Another busy week

The weeks are flying by. I can’t believe its been more than a week since I posted! But a lot has been happening around here:

1. Spring Festival at my inlaw’s neighborhood. They have a much bigger shrine and a much more elaborate festival complete with Oni and Dragons dancing through the neighborhood all day long. Interestingly the same priest that did our little spring festival also does this one. LP1 and LP2 were scared of the Oni (the guy in the red mask).

2. The kids are fitting right in with the neighborhood kids. We had a little gathering this weekend because unfortunately two of the three kids in the neighborhood are moving out. It really sucks because one was the same age as MB and the other was the same age as LP2. LP2 was devastated and still starts crying whenever the little boy is mentioned. The remaining neighborhood boy is 4 years older than MB, but is a really nice kid who hangs out with the younger ones and teaches them how to catch fish, and make bows and arrows out of bamboo. I take the kids with me when ever I can and they spend all day playing outside in the hamlet and surrounding fields and forest. It is really great to see them take to it all so easily.

3. The house is coming along. I have cleaned a total of four rooms so that they are at least comfortable and don’t look like a ghost house. Still, the Kitchen is completely demolished, and we have no usable bath or toilet, so those are going to be serious priorities from now on.

4. Finally work on the roof has begun. That is my friend in the tile business, helping me with the worst leak in the house. He taught me the basics but I am going to have him come back to help me with the more complicated roofing tasks. The roof is one place you want to do right!

 

5. Ahhhh. I do love the view from here. I recently had the owner show me the actual boundaries of the orchard, and discovered that I had a bit more orchard than I initially thought, so today I dropped the last of the fruit and continued with the pruning (which is about two months late now I hear).

Spring Cleaning and Kabosu Pruning

Last week I visited a friend in a neighboring community who moved down from the Kanto region after the Tohoku earthquake. They have adopted an old farm house and have been living in it and fixing it for about a year. Seeing their place gave me renewed ambition to get my place in livible condition as soon as possible. To that end I have been focused on CLEANING, and lots of it. 10 years of dust and dirt on every surface is a lot to clean and I

The Neighborhood kids enjoy a snack in the one clean room we have right now.

have been going at the blistering pace of 1 room every three or four days. This includes scrubbing and wiping down all surfaces, wiping down all the old tatami (which I am going to reuse as much as possible), removing the paper from the shoji screens and cleaning them. and getting rid of all the “contents” of the room which cannot be used. The house has a prodigious amount of zabuton (cushions for sitting) so if anyone needs any, I have enough for several houses.

LP2 helps with cleaning the shoji

Also I am now splitting time between The House and the Orchard (not to mention my Job and the Kids) so its been getting very busy leaving me little time for much of anything else… like bloging. But I will leave you all today with a little video from the orchard. Enjoy.

 

Spring Festival

A lot has happened in the last few days, and I’ll break it all down into chunks:

1. The House:

Demolition work has begun in earnest after the full extent of the Termite problem was discovered. I had to completely tear out the kitchen. Probably a good thing because the kitchen floor was thoroughly infested with termites. Fortunately I had the help of a neighbor, Mr. H, who was extremely handy with a crowbar. Together with my self and BIL we made pretty good progress.

The whole kitchen area is going to be returned to a traditional “Douma” or Earthen Floor style. I’ll still have most of the modern conveniences, but I’ll return the room to its former look.

Three of the main floor supports and part of one column need to be replaced in the kitchen/dining area. They basically crumble at the touch and I am surprised the house isn’t tilting badly. But I also have to address the roof, which is leaking badly in one are of the house (near the toilet).

2. The Kabosu Orchard:

Since the orchard has been left alone and not looked after for two seasons, the owners agreed to let me use it free for a full year. Sort of a trial period, both for me and for them I suppose. But I start on it tomorrow and the whole family is helping. They seem pretty excited about the whole thing.

3. Community Ties:

Yesterday I took the kids to the House and they played in the fields and around the hamlet while I was demolishing the kitchen. A neighbor informed us that everyone was gathering to clean the shrine in preparation for a spring festival the next day. So I took the kids and we walked to the shrine with our buckets and rags and helped clean. Today was the festival, where the Shinto priest came to offer prayers to the Kami that watches over the hamlet. After which was much talking and a lot of sake… at 10:00 in the morning…

I was drunk before lunch.

But at least I got to know the neighbors much better. One of them was impressed that I was taking on a kabosu orchard, and he offered to teach me all about kabosu, as he grows them as well, and in addition he offered the free use of two open rice fields for the next year. All I have to do is pay him a visit with “Isshobin” – a bottle of sake in hand.

Bringing Out the Neighbors

Yesterday was a pretty nice day, started cloudy but by afternoon the sun was out. Its been a weird winter for Japan, with all this rain, kind of reminds me of an Oregon winter actually.

Anyway, today I went to The House with the purpose of continuing work on the outside (most visible to the neighborhood) parts. As I noted in the video below, I started by clearing the debris from the fallen roof on the gate/barn. It was about a foot deep and was completely blocking a drainage ditch.

Cleared debris from the front of the Barn, you can see the drainage ditch and all the tile and material separated and piled to the side.

I separated the tile that can be reused to replace broken tile on the house. I think I’ll use the wood to do this, and the broken tile I might use somewhere in a garden wall somewhere.

During the excavation I found several crabs and one WOUS (Worm of Unusual Size). As the season progresses I am sure I will meet all kinds of strange creatures.

  

All the work on the exterior is having the desired effect. Yesterday I was visited by several neighbors who all expressed “Yoroshiku’s” and “Gambatte’s” and other words of support. But it didn’t stop there.

Yesterday I began clearing the surrounding fields of all the clumps of tall grass and thatch. I was doing this by hand with a sickle. Like I said it was a nice day, and I was enjoying the exercise, and being outside as it has been raining all week. I must have looked pretty pitiful though because two neighbors, Mr. M and Mr. H stopped by offering the use of their weed-whackers. At first I declined the offers, saying that I was enjoying the exercise, but they must have thought I was just trying to be polite because later they came back with the tools in hand and motors running (Mr. H even changed clothes, intending to help me clear the field). Since I couldn’t really refuse at that point I borrowed Mr. H’s weed-whacker and let him train me in all the particulars of its use and then used that to clear the rest of the fields around the house.

The Field Directly in front of the Gate/Barn, now cleared.

Several neighbors commented on the deer and monkey problems we have. I have seen evidence of both. The monkeys leave mikan and kabosu husks everywhere, and there is deer scat all over the fields. The deer in particular are a problem for growing vegetables. The neighbors all have very small kitchen gardens that are fenced and netted to keep the deer out. Mr. M commented, after I had just cleared the field, that planting a garden there would do nothing but feed the deer!

I’ll have to figure out a creative solution to the deer problem…

A Mountain of Garbage

That’s what one of my new neighbors recently called The House. The house that was left empty for 10 years after the passing of it’s owner. The House that was used like a squat/garbage dump for two years by a wild boar trapper, with bones and piles and piles of trash everywhere. That is the house I am renting and cleaning and fixing. The irony of paying money to rent a house (and not being able to live in it) while I clean up and fix it (ultimately for the owners benefit) is not lost on me. It slaps me in the face nearly every day. Like the other day when my neighbor, Mr. M, said “boy this whole place is like a mountain of garbage.”

I still believe that underneath all that garbage is something very special though. I just sometimes wonder if I am doing the right thing for us, or if I am being used as a means of profit/free property improvement by others, only to be kicked to the curb in five years with nothing to show for it.

I know, dark mood maybe… We’ll see next week hopefully when I get a real idea of the cost of the Roof and Termite damage repair. In the mean time its full steam ahead, with particular emphasis on the outside.

Here’s a video update for your viewing pleasure.

Say hello to Mr. Kabosu

About a week ago a friend of the family came to visit with a story of an elderly Kabosu farmer who had recently passed. Until the last year of his life he had maintained an orchard of 300 or so Kabosu (a citrus fruit used like lemon or lime) trees and this orchard was now available for rent and very conveniently located near The House.

So we all jumped in a K-van and drove up to see the place, meeting a representative of the family there. The Orchard was not harvested this last season and it will be quite a task to clean up the result, but overall the trees look healthy and from the evidence all around, they bear lots of fruit. The orchard is situated on a pretty steep slope, but I have been told by several other citrus growers that that is actually preferable.

Its up in them thar hills

Speaking of other citrus growers, an acquaintance of my FIL, is apparently a very successful grower of Mikans and uses Organic growing techniques, and he offered to teach me how to care for the orchard.

Recently the family who owns it agreed to rent it to me, so the only thing left is to work out the details of the contract.

Oh and as a bonus there is also a small rice field that goes with it, which can produce enough rice at least to feed us on a yearly basis.

Back Into the Swing of Things

The influenza passed and the week long business trip is over and now I am trying to get back into the groove. To that end I picked up my new-to-me rusty (literally) trusty Kei-Truck.

It’s been nice to have the freedom to tool around, take loads of rotten futons, and rusted metal to the recycling center, etc. One thing I noticed in my shopping around for tools is how rediculously expensive tools are here! I had no idea. I had a great collection of tools in the US that I left behind. And as with my beer making equipment, had I known better, the expense of shipping that stuff would have been well worth it…

Yesterday I took a break from cleaning to walk across the street to the small Buddhist temple in our neighborhood. It sits directly across from our house and up a steep hill. Carved into the hillside are a couple of 石仏 “Stone Buddhas” which Usuki is famous for. There are the main grouping of Stone Buddhas which all the tourist come to see a bit closer to town, but our little valley has its own group of them which is pretty neat. The carvings were done around the 8th century, so they are quite a cultural treasure.