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Desire vs Drama
I want to be a good neighbor. But I really don’t understand the method to do so. And I feel like I have created drama in my ‘hood already. Japan’s neighborhood associations – called kumiai – are based on groups of a dozen (give or take) houses in proximity to one another. Traditionally, these were…
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Pansies
Yesterday, I decided to plant some colorful flowers at 555 to welcome visitors and workers. There were some old plant pots sitting around the space and the other day Sakaguchi-san rescued an old concrete pipe that he suggested as a plant stand. With those materials and access to as much dirt as I could want,…
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Dodai time
Today the first layer of the house puzzle went into place, the dodai 土台. Fat hinoki beams sit on “packing” of plastic padding on top of the concrete foundations. I turned up at the genba just before 10 am break, hoping I’d find a way to help. I did! I made coffee for everyone and…
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Ashiba adventure
555 is surrounded! From the wooden fence erected during the foundation work, we moved on to proper scaffolding this week. It’s called ashiba in Japanese, which means legs. When I saw it yesterday, it was all I could do not to scurry up that staircase to the top. I restrained myself, though I’m not actually…
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The view from 45 cm up
Our foundations are unusually tall for a modern building; they are much more like the vernacular kominka of old when high floors kept the dirt and animals out. At 45 cm (18 in), our floor floats so far above ground level that there will be two steps up into the house from the doma. The…
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Pre-cut
Yesterday afternoon, the wood arrived! It was three trucks’ worth of lumber – beams, posts, rafters, gables, studs, joists – all of the fundamental framing parts. Next Friday every stick of it will be put into place for the jotoshiki. These hundreds of timbers have been precision milled. They are pre-cut to length as well…
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Hokora, the little shrine
Sakaguchi-san came on Sunday, his day off, to work on something that I know has been bugging him: getting the hokora (祠), our little shrine, back in place. When we started the gabion work, Kawasaki-san disassembled and moved the shrine to the shed. There was too much chance of it being damaged by big equipment…
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Crepuscular lessons
Fritter had a brief 9:30 pm walk with me. Another with Tod at 11:30pm. He then made loud requests to go outside every 90 minutes until I capitulated at 4:45 am. His stitches are out and Fritter is ready to get back to normal. But normal is now chaperoned walks in a harness and he…
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Secret Ways and Hidey Holes
Since Fritter came back from his surgery, I have been keeping him mostly inside. He’s tired and sleeps a lot so doesn’t seem to mind. But since he isn’t litter trained and is ultimately an outdoor cat, we go for leashed walks on his request. And I have been learning a lot about cat behaviour…
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Nama-con #3
Yesterday was the final pour of concrete for the foundations. It is such a treat to watch the coordinated mayhem of professionals doing their well-understood roles in a project. Six men worked together to fill all of the oiled framework for the riser ring (thanks for the correct terminology, Mark). One operated the cement mixer.…
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