Story of Mara-God

Greetings!

My name is Ogasawara, also known as “marasan”.

You may or may not know, but I am the representative of an organization called “ENLIFE”, which organizes game events.

In this note, as I am not good with being uptight, I would like to share my thoughts on things like how ENLIFE started and on what has happened leading up to today.

I’ll begin with talking about my personal background, so if you can’t be bothered, please go ahead and skip this. I would like to write this in parts.

Ogasawara’s upbringing

I was born in the western outskirts of Okayama prefecture, in a fisherman’s village. 4 boys in the family, and I was the oldest brother. I was born in a fisherman’s family - my father, my grandfather, and my great-grandfather were all fishermen. Our main business is oyster farming. Since my family background isn’t the “salarymen” type, perhaps the environment I grew up is a bit different from the majority of you reading this?

I think for those who know me, they have a strong image of me as the “oyster guy!”, but I’ve had my own struggles as a kid for being born into a fisherman’s family.

During the winter when oysters are in season, I would often be brought out to the sea. During winter holidays, my friends would call me to ask me to hang out, but I had to always decline because I had to help with work. Crying.

Once in middle school, I was given a proper workload. While everyone else was busy with school club activities, I would skip my club activity and go to work wearing a raincoat and long boots.

“Your parents are crazy”, “It’s your family business, so it can’t be helped” – I think there’s a lot of opinions around this, but as a kid, it was very hard for me to swallow, and I would often get in a fight with my father.

“I’m never going to do oysters! I don’t want to work with you, dad!” – was the phrase that often came out of my mouth by the time I was in highschool.

There was a time I ran away from home during the winter and not help with the oyster business. There was a phase where I hated oysters and my father that much.

But when I was 16, I met my now-wife, and to take her out on dates and buy her presents, I would help out with the oyster business. I started thinking of it as a part-time job and had a chance to face my family business from a different perspective.

What I’m trying to say is that “I had a lot of internal conflicts – it’s a kid’s concern, but people grow up! This is how I grew up.”

I wanted to make sure I got this out of my way before I started writing about other things.

My education ended after graduating from my civil engineering department at a tech high school, so I haven’t studied much.

You might be able to tell from my sentences, but I wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box. However, thanks to being raised in the middle of lively fishermen, I was able to make a decent amount of friends. I also was the president of student council, and came up with scripts for the school’s cultural festival plays. Looking back, I’ve always been fond of big events and planning things. I really like people’s smiles – even if I’m not smart. Or maybe because I’m not smart, smiles give me relief.

Loved video games since I was a kid!

As I’ve stated above, I’m the oldest of the 4 boys. During the oyster season, my parents wouldn’t often be home. So inevitably, we played a lot of video games at home, because we could have fun without having to step outside the house with my little brothers.

My parents bought us quite a lot of games. We usually had the latest console, and we would always have the games that was trending. (Although during the winter, I was a bit irritated because I couldn’t play with my friends as I would have to take care of my brothers and help with the oyster business)

When drinking with my real-life friends and we start talking about what was fun during our childhood, the topic of video games would come up quite often. Especially since I grew up in a town where there were no Karaoke, arcades, bowling alleys or movie theatres within a 30 minute bicycle ride. When we would play, we would gather at a park with our Gameboys, or play super smash brothers at a friend’s house. Within the circle of friends, there would be strong ones, weak ones, trolls…. Sometimes people would get in fight over winning and losing. This part, whether online or offline, doesn’t matter – we all want to win! I didn’t get a chance to play online games, but I really loved video games as a kid!

Marriage -> taking over the oyster business

I did have a dream, but outside of helping with the oyster business, I did whatever I wanted during my free time. So time passed quickly before I made my dream come true.

And regardless of age, there was always that option of taking over the oyster business. This option was always a big part of me. It might be hard to understand this feeling if you weren’t born to a family running a family business, but it’s quite big – no matter how much I said I hated it. You parents and the town you grew up in make up a big portion.

So eventually, I married my wife soon after I graduated high school. The winter when I was 18.

During this time, my feelings towards wanting to marry my wife was strong. “I love my wife!!!” – this feeling gave me a push in the back to decide to work in the oyster business.

You may think “you planned nothing about your future” or “you’re just some hick”, but since I’m very happy since I made my decision, I don’t think I made a mistake here. That’s what being young is about, and I want my kids to be very forward about doing things that’s fun and being happy. I can’t thank my wife enough for marrying me and being understanding about the oyster business.

So in order to feed my family, I ended up taking over the oyster business. But the first few years I had some doubts. Customers who would come buy oysters directly, are mainly the older generations. My generation don’t come buy oysters directly. So I wasn’t getting the feeling of satisfaction. I couldn’t imagine the smiles of the people who would eat my oysters. Through an oyster factory in the rural area, going through an association, our oysters would be shipped out to supermarkets nationwide. The voices of people who ate our oysters weren’t reaching us. For regional businesses, it might be a common story, but people have no interest in the internet. We tried many times to start up e-commerce, but it was hard to break the mold of a culture that was built up by the 60-80year olds. When oysters became a topic on television, it would often be about Noro virus or something along that line. I was getting the same feeling as I did back when I was a kid of “I’m being forced to do this oyster business”, “I’m just doing this for my family”.

I’m very proud of my family’s oysters. Lots of effort is being put in, sacrificing my time with my family and hobbies. I’m sure it’s delicious, and I believe people are buying our oysters somewhere in the country and saying it’s delicious. That’s okay, but days went by while I couldn’t really get a real sense of it.

My encounter with online games

So I was just an ordinary oyster farmer, but one day, a friend who played online games, which was very rare in the rural areas, recommended a game to me. I became interested and was quick to buy my own PC. Might be hard to believe, but in the rural areas, people with internet might be about 20-30%. I could probably count with one hand the number of friends that have their own PC. Even today, my friends would categorize me as an Otaku (geek) when we go out drinking. I’m not really bothered since being a video game otaku is a compliment to me!

And here I encountered Dota2. Until then, I casually played with my PS3 or my Wii, but online games and Dota2 was very new to me. At any time, I could play video games with people I don’t know and even talk with them. And there are thousands of people that easily surpass the people that deemed themselves the strongest in fighting games in these rural areas. We could see this live and also be left as recordings. Even high schoolers could be number 1 in Japan or even the world.

We have an idiom in Japan “the frog in the well knows nothing of the great ocean”. That was me.

After being exposed to the internet culture, I found even more possibilities. This was about 4 years ago, when I was about 24.

Streaming and running a tournament

Loving video games, other people’s smiles, and me wanting to always stand out, I inevitably became interested in video game streaming.

I started off by being a viewer for many different streamers, but I was very appalled by the live streaming culture.

When I was 26, I would start streaming late at night after putting my kids to bed. This was during the summer when oyster season was finished.

I would use my Okayama-dialect, make some dirty jokes, sing songs and continued to laugh. I continued to stream as I wanted.

You could think of it like the smash brothers tournaments you would have at your friend’s house when we were kids. Always laughing, make jokes, and give you the sense of not wanting to go home. I grew up in a video game environment like that, and I believe having fun is the best part of video games.

As I continued to stream, I would have regulars visit my stream, I would make friends, and famous players would come drop by my streams as well.

However, oyster season soon arrived. My first oyster season since I started streaming, I was so busy I had no time to play video games. I remember feeling very lonely.

As I was talking to my viewers and friends, I took in the opinions of “I want to try your oysters!”, “hold a tournament!”, and I decided to run my own tournament to bid my good byes until spring.

This is the Dota Mara Cup. The prize was oysters.

Thanks to everyone, there was quite a big buzz. I initially thought it would be okay if 4 teams entered. When I opened the box, in my first ever tournament that I ran, I had 30 teams and over 150 people applying for entry. Participants ranged from professionals, younger generations, working people, etc

“Oysters as a prize? Amazing!”

“Even pros are participating! I can’t wait!”

“We’re not a very strong team, but it’s easy for us to participate if no prize money is involved!”

“We can show off what we’ve practiced!”

Are some examples of feedback I had.

I’m not sure whether it was the interesting prize of oysters, or my personality, but I think it became a tournament that “regardless of being good or bad, a tournament that anyone who loves video games can easily enter”.

And I actually sent the oysters! And this is where I actually got to hear the voices and opinions from people that weren’t that close to me. I was able to get people to say “delicious!” about the oysters I was very proud of shipping out. When the tournament ended, I was able to think for the first time that I was glad I am in the oyster business.





My decision to establish ENLIFE

When I was planning my next tournament. I had a chance to talk to a Kouhai (a younger acquaintance, usually through school/work) who ran a ranch in Okayama.

We talked about the past and current, about work, about hobbies… and my Kouhai also had some conflicts with how things operated in the rural areas.

So I asked him: “Would you like to sponsor us and make your beef a prize? There seems to be no relation between gaming and beef, but I was relieved when I had my work recognized by gamers. It’s hard to hear opinions when selling directly, but when you go through the internet, you can hear a lot of voices, especially through SNS!”. We went through a number of meetings.

And here I made my decision to create the organization “ENLIFE”. Until then, I did as pleased as an individual, because the prize was my very own oysters.

That was okay in a way, and there was times I made a big mistake as I couldn’t do everything by myself. I also had a lot of people give me a helping hand.

So I thought “there must be some gamers out there in the rural areas who is experiencing the same thing as me. Wouldn’t it be interesting if a bunch of us linked our work with video games and gave back to the younger generations and the video game culture? I don’t want to keep making mistakes and I want to expand the possibilities, so I decided to bring in some staff. I also looked for streamers that could to send the message on behalf of our sponsors “to show the fun in video games and the greatness of food to people who don’t know much about the rural areas and video game culture”. I brought in Otofu-san and Hakata_Dyrus-san.

This is ENLIFE. We started off with 6 people. And thanks to everyone we’re heating up.

I don’t get a chance to talk much about my experiences and what ENLIFE is about, so I decided to write this up.

As the “ossan” (older men) representative of this community, I want to continue my journey without forgetting where I came from.

Not everything will be pretty, but my goal is to become an organization that creates video game events that is easy for everyone to join.

Writing is hard!!! This is it for now.

If I start getting more feedback, I still have lots I want to write about, so I will do so when I feel like it.

“bringing video games to our lifestyle; and real feels to our video games”

Ogasawara, ENLIFE representative