From the official site of the Jomon Prehistoric Sites in Northern Japan.
People in Japan began to use pottery and to live in one place about 15,000 years ago.
For more than 10,000 years after that, they kept living by gathering, fishing and hunting. They adapted to warmer and colder climates and to the sea rising and falling.
The Jomon period lasted until the Yayoi period, when full-scale rice farming began in the Japanese islands about 2,400 years ago.
People hunted with bows and arrows and stone spears. Fishhooks and harpoon heads found at the sites show that they caught fairly large fish.
As people moved from a moving life to a settled life, villages appeared. Some had large buildings with thick posts, mounds for ceremonies, and stone circles.
The oldest pottery had no pattern. About 10,000 years ago, pottery with many cord-marked patterns appeared.
The Jomon Prehistoric Sites in Northern Japan became a World Heritage site on July 27, 2021. It is made up of 17 sites, including villages, graves and stone circles, in southern Hokkaido and in Tohoku across the Tsugaru Strait.
One of them, the Sannai-Maruyama site in Aomori, was a large central village. Pit dwellings, post buildings, rows of graves, mounds, storage pits, roads and large buildings were laid out there according to a plan.
There is no single right answer. Talking it over with someone at home is a good way to learn.