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Witch’s broom
Amongst the many branches I ran through the chipper last month, I found one that I set aside. It was the perfect shape my my hand and a good length to become a handle for something. After the jichinsai, the bamboo altar was dismantled and tossed on the burn pile. Before burning, I took a…
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The giant’s teeth
While we have freedom to drive the yumbo every which way across the lot, Monaca Doken are collecting all the old foundation stones and the boulders around the property to reuse them. It’s exactly what I hoped for – the quantity of materials around the space is epic and there are many stones just waiting…
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1:1 scale
Sasaki-san and Yoshida-san came to 555 today to stake out the corners of the building and to show me some really meaningful measurements. It took a few tries to get the building in the right place. I have reasons for not wanting it the typical 90 cm from the edge of the drainage – the…
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Retained
The gabion work finished up today when we threaded the lids on the top level this morning. It’s a magnitude more challenging to get the lids on with the rocks in than it is to put the empty cages together. There was a lot of squeezing with pliers and hands to get the edges close…
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Arranging stones
Creating gabion is a much more labor intensive process than I expected. You can’t just dump a bunch of rocks into the cage. Even at the bottom and back, every rock is positioned by hand into a pile that won’t shift. There are thousands of small decisions that add up to a filled frame. Sakaguchi-san…
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Water Test
The Kawasakis warned me not to drink the yamamizu, mountain water, that we have on tap at 555. It comes from the mountain to the east, piped in somehow that no one can actually explain to me, but that I will be responsible for eventually. There are networks of pipes all over these mountains, maintained…
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Foliage & forage
There are so many plants at 555. Some look like weeds, but aren’t. Others are definitely weeds. Some are mysterious. I have been photographing and trying to identify what I encounter. This is a roundup of some of the late summer botanicals and things that caught my eye. We have a lot of useful or…
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Groundbreaking
This morning, the sun came out in the midst of typhoon weather to shine during our jichinsai, the groundbreaking ceremony. I have to back up a little bit and explain why we held a Shinto ceremony at 555. First of all, it’s the tradition to invoke the local spirits and get them to bless the…
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Prepared
Typhoon No. 14 (Nanmadol) is a Category 4 storm blowing through Kyushu right now, and we are expected to get the tail end of it on Tuesday here in Chiba. That did not stop today’s weather from being blustery and wet enough to destroy rice fields, swell rivers, and cause a power outage this evening.…
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Mascot
I think I can keep up with the 71 year olds who are my crew. But I truly cannot. I arranged rocks in the gabions for about 45 minutes yesterday morning. It was hot (87F/31C) in the sun and the work was hard. My heart started beating its experimental jazz rhythms, which at first feels…
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