway team through the direct message in the website (www.workaway.info) [12].

Promoting the rural attraction
Destination countries are the recipients of tourists. They provide the novelty and superficial rationale for an overseas holiday [14]. Japan on the other hand has a distinctive example from a setting up of a tourism initiative like Bradford (a city in Great Britain which optimizing its major tourism potential that began in 1980). Consideration is now being given to the development of a museum and a festival to complete the visitor's experience in Bradford (Davies, 1987) [15]. Japan has a rural entrepreneurial scheme which renowned as "One Village One Product" (一村一品運動  Isson Ippin Undō). This is a regional development attempt which began in Ōita Prefecture in 1979 when the then-governor Morihiko Hiramatsu advocated the program. The implementation was started in the next year. This approach aims to support the rural economy by the promotion of the local products, also to transform local cultures and environments to make them attractive to both local residents and tourists. The attempt was not only to preserve the historical sites and the old culture, but also to create a new attraction like the local festivals and mascots (the symbol, sign, or special character which is attractive to be seen). These attractions become a part of rural attraction for the people from outside the area (including the people from foreign countries), especially the urban people.
The latter factor, tourism promotion, is a vital element in the dynamics of the tourist industry. Along with transport linkages, accommodation provision and fare costs, the image or perceived attractions of a destination are the critical factors in directing tourist flows [14]. The attractiveness of countryside tourism needs to be publicized abroad to strategically create opportunities for people to become aware of local initiatives. In this era, the attractive things in Japanese rural areas, such as the promotion of rural areas for the sustainable development of agriculture sector, could be easily shown to the people in the other part of the world through social networking services.
There is a universalization of the tourist gaze in postmodern cultures-which in Japan mainly takes the form of heritage and vernacular reshaping of the rural and urban landscape. The essence of tourism is multi-faceted and principally occupied with many other sociocultural elements in contemporary societies. The social tone of different areas; the universalization and the globalization of the tourist gaze; the process of consuming tourist services; tourist signs and meanings; modernism and postmodernism; history, heritage and the vernacular, and post-tourism and play are relevant to comprehend the changing sociology of the tourist gaze [9].

The pull factors of the workaway projects in rural area
The contemporary cultural experience which is included in the attractions of the Workaway Projects in rural areas are the construction of themes and notions of cultural and educational tourism developments, which imply that further transformations are occurring in the complex relationship among leisure, work, and holidays. This associates in a significant way to the development of holidays. Workaway projects offer the other way of travelling which usually only fetch the things, thoughts, and experiences from the place or people. This other way leads to the "give and take" action. The "give and take" action means the travelers could also give something useful to the community and the site that they visit like helping in the projects and contributing in the cultural exchange among the global society (the workawayers and the local residents), while also could take the advantages from the situation, such as the mutual cultural exchange (language, way of life, local knowledge, art, dance, music, etc.), the chance to explore the place, and the new skills that they could get from the projects that they work on there and also from the interaction with the local society and the volunteers. Additionally, Japanese traditional and pop culture, also its language is quite famous in around the world through the spread of Japanese movies, performing art pieces (especially boy bands and girl bands), and comics (manga) [16].
As the cultural form and tourism aspects are becoming the pull factors of the Workaway Projects in rural areas, it has to be considered that by the increase of the tourists, the food demand will also increase, hence the supply needs to be added. The outcome could be both positive and negative. The positive projection is the market of the food production in that area will multiply and make the farmers could gain more income by the selling all their yields. However, if the farmer's population is not enough to fulfill the high demand of the basic food production, what will occur is the overwhelming job for the farmers because of the lack of the food supply.
If we look at the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 agenda which is adopted by all the members of United Nations in 2015, among 17 goals, the issue toward Japan's generation of farmers is related to four points: goal number 2 (end hunger, improved nutrition and achieve food security, and promote sustainable agriculture), goal number 8 (promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all), goal number 11 (make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable: related to urbanization and support positive economic, social and environmental links between urban, peri-urban and rural areas), and goal number 17 (revitalize the global partnership and strengthen the means of implementation for sustainable development). The SDGs are not only attempted by the governments of all United Nations members but also need the cooperation of the world society to be successful and could reach all the targets in 2030 [17].

The mutual benefits of the workaway project in Yufuin
The aim throughout the research of this Workaway Project was to ensure that the study, as far as possible, reflected the passage of real time, also could give a representation of the attempt of the local community to solve the current issue towards the future generation of the farmer in Japan. This study also draws on ethnographic material to demonstrate that local communities, especially those who conduct the volunteers to contribute in solving the labor issue in rural area, in this case related to agriculture sector. The term "workaway" is actually has a several meanings, however in this case, it basically means "work in the place that is away from where the contributor lives".
The mutual benefits that can be seen in the case of Workaway project in Harappa Cafe, Yufuin, is not only between the workawayers and the host, but also the relation among the host, the workawayers, the customers (foreign tourist and also local residents), and the local residents that work as a farmer. Ethnographic research has enabled the identification in the implementation of the rules during the working time and free time by the host to the workawayers and how the workawayers adjust the strict rules that is considered as a Japanese work ethic. Also, how all the workawayers and the host communicating and dealing with each other.
However, the disadvantages with this system was that people mostly apply to be the volunteer on the special occasions (i.e. there is a special festival or in a suitable season for them to work effectively). There is the season like winter, when it is hard for the host to find the applicant. There was a time when the workaway host accepted the applicants which could not work effectively and did not want to contribute much during their stay, mostly because of the cold weather which cause the immune of the body weakened, also the lack of the facility to make the air inside the whole rooms warmer and comfortable

The cultural exchange and the agriculture projects
At the time the authors did the research on the workaway project in Yufuin, there were only two workaway projects in that area. The other one is offering a voluntary job to help in the ryokan (Japanese style guest house). The one that the authors experienced was require a volunteer to help in the farms and be able to stay at least 10 days. There are some farms which owned by the local farmers. During our stay, the authors only went to two different farms, the corn fields and the mushroom place. At the corn fields, the authors helped the farmers with five other workawayers. The work was quite easy to understand but needs so much energy, stamina, and willingness to learn the new skills. The work is related to lift heavy objects, including crops and tools that is why the physical strength is necessary. The other farm was the mushroom farm. I was there with two other workawayers and some other workers which are the disabilities. The job was sorted four types of shiitake mushrooms and put them into some different boxes. Then packaged each type of mushrooms in the different plastic bags and wrap the bags. It was all done inside the room which has a cold temperature, and the workers could sit, so that this job is suitable for the disabilities in Yufuin because it is not require an active movements.
During the stay, the Japanese taught us some basic words of the Japanese language for us to use to greet the customers, the local residents, and the other volunteers, such as ohayou gozaimasu, arigatou gozaimasu, konnichiwa, konbanwa, itteirasshai, tadaima, okaerinasai, oyasuminasai, and oishii (the meaning: good morming, thank you, good afternoon, good evening, see you later, I'm home or I'm back, welcome home or welcome back, good night and have a good rest, and delicious). The workawayers also could know more information about the other cultures of western countries. Additionally, there were some special occasions there: 1. The weekly local cultural festival on every Saturday night which show the music and dance performances-the Japanese and foreign volunteers from Harappa Cafe were also taking part of showing some performances and 2. Monthly birthday celebration of the local residents (mostly the elder people and the farmers's family) around Harappa Cafe which have their birthday in the same month (back then was held at the end of July).
There were 13 workawayers (8 females and 5 males): 1 from Indonesia (♀), 3 from Italy (1 ♀ and 2 ♂), 1 from USA (♀), 3 from Switzerland (2 ♀ and 1 ♂), 2 from France (1 ♀ and 1 ♂), and 3 others were from Japan (2 ♀ and 1 ♂). Some of them are the university students (undergraduate and master) which got a long summer vacation, and some others were an artist and a writer which could work anywhere by the using the internet connection. In the free time, the workawayers could go around Yufuin, there are a lot of tourist attractions, including the local characteristic of street foods, and the natural onsen which could be visited everyday for free-because the host has a good relationship with the local residents. Moreover, surprisingly most of the local residents which cooperate together with the workawayers were good at English, both speaking and understanding, especially the host. Most of the youth said that they self-taught English language by watching the American television series on the Amazon.com because they think English is necessary for them to communicate with the foreign visitors.

The development of rural tourism = the development of rural economy
Work and leisure characterized social development in the twentieth century. Some developments are the increased desire to add new skills such as farming, harvesting, and cooking (in the case study of the Workaway project in Harappa Cafe, Yufuin). Tourism came to be systematized and organized. It did not involve in an absence of learning and education because these were the important elements of the tour. I shall bring the argument full circle by suggesting that contemporary tourism is in part taking on some of these characteristics of the working holiday program.
The development of such differentiation in distinctive centers is because the display of difference will today increase a center's tourist appeal to everyone else from elsewhere (Morris, 1988: 205). [18] The most surprising way in which the development of tourism is transforming the rural environment is in those places where a newly established cultural tourism has taken root. Tourism (in rural area) can invites many other aspects to collaborate with it or support it, like opening more labor opportunities, connecting more transportation tracks and add more transportation options, also could become a trigger for more local creativity, which lead to the development of rural economy [19].
What is now happening-as tourism is developing into one of the largest industries worldwide-is that this industry could connect the interdependence relation among the world society. It is important to notice how holiday-making could mean so much to the local society in rural areas and create a positive impact on the agriculture sector in the country that has a problem toward helping the next generation of the rural farmers. Further analysis related to this would require to explore the social effects when there will be some new changes in the country and the Japanese society itself.

The interdependence relationship of the global society
The entire theme of globalization has raised crucial issues concerning the relationship between companion and globality. This centers upon the connection between comparing societies or regions, on the one hand, and systematically investigating what has often been called world culture (Robertson, 1992) [20]. Nor is there any acknowledgement of the relationship between the universal and the particular, also the interaction between the global and the local. In the case of the Workaway project in Harappa Cafe, the globalizing forces of media, communication, and culture has created a good impact for the interaction between the host and the workawayers, also between the foreign workawayers and the Japanese workawayers. There could be seen that these Japanese people which usually contacted with foreign people, or in other words those who have experienced globalization, have a different way of perspective than compared with those Japanese who have a narrow social interaction scope.
The interaction among the outsiders from around the world make the Japanese people more open to accept the differences and the diversity of the global perspectives [21]. These Japanese in Harappa Cafe are more open to share their stories and thoughts, braver to ask or notify if there is something unsuitable, and have a better ability in speaking English. Some of them said that they need to push themselves to be able in communicating with the foreign volunteers for the sake of make the projects sustainable, like creating a good image of the place (related to the comments on the Workaway website that the workawayers will write after they contributed in the project there). Also, to avoid the misunderstanding that is caused by the obstacle of the language, gestures, way of thinking, and the culture. If we look at the figure 4, we could see the cycle of the spreading information about the rural attractions which leads by the workawayers that had experienced the projects, then come back to the urban areas. There are two ways in spreading the stories: through the SMNs and directly to the people whom they meet in the city. After the cycle number 4, actually there will be more than just one cycle number 1 who will continue the next round of the cycles from 1 to 4.
This workaway project example in Harappa Cafe gives the social theory of identity a certain kind of edginess. If identity matters today in Japan, from a more objectives standpoint with the forces of labor issues in the agriculture sectors, Japanese society needs to learn how to be more flexible in interacting with the people from the different backgrounds such as the foreigners [15,22], because the needs of global interdependence is getting strengthen up in this era and so on.

Conclusion
To conclude, the authors have confirmed the way in which network theory has become accepted in Japan and what feedback it has gained from the reality of Japan, in the context of the volunteering project relation of the local people in Yufuin with the workawayers as the global societies. The issue raised in this writing was focused on the relationship between tourism and sustainable development in order to maximize its contribution to both understanding the importance of cultural and tourism attraction in Workaway projects, and providing the basis of interdependence between the local community and the international society; to help solving the problem in sustainable agriculture sector in rural area.
Tourism does provide many benefits to rural areas, in this case, especially the type of tourism that is conducted via Workaway project-which not only brings the people to spend their money in the area but also to help the local people (in this case: the farmers) maintaining their productions effectively and at the same time help to solve the food supply chain just like the aims of SDGs. The emphasis here is on not whether tourism is economically advantageous in aggregate terms, but to whom these advantages accrue. Therefore, an urgent task is to establish the autonomic individual by emancipating the rural people from the traditional structure of the country (like Japan) and local community for the sake of Japanese society to become a modern society modeled on Western society without erasing the positive culture-like the punctuality and the respect of the elderly. We can produce the current evidence about the inter-connectedness through cultural exchange and cultural openness to the outside world. If people can observe a strategic stance towards the phenomenon of globalization and migration as something which was occurring in the world, then how should Japan cope with it? When we discuss that globalization as the global extension of modernity (not in urban areas), in the case of the Workaway project in Harappa Cafe, Yufuin, appears the issue about the transfer of the Japanese society modernity in rural areas. That thing occurs as the pull factors for the international society to come to the place and volunteer there, while also travel and get to learn the new language and culture-or in other words: the cultural exchange-among the Japanese and the foreign volunteers that cooperate together in the project.
The language and culture barriers are disappearing as the people in the rural areas in Japan already could get the good facility of internet connection to self-taught themselves English and to connect with the people in around the world (as mentioned in the concept of the network theory). By this changing, the local problem in anywhere could be attempted to be helped by the global society from around the world. The changes we have seen here are perhaps could also be seen in other advanced societies. Thus it is believed that the network and counterurbanization theory, upgraded through the Workaway projects, will prove useful in the understanding of phenomena in other societies as well.