Final Showdown! Sugiyama!

After working for a few weeks in Enzan, I made my way to my final WWOOF host in Kamogawa. At the southern tip of the Chiba province, Kamogawa is about two hours southeast from Tokyo by bus, near the Pacific coast- a beautiful place. The host family was great. Sugiyama Harunobu, the head of the house, has an interesting history. He did not go to college and instead worked as an archeologist, assisting with excavations in southern Tokyo (Kamakura). He moved to Kamogawa about 20 years ago to found a ceramics studio. He Currently makes pottery as fine art, produces ceramic bells for an annual festival,
teaches ceramics classes for all ages, and is the manager for an organic rice cooperative in the area. The following article sums up his pottery background very well:






The sort of pottery Harunobu does is very unique, even in Japan. The oven he uses to fire his artwork is a traditional design over a thousand years old, which he constructed himself. According to Harunobu's estimation, there are only about 15 ovens of this type in all of Japan. His style is completely natural and utilizes no artificial glazes. The only ingredients are natural clay, a naturally constructed furnace (a huge, earthen whale of a thing), a wood-fueled fire and skill. It is really, really sweet. I spent a lot of money purchasing some of these artistic delicacies...

The Work

The work at the Sugiyamas house varied according to the weather. If the weather permitted, the work was maintaining the rice paddies and preparing a new one for planting. I got to learn a lot about organic rice paddies!

Cutting down brush and weeds on the hills surrounding the paddy (I took the photo. Can you tell?)

Sugiyama using a machine that beats the tilled soil to just under water level

Here we are loading up the truck with baby rice stalks and women. We took these to the new paddy to plant.

Planting rice in the paddy

Unfortunately, most of the time the weather would not permit outdoor work. It basically rained every day at least once and on many occasions for days on end. In this case, I pounded old, used clay with a big wooden hammer. This clay, which came from mess-ups and discards, would be rehydrated after pounding for further use. It was not terrible work, but not much fun either. Good exercise, but it got a touch boring after ten days of the same routine. Because it was more tiring work, however, I got to work fewer hours- a nice bonus.

My workspace with Conan the Barbarian-style mallet

I did lots of stuff and had lots of fun. Here are some photos.

The Art of Kako Ogihara

Basically every time I meet a person in Japan I am asked what my job is. Then I tell them that I am a college student, which leads them to ask for my age. Everybody is blown away, of course, when they discover that I am not in my early or mid-30's but only 21 years old. After that ordeal passes, I tell them that I am an art major, which gets them really excited. It amazes me how reliably art excites the Japanese people.

Being Japanese, Ogihara-san got very excited once I told him about my art major. But he was excited for another reason as well- his great-grandfather, Kako Ogihara, was a traditional Japanese painter- art is in his blood. When he told me this, I became very excited as well. This all led to a lot of excitement. And so I asked him lots of questions about Kako, what sort of paintings he did etc.

Kako Ogihara

Ogihara-san showed me a bottle of wine made from his family's grapes. The label was a section of a painting done by Kako Ogihara about 100 years ago. Pretty cool! Ogihara then told me that at his mother's house they had loads of his work, in addition to a bunch of Kako's painting workbooks. The next day we stopped by the house to look at the paintings.

Being an art major, I was a bit distressed by the storage methods for the artwork- folded up in old boxes. The folding is what really got me. One of the books had been nipped by an apparently ravenous mouse.

A teaching workbook, from which Kako likely studied. Note the mouse bites and the stunning translucency of the paper

There were lots of workbooks, seven or eight, and lots of individual paintings and sketches. Leafing through them all was really interesting because you could see the images in the workborks mirrored in the sketches done by Kako. Some of the images in the workbooks were recreated entirely, large-scale. All were beautiful.

A mutual favorite of Ogihara-san and myself

Another mutual favorite, sadly folded up. Note the translucency of the paper

An image from one of Kako's workbooks

One of Kako's workbooks

This last workbook is very special. It was in excellent condition and had more images inside than all the other workbooks. All were in color. The binding was top notch, despite the book's age of around 120 years old. This workbook is very special because Ogihara-san gave it to me. When he gave it to me, with a huge and beaming smile, he told me that it probably had not been used for at least 70 or 80 years. This made me happiest of all- that he understood the book not as an artifact or fossil- a souvenier, essentially- but as something alive, something that should be used and perpetuated. I hope to do that!

Grape Farming

From June 24 up until about now, I worked on a grape farm in Enzan City, Yamanashi, Japan. Enzan is about 1.5 hours by train from Tokyo, situated in a beautiful valley with Fuji's peak visible in the distance. The city is famous throughout Japan for its fruit production with the main crops being grapes, peaches, plums, cherries and strawberries. It was a beautiful town bathed in greenery, and fruit could be seen ripening everywhere.

On my first night there, Ogihara-san, the WWOOF host, took me to an onsen. This must be some sort of protocol for getting to know people- it works, and I like it a lot. It was definitely a nice end to a long day (about 8 hours) of train travel with all my crap (too much crap) and no food. I was hungry enough to eat a horse, a whale even. I did, in fact. After the hot bath, Ogihara-san shuffled me into a small dining room where a bunch of his friends were sitting on the floor around a feast of oysters, clams, sashimi (raw fish), dumplings, fried whale, hush-puppies and raw horse, among other things (like beer!). It was endlessly satisfying. I had never eaten (or thought to eat) whale or horse, but both were delicious. The whale was fried, so it essentially tasted like friedness plus a unique texture, which was of course delicious. I was not surprised that horse was offered only because I'd been told by other people that horse is a delicacy in Japan. What I didn't know was that it is eaten raw. The only other meat I've eaten raw aside from fish is pork, so this was my first raw red meat meal. It was very tasty- similar to deer, if you've ever eaten that.

Ogihara-san, the host, is awesome. I will leave Japan with him at the top of my list of favorite Japanese people if I ever make one (I won't). Ogi started out working for and driving in Motocross. To put it bluntly, that's fucking awesome. I'm not sure if this was just a hobby along with his job or a professional interest. After (or during, I don't know) his time in Motocross he sold insurance, a career he would hold for about 20 years. During this time he took up an interest in snowboarding, which he has continued to do for the past 20 years. His favorite courses are powdery double-black diamonds through the woods. I will not do that any time soon. After he quit his job at the insurance company, he decided to get involved in the family business of farming grapes. He is happier than ever.

See the grin?

So basically, Ogihara-san rules.

His grape farm is divided into a number of plots, as are most farmers'. One section is a vineyard, dedicated to producing grapes for wine, which Ogihara has recently taken a greater interest in expanding. But most of the grapes grown are special varieties of table grapes- mainly Peony and Rosario Bianco. Ogihara grows many other varieties which you can see by visiting his blog, in mutilated English. The grapes are valued for their asthetic beauty and their taste, and are often given by wealthy businessmen as gifts. One bosomy bunch of Peony grapes, which is typically a count of 30, sells in Tokyo specialty shops for around 5,000￥, roughly $47. Damn! If they are not sold in specialty shops, their value changes dramatically. In a local grocery store they typically go for around 600-700￥ per bunch. This high cost is a result of tender-loving-care. Every bunch of grapes must be manicured by hand to eliminate rotten, wind-burnt, sun-burnt and small grapes. They are also pruned so that when the grapes grow to their gigantic size they do not exert such a pressure on their neighboring grapes that would explode them.

A Peony bunch, before pruning

The same bunch, post-pruning

Yours truly, pruning. Apparently I am a champion Peony pruner

In the photo you can see the strange trellis system that Japanese grape-farmers use. The main reasons are to resist the dew and humidity that are more extreme near the ground. It was always a long day of this work. We started around 8:30 and ended around 18:00. There were breaks and lunch in there, but that's a lot of pruning for one day. It was not hard work, but it was often very hot (35c at 70% humidity isn't much fun!). After work I would fall into daydream trances of grape-pruning. But every meal was delicious and every evening provided beer and great satisfaction at a job well done- all in the very good and charming company of Ogihara and his wife.

Aside from the job of trimming Peony bunches we did some work in the greenhouse if it was raining. In the greenhouse we did pruning in addition to covering the bunches with small hoods. Grapes that ripen to red or purple got clearish-white wax-paper hoods, and grapes to ripen green got brown paper ones. Red grapes need light to change color, and green grapes need a lessening of light to remain green, thus the different hoods. The hoods also prevent birds from eating the grapes.

Hoods

More photos:

Rosario Bianco

Another variety that looks pretty neat. The name escapes me.

A decent view of the trellis system.

A sweeeeping panoraaaaaamaaaaa

The Nature of Shalom Forest

Shalom no Mori was one beautiful place. I could have spent months hiking, finding new and interesting natural spectacles. And I don't mean eyeglasses! Although I guess finding naturally made glasses would be quite a natural spectacle, indeed. Anyway, so let me tell you about the Forest of Shalom itself, and it's history.

The other day, while Hiro-san and I were driving our bags of poop up the mountain, he told me the history of the forest. The land was originally purchased by Hiro's "4-step" grandfather, as he told me. I take this to mean his great-great-great grandfather. Hiro also informed me that the land was purchased around the beginning of the Meiji period, which began in 1868. So either way, it's been in the family for quite a while. Hiro's ancestor purchased the land with the profits from his lucrative shop in town. The land was originally bought to make profit from its one abundant natural resource- wood. At the time, the Meiji government was nationalizing and modernizing the country, an effort which requires a lot of energy and material. Demand for wood was up and he got top dollar for the stuff. Thus, the wealthy shop owner became wealthier. He, or one of his children, planted new trees (Japanese cypress and cedar) which are currently standing. This planting resulted in tree stands very straight and tall like this:

Woods

Unfortunately, after the development of fossil fuels as a power source, along with international trade, the cost of wood fell dramatically. Hiro-san offered me a telling comparison- he can trade one tree for approximately one radish. And so, he does not sell the trees, but keeps them where they stand. But there are other natural resources at Shalom no Mori that can generate income- the river and its inhabitants.

A calm section of the mountain stream

Yamame, or Japanese trout. Can you spot it?

Fly fishing is incredibly popular in Japan, Tokyo especially. However, due to Japan's high population density most rivers where fly-fishing is possible are overcrowded with fishermen. Hiro-san has taken advantage of this dilemma- he runs a fly fishing business where he limits the fishing to only eight enthusiasts per day. On a property of about 10 square kilometers, it is a far more natural experience for Tokyo residents than the usual fishing hole. This benefit extends to Hiro-san, whose woods maintain their peaceful nature.

I had time to go on a hike one day. I wish I'd had more days with time to hike, but usually by the time work was through the sun was already setting. Aside from that, work started too early to hike in the morning, and the break after lunch was only 30 minutes- not enough time to get very far. Here are some photos from the hike.



Okay, so I like mountain streams and waterfalls. The last full day I had at Shalom no Mori, Hiro-san drove me to the top of the mountain with a mountain bike. It's a rugged drive up, despite the occasional paved section:

One of the cleaner paved sections (it's a tree, not a bridge)

Once I reached the top, I took a bunch of photos and then sketched for about an hour. It was a very beautiful overlook. Goddamn I wish I could have camped out there for a few days, taken some night photos of the stars, photos of sunrise etc. If anything, my experience there has encouraged me to take advantage of the natural bounty of the United States and to go camping more.



Ahh, what a beautiful place. The ride down the mountain was a lot of fun, and very fast.

To view more (and better) photos and information, in Japanese, on Shalom Forest please go to Hiro-san's homepage:

http://www.shalomnet.net/

Meet the Family

As soon as I arrived at Shalom no Mori I was treated like family. The Komoriyas get WWOOFers a lot, and so I'm sure they are somewhat used to random people showing up and suddenly becoming friends. Indeed, after my second day staying there, the whole family and I (Reiko, the mom, was absent) went to "Sun Lake," a hotel/restaurant/store/etc., for a nice dinner. Afterward, much to my surprise, we all went to the hotel's onsen- a public bath. Needless to say, I have never been so very naked with a man and his family so soon after introductions! Or ever, for that matter. My first reaction was hesitation, but I very soon realized that this is just a regular thing over here in Japan. And that's just how it turned out- very regular, and extremely relaxing (There is a giant "hot tub" type thing, and a sauna). It also made me feel much more accepted by their family, and much more comfortable around them.

So let's meet the Komoriyas!

Shintaro, the dog

A more candid shot of Hiro-san

Ryouma, 7, mystical enchanter. Nice junk, Ryouma

Anri, 5, ninja queen

I unfortunately do not have very many photos of Karin or Reiko- Karin was always off reading somewhere and Reiko was busy most of the time- dutifully studying her Chinese, gardening up near the house, cleaning, helping with friends' farms etc. A hard working woman! There will be pictures of these two later on, but I do not have individual shots of them.

Karin and Ryouma both had their birthdays the first week I was with the Komoriyas. Karin turned nine, and Ryouma turned seven. I was uninformed about Karin's birthday, and so I unfortunately don't have any photos from that event. She got a unicycle! I was informed about Ryouma's birthday, and so I brought my camera along. There were smiles and delight all around.

Dammit that is one happy little boy

Hmm...I wonder what this....

It's a...! It's a...! (It was a new Japanese style outfit with Ryouma and a Dragon on it. Pretty sweet. Karin is wowing on the left)

After two short weeks of living with the Komoriyas I was very sorry to say goodbye, but I had to get going to Yamanashi to work on the grape farm. I was privileged to be able to stay with their family and experience life in Azuma. I wish them the best!

Alas, farewell. (Hiro-San, Reiko-san, Anri-chan, Karin [behind Hiro] and Ryouma [behind Reiko])