Calendars aren’t something you go out and buy – you get given them, usually by companies you have some dealing with and who’d like to have their name on your wall through the next year. Unfortunately, along with cutting “entertainment” expenses, calendar budgets have been trimmed too and there’s a nationwide calendar deficit apparently.
Farmlog 10th October 2010 13 October, 2010
- Three little kids carrying a lion-dance costume around a Nagoya street corner. A local festival I guess. Some Japanese “matsuri” are thriving, but many have deteriorated to this. No-one was watching. Maybe at the end they’ll get some sweets paid for by the local residents’ association. That’s about it.
- Interspersed among the buildings on the outskirts of town some small rice paddies turning gold in the Autumn sun. I wonder what that rice tastes like, though, marinated in car exhaust fumes?
- Arrived at 3 to be greeted by a chilly wind that didn’t suggest eating out that evening at all. By evening, though, the wind had dropped and the insect chorus had started up and the whole thing felt much more welcoming so we had probably our last dinner under the stars for 2010. Spectacular clear skyful of stars it was too.
- The deer had knocked the net down again. They’ve made a home in the uncut grass just outside, so I got out the cutter and cleared it down a bit, went to the wood for a bit of bamboo and grimly patched up the deer-barrier yet again.
- A lone bumble bee going round the chilli flowers, and a big hornet in the tea bushes. Both seemed quite peaceful though.
- Min temp 10°C max 23°C
Summer 22 September, 2010
Finally it’s over – sort of. That sultry sticky sweltering sweaty squishy soggy humidity has dropped way down as the dry Autumn air from the continent takes over. Although we’re going over 30°C today and you wouldn’t call it cool exactly, the mornings and evenings are really pleasant and there’s a nice breeze even now, at 2 in the afternoon. It’s been a record-breaking long hot Summer this year – more than 500 people are reported to have died from heatstroke and the electricity companies are expecting to make record profits from all the carbon they burnt to keep our air conditioners running. (How are we going to escape this situation where the only way to make life tolerable is to contribute to making it worse? I’m reminded of the old, old Kevin Ayers song “Why are we sleeping?“) A lot of my friends teach at universities, get long Summer vacations and head right out of here for the month of August. Conversely, for old friends in Europe, August is the obvious holiday season and that is when they want to come over here to visit. I try to talk them out of it, explaining that they’ll likely find the heat intolerable, but they don’t really get it …till they arrive.
Even so, Summer in Japan is a special time. For a month or two we share the same air mass as Southeast Asia (apparently Hong Kong has Japan beaten for humidity) and it’s as if the whole country has taken off southwards. You don’t need more clothes than a T-shirt and pair of shorts, and even when working there’s a sort of holiday atmosphere. (I guess the suit-wearing salarymen might see it a bit differently…) The kids are all off school and along with the cicadas the heavy air carries the sounds of High School Baseball from a thousand open windows. And the evenings can be magical. The warmth just envelops you so that there’s no distinction between indoors and outdoors. Just take a walk around your neighbourhood, follow the smoke pouring out of a local yakitoriya for an ice-cold beer and some grilled chicken, or maybe even head to a beer garden… These are a different story really – while eating outside, maybe on the roof of a tall building, has an appeal, you’re usually obliged to go along with some kind of “all you can eat and drink” sort of deal, usually with a time limit. The foods not that great, there are hundreds of people and the effect is a bit like feeding time at the zoo.
Much better are the Summer festivals, especially out in the countryside. There’s dancing, more of that indispensible ice-cold beer and young people come back from the cities to revisit relatives. The young girls look really cute in their Summer kimonos and there are quite often fireworks too. Japanese fireworks are some of the best in the world, and the big displays draw millions of people. All this is really based on the “Obon” festival, when the spirits of dead ancestors return to their families and have to be entertained with Bon odori – traditional dancing. Fires are lit to help them find their way home, and later to send them off again. ( Could that be where the fireworks come from? )
This is also the time for ghost stories – some say it’s because they give you a delicious chill, but maybe it’s just that Obon connection again. There are some real ghosts too. Among the spirits who return for consolation are the nearly three million who died in World War 2. The anniversaries of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of the Pacific war come in quick succession at the beginning of August, and the ringing of temple bells joins the cicadas and baseball.
So it’s not all festivals and fun, and the Autumn just coming can be really beautiful, as can Spring, but I’d still say Summer is my favourite season.
Farmlog 12th September 2010 16 September, 2010
- A small praying mantis in the kitchen as we’re getting ready to leave Nagoya. This “exotic” insect is quite common out in the country, but you don’t often see them in town.
- Stopped off at the bank ( a different one from the bad karma bank ) and there were little piles of salt on each side of the entry to the ATM. Salt is a purifier, like the sake at festivals, and you sometimes see it outside a bar or restaurant intended to ward off bad spirits – either to improve business or because of some incident they want to expunge. I wonder what happened at this bank?
- Lots of brown kids at the supermarket. It’s been a long hot Summer and Japanese have lots of melanin so they tan easily. T can get a tan in an afternoon that would take me a whole Summer! Being white is more cool these days but I’m old-fashioned and still a sucker for brown skin…
- On Sunday evening or so The Front passed through and we switched from the humid Summer air to cool dry Autumn in a few hours, with some rain in between.
- Now being very careful about what might be in clothes that are lying on the floor!
- Working on the chillies and heard a lot of excited bird chatter. Eventually in a nearby cedar I saw a couple of tits, a small mejiro and what looked like a finch, maybe others, flying around……a snake. Some kind of small snake had climbed up the tree, looking for eggs or chicks I suppose, and the birds were co-operating in trying to scare it away.
- Listened to the Sumo on the radio in the car driving back to Nagoya. Sumo’s been under a cloud lately with a whole succession of scandals: dope-smoking Russians, bad-behaving yokozuna Asashoryu, sadistic death of a young apprentice and yakuza connections… NHK punished them by not broadcasting live from the last tournament, which was in Nagoya as it happened.
- Min temp 19°C max 30°C
It’s started 7 August, 2010
Along with the cicadas, baseball from a radio somewhere is one of the sounds of Summer here; it started today and there’s nothing else on the TV or radio all afternoon, for the next couple of weeks. I really don’t remember anyone paying the slightest attention to a rugby or cricket match between a couple of schools back in the UK (maybe you could compare the University Boat Race?) but here it’s a big event with elimination rounds all round the country and everyone avidly follows the later matches and gets quite emotional. The losing team (and sometimes the winners too) usually burst into tears at the end. T loves it.
A walk in the woods 16 June, 2010
A "Jizo" Buddha at the pass on many country roads.
Beautiful day in Golden Week, and we took the road above the house up the hill, past the “Jizo” at the pass, down a bit and took this little road off to the left. More a track really, with an almost obliterated sign pointing to a village we hadn’t heard of. About a 20-minute walk though cedar plantations later we arrived at this “village”: three buildings drowning in the forest. A few years ago people lived there, in these rather nice traditional wooden houses, growing rice in paddy fields nearby, now planted with cedars or spruce which have grown up all around.
...another couple of years...
These once-handsome buildings are slowly collapsing, disintegrating and returning to the hills they came from. Sad but inevitable I suppose. It’s not really on to expect to make any kind of living out in a place like this. Just after the war there was a building boom to replace the flattened cities and since wood was (and still is, really) the main construction material large areas of Japan’s wild forest was replaced with plantations of quick-growing cedar and spruce. The idea of many people was that 20 or 30 years down the road these trees could be sold off at a good price, so were regarded as an investment for their childrens’ future. Unfortunately cheap timber imports from countries like Canada have knocked the bottom out of that, so now the value of a tree is less than the cost of transporting it down the hill into the town…
A footpath, still usable, led up the side of the hill from those houses to, we calculated, the next village a kilometre or so away. Just above was a little shrine with a couple of Buddha statues, an empty sake bottle and some flowers which were still fresh, so someone must have visited in the last day or two. A bit further on, down a slope, and sure enough there was the village, basking in the Spring sunshine. An image of rustic tranquillity. Really, quite beautiful, but so quiet. There is only a handful of people living there now, all getting on in years. Children have moved out into the cities to get jobs in offices and factories, leaving their parents tending the ricefields and cows in this corner of paradise. As it happens, we know a couple of the people here. The couple who live at the top looked after our house – opening the windows to let the breeze though once in a while, bit of weeding etc – while we were in Thailand for a year. Further down the road we ran into Hashimoto san, who must be 70 or so by now; he keeps some cows and grows rice.
I wonder what it will be like in 10 or 15 years when most of these people have passed on? Will there be a u-turn from the city, a boom in eco-living… or will this idyllic village go the way of those houses in the woods?
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Farmlog 19th April 2010 1 June, 2010
(A major effort here to catch up on a month’s missed posts, while I can still find the envelopes with notes on the back…)
This time of year can be like a corner of paradise outside the city, and Sunday was a perfect sunny day with flowers coming out everywhere. People are getting worried about invasions of alien plant species, but the variety of plant life out in Gifu always surprises me. I’m not a botanist, so I don’t know the names of them all, but keep finding something I haven’t noticed before.
It’s “sansai” time – wild edible shoots and leaves coming up everywhere, and people coming out from the cities to pick them. There doesn’t seem to be much concept of private property among these peole and they quite casually walk into your garden and pick what they can find – sometimes even if you’re sitting outside the house watching! T. can get a bit ratty at this time of year…
On our way back to Nagoya on Monday the frogs’ evening chorus was already starting up in newly-flooded rice paddies by the side of the road.
Min temp 1°C, max 19°C
Takemi Zakura 30 April, 2010
The "Takemi Zakura"
The mountains of Japan are full of wild cherry trees, at least where they haven’t been replanted for timber. Most of the year they’re hidden away, but in April suddenly there’s blossom everywhere – some beautiful trees you had no idea of.
One such is just above the entrance to a tunnel on the way back to Nagoya from our country house – a big old cherry that has its moment of glory for a week or two every year. We thought it was our private discovery but a couple of years ago some local friends cleared the trees from the area around it, built some stairs, seats, railings etc and made it into a little park, with an annual hanami party, which we went to a couple of weeks ago.
the teahouse is gone...
Apparently this isn’t a wild cherry after all – it has some history. Before that tunnel was built the road used to wind through a pass over some hills above it, right past that tree. There used to be a tea house at the pass, and the cherry was planted outside. It’s now some 300 years old, and the tea house is long gone, but, with a little treatment from a tree doctor, now looks set for a good few years more. From that spot, if it’s a clear day, you can get a beautiful view of Mount Ontake, the holy mountain, so a local politician gave the tree the name Takemi Zakura “mount-viewing cherry” – fair enough, though most people had been calling it the cherry on the pass or something like that…
Check the prices.
It’s still a fairly quiet local type of event, but elsewhere in Gifu there are some famous sakura that attract hundreds of visitors, so maybe ours will be one of those some day. Meanwhile they sell beer and yakitori at more or less cost price just so people will come. Weather was less than perfect this year, but on a sunny day it’s a very nice way to spend an afternoon or evening.
Spring 4 April, 2010
This is a weeping cherry on the big crossroads near us, about two weeks ago, already in full bloom. It was a beautiful day, but freezing cold actually with a fierce wind blowing round the buildings. The much-heralded early blooming of the “proper” cherries – the “somei yoshino” – was stopped in its tracks by a cold wave that at last seems to be coming to an end and finally the cherries in the park down the road are completely out. I expect it was full of revellers enjoying hana-mi, but we had to work. Maybe we’ll take a look on Monday if it’s not raining…
Hanami is a sort of Rite of Spring I suppose, and can be a Bacchanale at times. There are people who claim flower-viewing should be accompanied with writing haiku and sipping green tea or something but I have no problem with people getting paralytic under cherry blossom…
Sakushima 19 February, 2010
Industrial wasteland right to the coast…
Leaving Tokyo on my first shinkansen ride – some time ago – I was stuck to the window eager to see some of the Japanese countryside.
It didn’t happen. 20 or 30 minutes out the buildings still hadn’t stopped, although by then we were going through Yokohama I suppose.The urban sprawl continued all the way to Nagoya by way of Shizuoka, Hamamatsu… Each city merged into the next in a depressing grey continuum, with no green in between at all. In fact a good part of Japan’s population is concentrated into that strip between Tokyo and Nagoya – the Tokai plain which is flat and fertile, while most of the country is mountainous and almost empty, as I found later. In fact it’s possible to be out in beautiful hilly countryside a short 30 minute train ride north from Nagoya.
Isshiki Port
It was however in the opposite direction that we took the car last weekend: to the south, past Nagoya port, one of the biggest in Asia, past the Chita peninsula, past endless factories, warehouses, drab apartment buildings, tatty shopping centres, all of which we had a great view of from our overhead flyover on a perfect clear sunny day, finally arriving at the fishing port of Isshiki in the Mikawa Bay.
Isshiki market
From there it’s a 30 minute boat to the island of Sakushima. The first thing you notice is that the water is crystal clear – you can see right down to the bottom of the harbour! This comes in contrast to the popular beaches on the Chita peninsula like Utsumi, where you might feel as if you’re swimming in chicken soup.
Coming into Sakushima harbour
In fact the water, along with a certain “island feeling”, reminded me of our trip to Okinawa a few years ago. Okinawa’s a bit livelier though; here a good half of the houses are empty, several lodges and restaurants have closed down and even on a sunny Sunday afternoon you can hardly hear a soul.
One of the 88
This was fine for us though, and on a January afternoon we managed to work up a sweat walking around in the sunshine of the warmest day so far this year. We’re surrounded by the sea here so it must never get as cold as Nagoya, still less the mountains of Gifu, and flowers are coming out everywhere in a foretaste of Spring.The largest island in the Mikawa bay, it’s still possible to walk from one end of Sakushima to the other in half an hour or so, but there are a number of temples and shrines to see, not to mention 88 tiny Buddha statues built all over the island about 80 years ago in an imitation of the famous temple cicuit of Shikoku, mostly with offerings of fresh flowers, so obviously someone is visiting them. 
A beautiful sunset, then back to our minshuku for dinner. Out of the half-dozen or so places open in off-season January ours must have been a popular one as there had been a couple of lively parties in at lunchtime; soon we got an idea why. These waters are full of fish, but a few seagulls must have gone hungry that day as we had about half the contents of the bay on our table. Crab, sashimi, fried fish, oysters in miso, sea-slug… it was all really good and by 8 o’clock we couldn’t move, so had an early night. 8000 yen (say, $90) for bed, dinner and breakfast with more fish and oysters seemed a pretty good deal.
The west end of the island, away from the biggest beach with all the hotels, minshuku, restaurants and coffee shops, is much quieter, and the people seem a bit less used to tourists, though everyone is very friendly. The village is a maze of streets about wide enough for two bicycles, creosoted buildings (to keep out the salt spray) and little vegetable plots, tended by old ladies, who could be someone’s great grandmother. 
Half the houses seem to be falling down; one has been converted into a restaurant by some young people, maybe from the city over the water, but you can’t help wondering what will happen to the place ten or twenty years down the road…
A short walk back to the minshuku through wooded hills, past more little buddhas, wind rustling the bamboo, kites calling overhead; ducks have taken over the west end of the beach; our minshuku owner says he couldn’t see Nagoya as a place for human beings to live and here it’s hard to believe we’re in the same country, let alone the same prefecture.
EDIT: I’ve added a lot more photos here.
asazuke 