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BONNEVAL-SUR-ARC, France : As a student in Tokyo, Michihisa Yamaguchi dreamed of being a farmer. Today the 33-year-old is a cheesemaker in a tiny village perched high in the French Alps.
"I was studying literature when what I really wanted to do was work in the country, become a farmer and look after cows. Cows are really, really nice," he said in Bonneval-sur-Arc as he prepared milk to be turned into cheese.
Yamaguchi, nicknamed Miki by his friends here in the Savoie region, has lived since October 2007 in this village of 242 residents, where he has become the main producer of "Bleu de Bonneval," the local blue cheese.
He is well integrated but he's also aware that he intrigues many locals. The iconic image of the French cheesemaker doesn't immediately bring to mind a former literature student from Japan.
"Everyone knows me, even if I don't yet know all that many people," he said with a smile.
He rises before dawn and spends his days alone in his cheesemaking workshop, where he listens to the radio or Japanese rock music, moving between vats of cheese and the cellar where he stocks the product.
Yamaguchi left Japan six years ago after a bad experience with a milk producer in Hokkaido in the north of the country, where he didn't like the intensive farming practices.
"There were too many cows on a very small area that we had to squeeze too much milk out of them. It just wasn't my thing. So I decided to leave for France," he said.
Watching the mountain stages of the Tour de France cycle race on television gave him a taste for the Alps.
"Next to the cyclists there were cows, and that was my first vision of the Alps, of farming there," he recalled.
When he arrived he couldn't even count to 10 in French, so he set about learning the language, and after three years was fluent.
Then he returned for two years to Japan to work on an assembly line in a Honda factory to save up for a course in cheesemaking at an institute in France.
There he learned the trade and all the technical terms that go with cheesemaking.
The local Haute-Maurienne Vanoise dairy collective first took him on for a work placement and then gave him a full-time job, to the satisfaction of his employers and his colleagues.
"Miki is the most conscientious of many of the cheesemakers I've met," said Pauline Collonge, who works in the cheese shop attached to the cooperative and who is also a cheesemaker.
"His workshop is ultra clean, and his equipment is always well ordered," she said.
"In just a few months he made enormous progress. Look at the cheese he makes, it's got great texture, the blue is nicely spread out. I live for cheese, and for Miki it's the same," she said. - AFP/de
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