bemmu, I love the candy service. I think there is a lot more you could do with it with a bit more love.
A bit of advice from an expat coder of 20 years in Japan, 13 of that in Oita, Kyushyu.
1) Build the community that you want to participate in. Find a nearby area with a bit of population gravity and start a group, watch it wither away, start another, repeat, repeat, repeat. A more formless drinks in an open office with coders/designers/local businesses/artists/makers can be a lot of fun and there are generally more of these people nearby that you might think. I'm currently working on starting up a hackerspace/fablab downtown.
2) Get involved in any kind of quasi-local information systems group/NPO etc, even if only related tangentially and work their connections for 1). If your good, give out lots of free advice to local businesses and use the group to raise your profile locally as the goto guy to again attract talent for 1). City and prefectural offices can give you leads. Also you might try a regional bank as local banks in the countryside are always getting asked by small businesses about IT and usually have advisors/connections.
3) Regularly travel to where the interesting action is. It's the price for not living in a rabbit hutch in a major city and 3 hours is doable if it helps your long term sanity. You are close enough for overnights to Kobe and Osaka which both have lively developer communities. Once a month can do wonders.
These are all things that helped me when I joined an inaka startup (which is a long, dark, and interesting story itself) and now starting my own company just this week.
Anyway, in the countryside it can be hard to maintain your sanity. I have found at various times martial arts, running, motorcycles, hiking, zazen, pizza, and just doing things like drinks with the father's group from my kid's elementary school to be very helpful.
A bit of advice from an expat coder of 20 years in Japan, 13 of that in Oita, Kyushyu.
1) Build the community that you want to participate in. Find a nearby area with a bit of population gravity and start a group, watch it wither away, start another, repeat, repeat, repeat. A more formless drinks in an open office with coders/designers/local businesses/artists/makers can be a lot of fun and there are generally more of these people nearby that you might think. I'm currently working on starting up a hackerspace/fablab downtown.
2) Get involved in any kind of quasi-local information systems group/NPO etc, even if only related tangentially and work their connections for 1). If your good, give out lots of free advice to local businesses and use the group to raise your profile locally as the goto guy to again attract talent for 1). City and prefectural offices can give you leads. Also you might try a regional bank as local banks in the countryside are always getting asked by small businesses about IT and usually have advisors/connections.
3) Regularly travel to where the interesting action is. It's the price for not living in a rabbit hutch in a major city and 3 hours is doable if it helps your long term sanity. You are close enough for overnights to Kobe and Osaka which both have lively developer communities. Once a month can do wonders.
These are all things that helped me when I joined an inaka startup (which is a long, dark, and interesting story itself) and now starting my own company just this week.
Anyway, in the countryside it can be hard to maintain your sanity. I have found at various times martial arts, running, motorcycles, hiking, zazen, pizza, and just doing things like drinks with the father's group from my kid's elementary school to be very helpful.
good luck