A queue of people snakes alongside a shiny glass cafe, with many resigned to a two-hour wait. Their goal: some simple yet famously fluffy pancakes. This could be a typical scene from the trendy Harajuku neighborhood in Tokyo. Except this cafe is surrounded by hills of luscious green, hidden in the small town of Yazu, deep in Tottori Prefecture. A decade ago, there used to be a grand total of zero visitors, but last year, 350,000 flocked to the area — thanks to one man and his free-range eggs.

"I wanted to create an agricultural theme park," says Riichiro Ohara, who took over his father's egg farm at the age of 29 to found Oenosato Natural Farm. The year was 1994. Ohara, who felt uncomfortable at the sight of chickens in cages, took the bold step to convert to free-range with natural feed — an unusual move in Japan, where less than 10 percent of egg farms are free-range.

All smiles: Riichiro Ohara took over his father's farm in 1994 and quickly committed to farming only free-range chickens. | COURTESY OF OENOSATO NATURAL FARM
All smiles: Riichiro Ohara took over his father's farm in 1994 and quickly committed to farming only free-range chickens. | COURTESY OF OENOSATO NATURAL FARM