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How an Artist Builds a Fence
Engineers, please do not read. In my imagination and vision, the patio still has some tasks to accomplish. One of them is putting up a fence to wall off the garden compost pile (formerly Gomi-yama #2) from the sitting area. A fence would make a visible end to the space and also provide a background…
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Family, photos?
Tod’s mom, Jeanie, and her husband, Tim, are visiting us. They were last here in 2018 but it seems like hardly any time has passed. Our days have been packed with activities that I have enjoyed so much I have forgotten to take pictures. But here is a daily log of highlights since their arrival…
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Artsy Koi Nobori
Koi nobori are carp streamers that fly on Children’s Day. On Friday, May 3rd, I’ll host a koi nobori art activity at the Soil to Soul Farmpark kids’ festival. Megumi and I both saw artsy foreign koi nobori that are making the rounds on social media and she was inspired to ask me to do…
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Stripey Tiles
The Tiles Mines have finally yielded a finished product at 555! For the last two weeks, in between rainy days, Sakaguchi-san has been coming over to lay the tiles I laid out in stripes in November. Yes, they sat there for six months before anything happened to them. My plan was creative and complicated. The…
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Hammer Knife Rotor
Feeling overwhelmed by the long grass today, I asked Kawasaki-san if I could use the hammer knife rotor. He gave me and Tod a quick tutorial and off we went. It’s been a dream for two years to try this beast! It is a powerful and complicated machine with a lot of controls. A pull-start…
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Pitching rice
Today was the first planting day for the Oyama Senmaida season. The Sake Owners came out and it was nice to see the people I met at the tasting event last month. I signed up to assist with the planting and was delighted to find that I really didn’t have to do much. Kawasaki-san and…
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Flea Market
At the end of last year, Mamiko asked me if I’d help her organise a flea market at Hangar eight. Sure! Several months of planning, design work, recruiting vendors, and enticing customers culminated in a good success today for the International Mottainai Flea Market. We had 27 vendors and lots of people came to shop…
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Teaching the Birds a Song
This morning I opened the window and heard loud and eager songbirds. A trio of brownish birds held a concert in a tangle of vines and trees. I listened. The cats listened. It was glorious. I tried to capture a video, but the sound quality on my phone doesn’t do it justice. Here it is…
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28 hours in Aomori
Yesterday I got on a plane for the first time since September 2019. I flew north to Aomori for work with Rob and CCJC. I was called in at the last minute to assist on a video shoot for the launch of Coca Cola’s new Ayataka tea products. My key task was driving, but I…
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Cutting grass, inaka style
Recently, I started hearing the buzz of kusukari-ki, our pared-down country lawnmowers, around the valley. I took it as a clear sign that grass cutting season had arrived. Last year I made a mistake and started cutting the jungle at 555 in March…several weeks before everyone else. That meant I trimmed back flowers and forage…
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