Antler Crafts Launches “Yama to Watashi wo Aeru Project”; First Mail-Order Product “Ryūiki no Aji: Geshi no Nabe” Set for Late June 2026

Antler Crafts, operated by FERMENTO Inc. and led by Keisuke Era on the Oshika Peninsula in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, has launched a new initiative called the “Yama to Watashi wo Aeru Project” together with people who have built relationships with food hunter Nozomu Onodera. As the project’s first product, the mail-order hot pot set “Ryūiki no Aji: Geshi no Nabe” will be released in late June 2026. For nearly 30 years, Onodera has been based on the Oshika Peninsula, hunting Japanese deer for food and supplying venison to chefs. His work goes beyond providing ingredients; it also conveys the stories of the nature and living creatures behind them. This approach has earned wide support and led to incorporation in 2016. Today, Antler Crafts receives orders for venison cuts and processed products from customers across Japan, including globally acclaimed restaurants. In recent years, young staff members have joined the team, obtained hunting licenses, and grown into key support for Onodera. This spring, due to Miyagi Prefecture’s construction of an evacuation road for the Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant, the company was forced to leave its Kozumihama facility, which it had developed over 10 years, and relocate its office to Aritahama on the same peninsula. For a small business, this burden is significant and difficult to overcome through ordinary sales efforts alone. Still, in order to preserve the experience and work cultivated there and pass it on to the next generation, Antler Crafts needs to rebuild its business foundation. For that reason, the company has decided to launch a crowdfunding campaign. The crowdfunding campaign is not simply fundraising. It is positioned as an important step toward opening to society, through food, the worldview of nature and ways of life inherited in the watershed of the Oshika Peninsula, while continuing to communicate them over time. The new “Yama to Watashi wo Aeru Project” is part of that effort. With chefs and watershed navigators joining the initiative, the project will propose food and travel experiences that go beyond stories of nature and living creatures, bringing humans and nature together within the ria-coast watershed as a shared “mountain” and inviting participants to feel the idea of unity between body and land. Fifteen years have passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake. After receiving prayers and support for recovery from many people, starting a business that can be passed on to the next generation is a major challenge, but the team believes it will become a light of hope for the local community. Set against the beautiful seas and mountains of the ria watershed, the project aims to receive what has been accumulated by people who have lived as if in prayer, and to become a source of strength for the next generation to start businesses on this land. Antler Crafts invites attention to its crowdfunding campaign and new business challenge. The first product in the “Yama to Watashi wo Aeru” food series is “Ryūiki no Aji: Geshi no Nabe.” It is scheduled for release in late June 2026, priced at 12,000 yen including tax, and manufactured by Antler Crafts. The first release, “Geshi no Nabe,” is directed by Soji Sasaki and Sayaka Sasaki of the Sendai Japanese restaurant Koume, who deeply respect Onodera’s work. Its centerpieces are “mountain broth,” made by simmering the bone-in foreleg of deer hunted by Onodera with only water and salt for more than three hours, and “sea broth,” made from oysters and mussels raised in the ria watershed. The hot pot set lets customers taste the watershed together with venison, venison meatball dumplings, oysters, seaweed, and summer seri. Its concept is a festive seasonal meal for the solar term, offered as a prayer that the watershed mountains and our bodies may greet the turning seasons in good health. Crowdfunding page, launching Monday, May 11: https://camp-fire.jp/projects/936472/view Project website: http://yamatowatashi.jp/ Project members include Keisuke Era, Nozomu Onodera, Jonathan Takumi Sagitt Sasaki of Antler Crafts / FERMENTO Inc.; Junpei Oka and Takenobu Tsuchihashi of Reborn Art Festival; Soji Sasaki and Sayaka Sasaki of Koume; Tomoya Kinoshita of Matsubaru; and Dai Akimoto and Aya Ogawa of Oyama Watershed Research Institute Inc. Antler Crafts / FERMENTO Inc. is located at 23-1 Aritahama, Oginohama, Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture. Contact: info@antlercrafts.jp, representative Oka.