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OMG, not enough tiles
Today I was feeling healthy, strong, and motivated enough to sort the tile mines so I can start working on a tile pattern for the doma. I found all the tiles that are 13mm thick, moved them into fresh piles, and counted them. Here’s my inventory: This should cover somewhere between 9.8 and 12.8 square…
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Wallpaper & materials
In Japan, paper is the wall covering of choice. Paint is less common because painted walls show minor earthquake damage more easily than wallpaper. Also, because paint is done less frequently, the tape and putty used on drywall isn’t as fine or tapered as it is in the US, for example. So wallpaper is the…
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How to Drive in Inaka
Living in the countryside of Japan, I have re-learned how to drive. Now I can avoid tanuki and tractors and stay out of ditches most of the time, but I can’t drive in the city, where the hazards come one after another and are usually human. Two completely different driving environments! It makes me cranky…
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Wired-in lights
I have been through numerous paper and digital catalogs and this morning I had about a hundred open browser tabs of lighting companies in Japan. It’s been months of comparison and research. I have finally figured out most of the lighting fixtures that I need to purchase for the electrician to install. I want Tod’s…
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Firewalking
At Oyama-ji, aka Oyama Fudouson, there is an annual firewalking festival on the the 3rd Sunday in May. It is one of the most lush rituals I’ve attended. Oyama Fudouson will celebrate its 1300th anniversary of founding next year. (The shrine on the mountain above it is even older.) While it looks typically Buddhist on…
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Maura’s learned to trust
With back-to-back visitors since the end of March, Maura has made a huge change in personality. He has been a skittish cat, dashing off every time someone comes to the door. But over the last couple of months he has been learning to trust our friends. He will sit in a room with me and…
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Chat GPT & yoga
Yesterday, I decided to test Chat GPT in a knowledge realm I know well, yoga. I wanted a new sequence for today’s class, so I gave it this prompt: Hi, Chat GPT. I’m a yoga teacher. I teach classes online. Can you help me create a 15 minute class for my middle aged students? I…
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Persimmon Wash
For the past two days, Jo and I have been applying kakishibu, persimmon tanin dye, to the cedar cladding on the outside of 555. It feels like washing the house. The kakishibu is non-viscous liquid, barely thicker than water, so we have filled our buckets with the dye and used rags to apply it. I’ve…
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Cedar flooring
In the spirit of using local materials, a lot of our house is being constructed with sugi – cryptomeia japonica, a cedar endemic to Japan. I hate sugi. Because of its pollen, I take antihistamines for 10 weeks every spring. Most of the local sugi are mature, having been planted post-WWII as an economy boosting…
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Water courses
555 is wet. There are springs and seeps through the land. Before we built the house, I drew a map of the drainage channels and wet spots that I knew about. Two years later, each big downpour teaches me more about the way the water pools and drains. There are places where this might be…
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