A Day's Work, part deux

The bulk of the work I did at Shalom no Mori was cutting logs along their length and then stripping the bark off of them. These logs would be used to create a new home for the Komoriyas. So far the foundation has been completed, constructed almost entirely by the three Germans who made Zum Ginsielder lodge. They have never worked with concrete before. All of this makes me want to build my own house.

The logs I worked with were all felled at some other time in Shalom Forest. I really wish I could have cut a tree down. Maybe some other time. We used a truck to transport all of the logs from the log spot to the cutting spot. Some logs had been lying around in the sun for a long time, and had thus lost their weight in water. I could carry these by myself to the saw spot. Usually two people worked the saw, but it was very possible to do it solo. Hiro-san asked me to do it by myself a number of times, including carrying the wood by myself. This made me very proud, and I enjoyed it.

I think we can all agree that I look really cool in this photo

Cutting a log

I actually took the first two photos myself, using a timer. That last photo was taken by Victor, from Tokyo (but originally from Peru). Victor was WWOOFing together with his family as a short vacation from hectic Tokyo life. Good people. Victor used to be a professional photographer, part of the Nikon Professional Circle. He gave me a lot of pointers and tips on photography. Thanks, Victor.

All of this work with logs and cabins and saws made me feel a bit (a very wee bit) like Dick Proenneke. Having seen the short film about him, Alone in the Wilderness, I knew that it was entirely possible to just heave a big log on your shoulder and walk around with it. The movie follows the construction of a log cabin from start to finish by Proenneke, all by himself, entirely by hand. He also filmed nearly the entire movie. I suggest anybody who can to see this film (I can lend it to you). Maybe you'll learn something useful, like how to carry logs on your shoulder. Thanks for that, Dick.

After cutting the logs, we would load them up in a truck and drive them down to the river. We set up a power washer which I then used to strip off all the bark.



Aside from this work, I did a number of small odd-jobs- installed a screen on a small dam used to re-route water to a future fish farm, built a gate for the pony's corrall, cleaned up the pony's poop, etc. The last few days I spent at Shalom Forest the work wasn't so great. We just cleaned rocks and soil out of of road drainage ditches for the electrical company. There is a small road throughout the forest that Hiro-san's family built so that the electrical company can easily maintain power lines in the area, which I am sure they are compensated for. There are a lot of drains along this road that get filled up- often entirely- with fallen rocks and mud. So we shoveled all of it out, which was hard work. I don't mind doing hard work, but the point of WWOOFing is to learn about organic farming, or at least sustainable living practices of some sort. Shoveling rocks for the electrical company does not fall under my rubric of "organic farming" or "sustainability". The WWOOF program is not just about work exchange. Oh well.

In all, I learned a lot through my work at Shalom Forest. My favorite job was definitely the log work- carrying, cutting and stripping bark. I wish I could have stayed around longer to help Hiro-san lay the base logs on the foundation, but I had to get going to the grape farm in Enzan.

Next up...Meet the Family!

A Day's Work, part 1

My very first job working at Shalom no Mori (Shalom Forest) for the Komoriyas was to scrub the dishes after dinner, a few hours after arriving. I did not wash the dishes. I started to wash the dishes, using soap, when I was informed that they do not use soap on their dishes. Just scrubbing and "nature", as they put it. Without much of an option, I went along. I assumed everything would be okay since they are all alive and apparently well. I, too, am still alive. This is good. Regardless, I will continue my usual regimen of washing dishes using soap. I think a good experiment could be modeled after this sort of a situation. Maybe when I retire, or have little people that I'm supposed to be immersing in the scientific method and other education hooplah.

Okay, anyway, the real work started in the morning. Every morning I would wake up around 6:30 and climb down the ladder from the loft to the main room of Yamaneko lodge. First, I would make coffee "by hand". This was more work than the usual method, although far more enjoyable. If there were no coffee beans roasted already, I would hand roast raw coffee beans. Hiro-san taught me the method. To do this you just heat up raw beans (which are very cheap, apparently) in a skillet or pan on the stovetop.

Roasting coffee beans

First use high heat, mixing constantly, and then after about 8-10 minutes when most beans are dark brown, you lower the heat and wait until all are evenly dark. Then you cool them. After roasting, I would grind the beans using an old-fashioned hand-crank coffee grinder.

Coffee grinder

It works very slowly- takes about five minutes of vigorous grinding to make around 3/4 cup of ground coffee.

Voila!

While I was grinding the coffee, water boiled in a kettle on the stovetop. Once the water was boiling I would set up the thermos, top it off with the ceramic filter holder and re-usable hemp filter, which was filled with ground coffee, and I would pour in the boiling water from the kettle. This went in small intervals since the coffee ground expands and foams up from the water, taking about five minutes.

Pouring water

Then we drank the coffee- you all know how that goes. I enjoyed making coffee this way, and hope to do it again in the future. It sort of wakes you up before you even have the coffee, and the more drawn out process forces you to realize what you are doing. "What am I doing? I would ask myself. I am making coffee". Better, I think, than setting the timer for the caffeine dispenser.

After the coffee was made, I would vacuum the first floor of Yamaneko lodge (every day). It was a wooden floor with its fair share of spilt coffee, peanuts, feet, food, oils etc. rubbed into it. I do not know why I was supposed to do this. No detergent on the dishes, but vacuuming the wooden floor of the cabin daily. Okay. It wasn't time consuming or bothersome in the least- just paradoxical.

After the first morning of coffee-making and vacuuming, I helped Hiro-san clean out the compost toilet, which was full of shit. I was excited to get a bit of experience with a composting toilet, which are used in basically all sustainable living operations, and to jump right into work- really getting my hands dirty. Really. I was given some cotton gloves, which are pretty useless against wet feces. Oh well! Afterward, I could always scrub my hands (with soap!). I wish I had some photos of us bagging crap, but I didn't want to get shit all over my camera, to say the least.

Here's how the composting toilet works. It's a big plastic toilet, sort of like something you might expect to see on an airplane. The toilet rests a bit high up (when enthroned your butt is at bar stool height) to make room for the poop reservoir at the bottom. You take a poop, setting your used TP to the side in a small can, which is later burned. You pour a cup of ashes over your poop. You do not pee in the toilet- you pee outside. This can be difficult to keep separated at times. Once a day, you rotate a little lever counter-clockwise, which mixes up all the poop and ash, helping maintain a nice dry load and thus no smell. The outhouse the toilet was in did not smell one bit. When you want to empty the toilet, you rotate the lever clockwise, depositing a load of poop into the poop drawer, which you then pull out and dump into a bag. The bag sits around for a while.

After a while, Hiro-san and I drove the shit bags up the mountain to dump on a hillside. This was very exciting- on the ride up Hiro-san told me the history of Shalom Forest and his family (more on that later), and for the first time I got to see the bulk of the forest that I had not known existed. We drove very near to the top of one of his mountain tops after passing kilometers of beautiful woods and mountain stream, overlooks etc, and unloaded the crap. This was surprisingly fun. Hiro-san mentioned to me that they put human feces in perfume sometimes because it gets women going. Right, Hiro.

In the Mountains of Gunma

Well, my time in Gunma has come and gone, however I still need to write about it. At the moment, I'm in Yamanashi Province, about one hour away from Mount Fuji. Yamanashi is an area known in Japan for producing fruit, especially Japanese peaches, cherries and grapes. I am working on a grape farm. More on that later.

My arrival in Azuma (the area I stayed in Gunma) was about as I expected. I took several trains to get there, the last of which was very old, small and unpopulated. There were two people on the train for the majority of the trip- me and a Japanese student. I arrived at Sori station, a quaint little place.

Sori Station

Once I got out of the station I got to the payphone to call the host, Komoriya Hiroyuki (Hiro-san). The entrance to the phone booth was covered with cobwebs- not used much. Hiro-san promptly picked me up and we drove off to his family's mountain abode. The drive to his place is beautiful- a slinky road lined with Japanese cedar and cypress, alongside a river in the mountains.

The road just before Hiro-san's cabin

Soon we arrived at his cabin- simple and unassuming. I suddenly had the impression that I was in West Virginia. This place was nothing like what I had seen in the rest of Japan (or much of the United States, for that matter). But as I would eventually learn, the roots of Shalom Forest go much deeper than this humble beginning.

The Komoriyas' Cabin

I was soon given a quick tour of the vicinity. The Komoriyas' cabin is where Reiko (the mom), Hiro (the dad), Karin (daughter, 9), Ryouma (son, 7) and Anri (daughter, 5) all live. Next to their home are some stairs that lead to a bride across the river. On the other side of the river there are two cabins built just for WWOOFers to stay. The main cabin is Yamaneko Lodge (Mountaincat Lodge) and then there is another cabin called Zum Ginsielder (Moon River in German), which was juwst finished by 3 recent high school graduates from Germany who stayed at Shalom Forest for over five months! They took a year off before college and stayed in Japan for nine months. They built Zum Ginsielder entirely by themselves with supervision and help from Hiro-san. Pretty sweet!

The precarious steps leading to the river

The also precarious bridge leading across the river, Zum Ginsielder Lodge in background

Yamaneko Lodge, my home for the past 2 weeks

The inside of the cabin was quite nice. There is a small kitchen nook in the back of the cabin, an old laptop computer (which became out of order, sadly, and thus this post's delay), a wood-fired stove, and a really cool table made out of logs. Something else you may have seen in one of the photos is the projector. While the place is out in the woods and there is no TV to be found, Yamaneko Lodge is equipped with Bose surround sound and a projector screen for watching movies. I really like this concept- the blending of natural environment with certain "high-tech" amenities. The only English language movies around were the Star Wars series. I watched all of them except Episode I and the Return of the Jedi. The Komoriyas are avid fans of Star Wars, Ryouma, especially.

How woeful was I to discover the void within these wee kegs

The ladder to the left leads up to the sleeping loft, where I- wonder of wonders!- slept

I slept in the dark corner on yonder side of loft

Exhausted from about 8 hours of rail travel and lulled by the mountain stream, I slept very well. The next day I would discover what it is like to work and live in the mountains of Japan!

Be Patient!

Sorry, everybody for the holdup on new posts. It will continue for at least another two or three days, so don't bother checking until then at earliest. I am currently in Azuma, a "city" in the mountainous Gunma prefecture. I have been doing all sorts of stuff here- cutting big logs, stripping bark off of big logs, building various things like boxes and gates, hiking and mountain-biking, among other things. I will have a much larger post (or hopefully, posts) with loads of pictures about this place and my experiences when I have better internet access. A week and a half ago, the owner of this place, Hiro, messed up the internet in the cabin I'm staying in, and has been unable to fix it. I am not allowed in the office/computer room of the house for a couple of very strange reasons. So right now, I am standing outside (it is raining) using Hiro-san's laptop on the windowsill. It is connected via ethernet cable (he messed up the wireless internet, as well) through the window, which is shut so I cannot see inside. This is an interesting place to say the least, and I have　many thoughts on it that I would like to share. If only...

So please, be patient! On Sunday I　am going to my new WWOOF host, the winery in Yamanashi. I did not hear back from the other hosts, so that made my decision easier. I'm looking forward to it!

Papermaking in Echizen City

Last Thursday or so I took a day trip from Kyoto to Echizen City in the Fukui province, about two hours Northeast of Kyoto by train. My task: to study, research, observe etc. the process of making Washi, or handmade Japanese paper. Part of my focus in Japan is on Japanese paper because I set up an independent study course (three 300 level credit hours!) through Truman State. I highly recommend others try doing this. But why Japanese paper, you ask? Why not something really useful, like the effects of the introduction of Buddhism on the ruling class structure in the 7th century? Well, being a printmaking major (I am a printmaking major), the topic of Japanese paper comes up a lot- it is a very important material with very special properties that you can really only understand after working with the stuff in various media. It is entirely different from Western paper- in its fiber content, its fiber characteristics, opacity, texture, thickness and so on. In printmaking these are very important characteristics- as important as the ink you print with and the mark-making on your image.

So anyway, I took a train to Echizen City, famous for its centuries old tradition of producing Washi. It was a wonderful day. I first stopped by the main museum where you can make your own Washi. The process was severely dumbed down, as it is typically reserved for groups of schoolchildren probably ten years my junior (I'm only 21). It was basically nothing like the real thing. Do I look really cool?

Check out the ACTION INSET!!

Look at that hairline! At the ripe age of 21, I'd say its pretty impressive! Once it's all gone I'll have to ring up Hans Weimann and see if he can't work some magic and transplant some hair from my arms to my shiny crown. I'd have thicker hair than ever before!

Anyway, so after that dinky tour I went to see the real stuff. I approached the Washi papermaking building:



I wandered around for a while, inspecting the structure to see if any nails were used in its construction. Traditional Japanese construction techniques utilize complex joinery in place of nails, which are thought to harm the wood and ruin its spirit and quality. This building seemed to use such joinery, which is usually the case only with older structures. The woman at the front desk confirmed that the building was over 250 years old, built during the Edo period and has been used for making Washi ever since! It excited me, at least. I was the only person there, which was great. I got a one-on-one tour of the shop and its contents.

The raw materials taken from Kozo (Japanese mulberry), to be used as the paper's fiber

Hand separating the choicest fibers from the lesser grades

Further separating the choice fiber (the white bast fibers) with a mallet

Preparing to form a sheet of Washi- laying the su (it's like a screen, basically)

Couching the sheet (stacking sheets on the table)

Laying the sheet out for drying in the Sun

A good example of a lamp made from Washi (lamp is the left 2/3, shadow on the right)

The old guy in the pictures was cool. He really enjoyed looking at me sternly, finger pointing at my chest and repeating "TO-RO-RO-A-OI!". Tororo-aoi is a special plant used in making Washi. Its bulbous roots are mashed up with water to form a goopy substance used as a binder of sorts. I think the guy was suggesting to me that tokoro-aoi is a key part of Washi, which it is. On my way out, the woman at the front desk gave me a free bag of tororo-aoi seeds! This made me happy.

In all, it was a successful day! It was nice to see first-hand everything I've been reading about in my thrilling book, "Japanese Papermaking", by Timothy Barrett.

Final Romps in Kyoto

Well my last few days in Kyoto were coming to an end, so I wanted to be sure to get to the must-see destinations. On the top of the list were Katsura Rikyu, an old Imperial villa in Southwest Kyoto, and the Daitoku-ji temple complex.

Katsura Rikyu is famous for its display of "purely" Japanese architectural form, along with its beautiful garden. The Japanese brochures typically hail the Villa as exhibiting Japanese design techniques with no outside influence. This is almost definitely untrue, at least as far as history is concerned, but whatever. The Japanese tend to cast a somewhat blind or perhaps myopic eye on the true history of their culture (examples being religion and aesthetics). So says the American. Anyway, so beautiful architecture and gardens.



Another day I took the time to visit the Daitoku-Ji temple complex, which houses a decent number of gardens and temples. Each with their own separate 5 bone entry fee! As such, I visited only one temple, but a solid one, the Daisen-In, a karesansui style, or dry rock landscape garden. Photos were not allowed. At first I was disappointed by this, but soon appreciated the fact that I could focus much better on the scenery around me instead of the composition in the lens. The signs in the garden told that the rock landscape has divulged infinite wisdoms for centuries. I considered this. I did find one wisdom. Some introduction to the wisdom.

In Buddhism the concept of time is brought up continuously. From many books I've read, my understanding is that Buddhists do not believe that time exists in the normal understanding of the word. They believe that only the moment, this moment, exists. It is constantly changing. There is no past, and there is no future- these are only constructions of the mind, psychological tools used to calibrate ourselves in an everpresent state of change. I think I get this, and it seems sensible enough to me (I'm no rocket scientist. Any kudos, future physicist friends?).

Well In Zen Buddhism, the goal of meditation is to empty the mind of thought so that you may experience this ever-changing moment for what it really is, whatever that may be, devoid of human time. To become an empty vessel, a "pregnant void" as Zen's Taoist ancestral roots would put it. Zen dry landscape gardens are one vehicle with which to focus/release the mind (which is it?) to this empty state. Typically these gardens depict water of some sort- that's what all those raked pebbles are, flowing water. This "water" then interacts with various other rocks. Examples would be waterfalls or ripples around giant, partially buried boulders. Anyway, so the wisdom I got was that this rock garden is supposed to be representing a frozen moment, one instant in the "river of constant change" that is existence, reality, THE IT, whatever you call all of this. All of the pebbles representing water drops stopped in time. Taking this further, you realize that the paused moment the garden represents is itself the ever-changing moment, THE IT. At the very least the rocks' atoms are a shakin' and a dancin'. Pretty neat, I think!

There were a few other realizations that I will reserve for personal discussion, for sake of laziness. I will end with a quote that I read on my way out of Daisen-In (there was no punctuation).

"Each day is training Training for myself through failure is possible Living each moment equal to anything Ready for everything I am alive- I am this moment My future is here and now, for if I cannot endure today when and where will I?"

-Souen Ozeki

Catching up!

At the moment I am sitting in a log cabin in a forest in the mountains, nestled just next to a large stream. I can hear the water as I fall asleep and I listen to its pleasant sound with my coffee in the morning. Basically, it's like, bogus! But more on that later. I've been very busy the last few days, and my last hostel didn't have internet, so I want to catch up on my last days in Kyoto before moving on to the fun stuff.

After staying in Waraku-an for a few nights, I switched hostels again, this time to Orange Inn. I was pleased to find that I had a 10 person room entirely to myself. There were only 3-4 people staying in the hostel which could accommodate at least 50. Bonus! (lack of internet- Negabonus). The hostel has an interesting, if eclectic, array of media for patrons' use: A bunch of books in Japanese (on who knows what, not I), a dozen or so English language, college-level textbooks on the topic of City Planning, TWENTY-FOUR VHS tapes of the hit American sitcom, "Friends", and a collection of various BBC sitcoms. Needless to say, I only took advantage of the BBC sitcoms. After tiring of Japanese language stuff after nearly three weeks, I found a great deal of comfort in, "Only Fools and Horses", a superb BBC comedy sitcom- apparently rated by the British as the best sitcom of all time! Who knew?

Starting at Left: Silly Uncle Albert, Nice-Guy Rodney, Slick Salesman Dell Boy, and Boring-Character Grandpa

This show really helped relieve my as-of-late case of the Mondays. I was getting a little overdone on Japanese stuff- my only reading materials were a Japanese language dictionary, a book on Japanese grammar and a book of poetry by Matsuo Basho (Traveling writer who invented the Haiku). I was a bit Japan-ed out. But then I bought a great book, "Freedom Evolves", by Daniel Dennett. What a good book (boring end, though). I will definitely read more of his stuff. "Only Fools and Horses" helped as well. Currently, I'm armed with "Freakonomics" and "Man's Search for Meaning", both of which sound promising.

After a short break from touring and a filler up on English media, I was ready to attack more sights. New post for them.

Where to WWOOF? You be the judge!

I'm trying to decide on a place to do farmstay (the program I'm with is called WWOOF Japan- Worldwide Workers on Organic Farms). I have a place already set up from June 10-July 1, but I need to figure out what I'm doing after that. I'm considering going back to the Mt. Fuji area- maybe climb to the top? There are two hosts in that region currently accepting WWOOFers that I'm looking at:

1. Eco-Village type thing, focusing on environmental sustainability. Excellent view of Mount Fuji from the porch.

2. Vineyard owned by some older dude. I would learn about grapes and growing them, but the farm is only partly organic and sort of factory-style.

Which will it be? You can vote by posting a comment. For god's sake comment more.

Waraku-An

I had sat at Kyoto's Cheapest Inn long enough, so I took a break from the place and decided to stay a few nights in a slightly more expensive, more traditional Japanese inn called Waraku-An. Well worth the price! To get there, you had to walk down this short path to the entrance:



The inside of the place was great- hardwood floors everywhere, beautiful Japanese paper lamps, and a Japanese-style garden in the middle of it all! The whole time I was there I was hoping it would rain, because it would have been incredibly relaxing and enjoyable to sit right next to the garden through a storm, but alas- not a drop. If I ever build a house, I'm definitely installing one of these babies.





Even the toilet room got the special treatment. You can see why I don't call it the bathroom. I guess w.c. would be applicable, here. Maybe t.c.? Do periods go at the end of sentences that end like the previous one or is a question mark substituted? I'd sure like to know.



The rooms were in the traditional style:



In all, staying at Waraku-An was an excellent decision. It was only 2500 yen/night, which is extremely reasonable especially when considering the peaceful, traditional atmosphere. A Japanese girl staying at the place asked me if I thought the inn seemed "Japanese", to which I responded, "Well, I guess so. I mean, it seems like it is". She informed me that it was very Japanese style, except that it was a little bit western. This meant that it was "too nice", as she put it. The place wasn't always so nice, however. The owners, apparently a new-ageish French dude and his Japanese wife, remodeled the inn after purchasing it in somewhat rundown condition. They had a small album which recorded the remodeling process- very inspiring, what they did. It really makes me want to build a house. The French guy was an interesting character, and his new-agedness definitely rubbed off on the place. My first encounter with him was at the reception desk. He had long black hair pulled tightly in a ponytail, and was garbed in a traditional Japanese shirt with big, billowing pants. In his left hand he wielded his baby daughter, and in his right a fully loaded breast pump with bottle. It was a bit like sleeping at Pier-one. I even overheard Dido and Enya a number of times, which was strangely acceptable considering the atmosphere.

Anybody see that episode of South Park with the Chinese singer Wing that covers (with reliably awful and hilarious creative interpretation) such musical acts as AC/DC and Elvis? Well, I overheard Wing playing at Waraku-An a couple of times. I've also heard her in a number of stores around Kyoto. Weird!

Super Touristy Crap

Touristy, yet beautiful. The Golden Pavilion was probably the most tourist-loaded sight I've seen in Japan yet. But I went on Saturday, so I was expecting such a turnout. There wasn't much to do aside from photographing the pavilion. Some of the fruit of my lens's loins:




I like the second one better. I think the clouds' reflection in the water helps give the photo a more heavenly atmosphere. Probably closer to what the Pavilion's designers had in mind. It also keeps you from noticing the somewhat unattractive natural poop brown color of the water.

After the Golden Pavilion, I sought out the Silver Pavilion, which is not so properly titled. The structure is not silver and is considerably smaller in stature than the Golden Pavilion. While the building itself was neither silver nor as grandly decorated as its golden counterpart, it was nonetheless a worthwhile sight. It also had a very attractive moutainside garden which was much more impressive and savory than the Golden Pavilion's. Not much in the way of photographs worth posting, sorry.

Relaxing in Kyoto

Well, last Thursday I took the train from Osaka to Kyoto to begin my stay there (here, for now). I've done a lot the past week with little chance to use the internet, so I have a lot to catch up on. I checked in at my first hostel in Kyoto on Thursday- Kyoto's Cheapest Inn, aptly named. I'm not so sure that it is actually the least expensive place to stay in Kyoto, but it seemed to be cheap in the other sense of the word. I shared a room with about 20-30 other people, which got a little warm at night due to the amount of body heat generated. We probably could have produced the electricity for the place to run on. For all those people there was one shitty old iMac computer- the "newer" sort of Macs we used in gradeschool, for you Annunciation kids.

I did most of my Kyoto sightseeing while there. On Friday, I had a very exciting trip to the Saihoji Temple, also called Kakodera. It is famous in Japan for its exquisite variety (over 120 types) of mosses that grow there naturally. It was a nice break from the more typical tourist-infested temple, but at a price. In order to gain permission to enter the temple and garden, you have to mail them (postal, not electronic) the date you wish to go, alternative dates etc. and then show up with your proof of acceptance. Once arriving, you have to pay a minimum 3000 yen (roughly 26 bones, USD) "donation".
Upon entering the temple grounds, we were ushered into a prayer hall where we got to sit through a buddhist ceremony of sorts. In all there were around 40 people on the tour, and there were only three westerners including myself. Before the ceremony started we all kneeled down at our little tables and wrote a buddhist prayer(Okay, traced a buddhist prayer) to fully prepare ourselves to enter the garden. This was cool because we used the traditional brushes, ink and stone to write it. Afterwards, the monks all chanted the prayer, which was SWEET (very unusual and musical) and we finally went into the garden.

The only reason I knew about this garden was because I saw a photograph of it in a Japanese gardening book of mine, and thought, "Hey, that place looks pretty sweet". The whole deal about writing to them, in addition to the huge cost further tempted me. It was worth it- a very beautiful place.

New- anonymous comments

Just letting you know that I changed a setting, so the blog now allows anonymous comments. This means you can comment on a post without signing up for anything. If you do post anonymously, please leave your name so I at least know who you are. And just for your information, blogger is under the umbrella of Google, so if you have a google or gmail account, setting up a blogger account is a zip.