"The most inconvenient market in Japan."
Is it really the most?
— What we say when people ask.
No. We can't prove it's the most.
No one has ever measured every kei-truck market in Japan and ranked them. Neither can we.
So why do we say "the most inconvenient"?
Because it isn't a measured rank.
It's a vow.
"We're fairly inconvenient" starts nothing. We decided instead to look our own inconvenience in the eye, hide none of it, and make it our flag. That resolve is what the words "the most" carry.
A neighbouring town, Kawaminami, is counted among Japan's three great kei-truck markets — places famous for their crowds. We claim the opposite summit: not the most lively, but the most inconvenient. We aren't even competing on the same field.
Two islands said it their own way before us. Ama-cho: "There's nothing here — and that's fine." Shiiba: "So far behind we've come back around to the front." Neither was measured to be number one. Each simply owned where it stood, in its own words. We're doing the same.
Inconvenience can give something back.
You might think boasting about inconvenience is pointless. But there is a body of research in Japan that finds real value in it.
The benefit of inconvenience.The good that can only be gained through inconvenience.
Coined and studied by Professor Hiroshi Kawakami and colleagues, Kyoto University
Since it was first proposed, fuben-eki has travelled beyond Japan as an academic idea in system and human-machine design — a kind of value that runs at right angles to efficiency and function. It is not endurance, and not grit. It is the recognition that inconvenience, as a condition, can draw out human ingenuity and human closeness.
The professor's examples land close to home for us:
A navigator whose roads fade the more you look
Because it's unreliable, you learn the way yourself. A perfect map leaves no trace in memory.
A ruler marked only in prime numbers
2, 3, 5, 7 — nothing else. The inconvenience makes you think, gladly, about how to measure.
The ¥300 sweets limit on a school trip
The limit is exactly what makes choosing exciting — and raises the value of the whole trip.
Look at what's been dismissed as mere inconvenience, the professor suggests, and ask what good might be hiding there. That question has the power to change how we see things.
Our market lives out this idea.
Our organizers are ageing; successors are few; we have no chamber of commerce behind us and little budget to speak of. And still, once a year, smiles gather on the paths between the rice fields. Inconvenience doesn't make things impossible. It makes ingenuity — and it brings people close.
"Fuben-eki" is a research concept developed by Professor Kawakami and colleagues. As one community that found kinship in the idea, we introduce it here drawing on their published work for general readers.
"The most" is a vow. But "deeply inconvenient" is a fact.
We diagnosed our own district across three layers — geography, society and economy. The figures below all come from data published on our official site.
Layer 1Geography
8 of 13 markers — everything essential to daily life sits outside the district
| Healthcare | No clinic in the district. Nearest hospital 9.1 km away. |
|---|---|
| Shopping | No convenience store. Nearest one 5.9 km away. |
| Banking | Nearest post office 3.0 km; a bank is 7 km+ away in town. |
| Government | Branch office 3.4 km; city hall 7.4 km. |
| Care | No day-service facility in the district. |
| Transit | Community bus runs twice a day — one morning, one evening. |
Layer 2Society
The organizing body itself is ageing
| Our members | 18 members, average age 65.1 (oldest 75, youngest 46). No one in their 20s or 30s. |
|---|---|
| District ageing rate | 62.39% — about 1.5× the Nichinan city average (41.03%). |
| Population | 117 residents in 65 households (as of April 2026). |
Layer 3Economy
Racing to stand on our own before the subsidy ends
| Funding | Currently supported by a national Rural RMO project (2024–2026). Which is exactly why we're preparing now for operation without subsidies from 2027. |
|---|
Geography, society, economy.
All three layers, stacked.
That is why we can say "deeply inconvenient" and mean it. In the geography layer especially, the foundations of daily life — healthcare, shopping, banking, government, care — all lie beyond the district's edge. The inconvenience comes in all three registers at once. That is what sets this apart from being simply remote.
The good we'd otherwise have missed.
Fuben-eki asks those who admit their inconvenience one further question: looking back, was there good you would have missed otherwise — ingenuity, or bonds, that could only have grown here? Ours:
Because the shops are far, our neighbours' faces are what we rely on. The message board, and the calling-out to one another, are still alive here.
Build the thing you can run yourselves before the subsidy runs out. Because we're inconvenient, we're in a hurry to stand on our own.
Past 60% ageing, and still people come — those who move in, those who lend a hand. In an inconvenient place, the ones who came stand out all the more.
Once a year, 1,890 smiles gather on the rice-field paths and 52 kei-trucks line up (2025). In sheer scale we come nowhere near Kawaminami, or Yoshinogari — another of Kyushu's major markets. And still we hold our market here, on this inconvenient patch of paddy — to prove that a place that refused to use inconvenience as an excuse exists here, too.
What we most want to hear:
"No — we're more inconvenient than you."
We are setting out to form a nationwide council of the most inconvenient kei-truck markets. Markets held on shopping streets already have their networks. The companions we're looking for are elsewhere.
On paths between rice fields, in the corner of a fishing port, in a village over the pass — people who refuse to blame their inconvenience, who hold it close, and hold their market anyway. We want to compare our inconveniences. Pool our ingenuity. Meet, at least once a year.
How inconvenient is your market?
The two don't contradict. Admitting the inconvenience is where the smiles begin.