asazuke

Life in Japan, food, music, whatever…

Farmlog 20th July 2009 23 July, 2009

Filed under: countryside — johnraff @ 2:33 pm
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Not much to report this week- more of the same really, ie:

  • More sliminess, damp, wet (had to put newspaper on the porch floor to soak some of it up), humidity, lush vegetation… and more leeches! We seem to be getting a plague of them. I found one under my T-shirt just before it had got its teeth (or whatever leeches have) into me, and T found another one in the bathroom. Ugh!
  • Another, biggish, snake in the drain ditch by the road. It’s getting so it’s hard to go outside without feeling nervous about what might be about to go for you. I’ll be quite happy when this Rainy Season is finally over.
  • Usually when we head back to Nagoya on Monday evening to I hate to leave, but this week it was like escaping from a hostile jungle…
  • Minimum temp. 20°C, max. 26°C.
 

Farmlog 13th July 2009 18 July, 2009

Filed under: countryside — johnraff @ 2:44 pm
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  • Gets hotter and stickier all the time. This week the theme was damp. Sticky, squelchy, slippery, slimy, squishy… You get the idea. Water somehow naturally appears on surfaces, just out of the air. Mould everywhere – anyway, as long as it’s not actually raining you can see why we prefer to have dinner outside.
  • The Snake Incident!
  • The uguisu was singing away all weekend.
  • Minimum temp. 20°C, mavimum 26°C.
 

Farmlog 6th July 2009 8 July, 2009

Filed under: countryside — johnraff @ 2:28 pm
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  • Hmm the weather forecast was off – it was supposed to rain on Sunday, but was nice and clear most of the day, and we could have dinner outside again. The crickets started up a little chorus around sundown, but nothing compared with what we should be getting in a couple of weeks when the cicadas join in. Saw a couple of fireflies, but it looks as if we missed the peak two weeks ago when we didn’t come up.
  • More leeches! T. got bitten (if that’s the word) on her ankle; it didn’t stop bleeding for a couple of hours and was still itchy a three of days later. They seem to have increased in recent years, maybe due to the rising wild animal population and this is really the peak season for them.
  • A few more hours of weedcutting, but there’s lots more to do. I’d like actually to be able to see the little stream that runs just past our house for example.
  • A big moon, but not quite full
  • Minimum temp 19°C, Maximum 26°C.
 

Farmlog 29th June 2009 5 July, 2009

Filed under: countryside — johnraff @ 1:45 am
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There was no farm report last week because I stayed in town – the band had a gig on Sunday afternoon. T. went up with a couple of friends and picked plums (ume actually) and tea.

  • This time we got to the house, opened the front door and were greeted by a blast of mould smell. Yes the Rainy Season has set in and mould has exuberantly infested the tatami matting, wooden beams and just about any surface available. At this time of year you can’t leave a bottle of soy sauce in the kitchen without coming back the next week to find it covered in mould. Ugh. It can get bad enough to give me headaches; anyway house dust and, yes, mould, can trigger an allergy which brings on sneezing and endlessly running nose, though generally the humidity helps me, compared with the dry Autumn. This time of year the moisture rises up from the ground too – or is it the moist air hitting the cool ground surface – but anyway on a bad day the kitchen and entrance floors can be wet. No wonder we prefer to have dinner outside under the stars ( or clouds ) if it’s not raining.
  • Came into the house that evening and saw a brown blob on my big toe. got a tissue to wipe it off and found it was a leech. Hmm, maybe you didn’t know Japan had leeches too. Add that to the list of nasties.
  • Still, there are compensations – late June/early July is when the fireflies come out. The season is very short, just a week or so, and the conditions have to be right: a cloudy, warm, humid evening with little wind and no rain from about 8:00 to 9:00 pm. We saw just one or two, so maybe we were a week late, or, hopefully, a week early so we can look forward to more this weekend. We’ll see, but if you’re lucky enough to hit the right time and see a whole load of them, it’s absolutely magic. A couple of years ago a friend told us about a good place just up the road, and, sure enough, there was a rice field by a stream where hundreds of fireflies filled the sky with a molten milky way of stars, accompanied by an orchestra of frogs. One of those unforgettable moments…
  • A spider has made its web in our outside urinal. The stream of urine hitting the web when I used it must have seemed like a caught insect at first, but that spider soon discovered this was something totally beyond its concept of reality. A paranormal experience, repeated two or three times that day.
  • Out with the weed cutter, and try to get the upper hand on the jungle that’s trying to establish itself around the house but it’s almost a hopeless task. You’ve heard the story of the team of men whose job it is to paint the Forth Bridge? As soon as they get to the end it’s time to start again.
  • Minimum temp. 16°C, maximum 25°C.
 

Season of the Itch 19 June, 2009

Filed under: Uncategorized — johnraff @ 1:48 pm
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“There’s a mosquito in the room” says T, throwing me an accusing look. (If she gets bitten it’s generally my fault in some way.) It’s true that the humid Japanese Spring and Summer seems ideal for insects, and there are some biters and stingers among them. For example:

  • mosquitoes The city ones come out at the end of May or so and they’re small, fast and hard to squash. The itch only lasts an hour or so, but they can certainly get to you, and our lush jungly garden in front of Raffles has a fair supply. Mosquito coils help, and there’s some stuff in a spray can which doesn’t do a bad job of keeping them away for a while.
  • buyo These are a small black fly – looks almost like a tiny beetle – and are nasty. They hang about in the grass by a stream in the countryside on a muggy , overcast day and draw blood. Really. Much worse than mosquitoes in spite of their tiny size, and the bite stays with you for a week or so. Fortunately I’ve never seen one in Nagoya.
  • dani or mites, live in the tatami mats and bite you when you’re asleep. Just have to fumigate the tatami sometimes, or lift it out of the room to dry in the hot Summer sun. (This is such a pain no-one does it these days.)
  • nasty green caterpillars I don’t know the proper name for these, but you see them on trees sometimes. (One year they chewed all the leaves off our persimmon tree.) They’re a nasty yellow-green colour, have no legs and move about like slugs, and are covered with hairy spines. If you touch one the microscopic spine will stick in your skin, which will swell up for days and itch horribly. Imagine a poisonous cactus…
  • centipedes: fortunately not so common – they live in rotting wood and the like – but the big ones can give you a very nasty bite indeed.
  • There’s more – jellyfish, adders, poisonous lacquer plants, the deadly Okinawan “habu” …

but I’ve probably put you right off ever coming here. If you actually live here of course you know it’s not really that bad. Still the insecticide and itch ointment makers probably do OK at this time of year.

 

“Warm moist air from the South”

Filed under: countryside — johnraff @ 12:33 pm
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This is an example of the warm-moist/cold-dry air thing I mentioned in the last post, though it goes back to early May. We drove up to “the farm” in a typical Spring drizzle, the breeze warm and moist. Opened the door of the house and inside it was still Winter, with the cold dry air of the previous week intact. After a while it got so cold I had to put a sweater on.

An hour or two later, out to the toilet (it’s a meiji-era outside job) and I was sweating. Outside, the sweater was quite ridiculous. The contrast was amazing!

 

Farmlog 15th June 2009 17 June, 2009

Filed under: countryside — johnraff @ 1:25 pm
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  • Swelter to shiver to scorch to swelter was how it went; the Rainy Season is officially under way, but the rain front is still a bit off to the south and the warm moist air that it brings up from southeast Asia has been alternating with cool dry stuff from Siberia. Sunday was typically close and muggy, but that evening the wind changed and it was cold. Monday started scorching hot but with a beautiful cool breeze, but by the evening we were back to the sticky heat that’s going to be the norm for a while.
  • The habanero chilli seedlings got planted – except for two that were still too small. The habanero (the name means “from Havana” but they’re really from central America) is quite special. A freshly cut one has a wonderful aroma, like apricots or strawberries, but don’t be fooled: the habanero chili is one of the hottest in the world. They’re really hot.
  • As the humidity goes up the weeds just take off. Every week the general greenery is a foot higher than it was last visit. lushness Out with the rotary cutter and try and at least have the house visible, but it’s pretty much a hopeless task. You’ve heard about the team of men who are aupposed to be continually painting the Forth Bridge? By the time they get to the end it’s time to start again. Last Saturday a Mongolian friend was in Raffles telling us that Mongolians hate to pull up a plant because you’ll end up with desert. Here in Japan it’s the jungle.
  • Minimum temp. 13 °C, maximum 28 °C. That minimum was really a bit cold for chilli seedlings, who’d prefer 15 or 16, but they seemed OK.
 

Farmlog 8th June 2009 10 June, 2009

Filed under: countryside — johnraff @ 3:10 pm
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I’m going to drop a few things about the weekend at “the farm” when I get back on Tuesday or (in this case) Wednesday. As much for my own future reference as anything.

  • Scorching hot weather, but a nice cool breeze – wonderful weather but the Rainy Season officially started the next day!
  • The hot little chillis I use in Tom Yam Kung were planted. The big red “Malaysians” went in a couple of weeks ago and are looking quite healthy
    chilli seedling

    chilli seedling

    . Three metre high nets are supposed to keep the deer out.

    3m net to stop the deer

    3m net to stop the deer

    We’ll see.

  • T was busy picking tea. We’ve got a load of tea bushes that are more or less ignored, except for being pruned every now and then, but T’s just discovered it’s not that hard to make your own tea, and hers tastes quite good actually!
  • We had “hobazushi” – rice and fish wrapped in “hoba” leaves. We’ve got a tree nearby and this is the season apparently.
  • Lots of fruit on our “ume” trees. They’re related to the plum, but too sour to eat. You soak them in alcohol to make something like sloe gin, or add sugar to make ume syrup (good on a Summer afternoon) or make “umeboshi” pickles.
  • Minimum 13deg C, maximum 26
  • Full Moon
 

…er, as I was saying… 3 June, 2009

Filed under: Uncategorized — johnraff @ 1:50 pm
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There are millions of blogs out there on the Wonderful World Wide Web; every day a few thousand of them presumably just quietly fade away so you couldn’t be blamed for thinking the same thing had happened to this one. Not so much laziness, or lack of things I wanted to mention, but the fact that every time I switched on the computer there seemed to be something else I wanted to do first, and in a flash it was time to switch off and do some work in the so-called Real World. Anyway, what’s happened in the two months since the last posting?

  • Spring arrived! It always seems to take you by surprise, but comes as if someone had turned a switch and suddenly, starting with the justly famous Japanese cherry blossom, there are flowers everywhere. Our country place, on a sunny April afternoon, can be like a corner of paradise.
  • I upgraded my computer’s operating system – Ubuntu Linux if you’re interested. Still an ongoing process – this isn’t a Linux Blog and I won’t bore you with the details – but the Perfect Computer is one of those never-attained goals I suppose. Still, anyone who feels like escaping from Microsoft and would like to try Linux, Ubuntu’s not a bad place to start.
  • The band went to Osaka to play at the Haru Ichi Ban festival again. This is a really nice friendly event and apart from the rain that hit the last two days (not us, luckily) everyone seemed to be having a great time. There were maybe fewer big names than last year ( except Daihachi Ryodan of course ) – actually this seems to be something of a Kansai event; Tokyo people know nothing about it…

Well, a bit of a catchup. The next post will be sooner – promise!

 

out demons out 3 February, 2009

Filed under: customs,music — johnraff @ 2:13 pm
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Anyone remember the Edgar Broughton Band? Back at university it seemed like they’d be there at any festival, event or concert with those Beefheart vocals and wild distorted guitar. I hated them at the time, them and another bad penny, the Third Ear Band who went in for interminable atonal wailings. (Subsequently changed my mind completely about them, and probably would have liked the Broughtons too if I’d heard them a couple of years later.)

Anyway every year I get reminded of Edgar Broughton’s anthem “Out Demons Out”; today is Setsubun, the coldest time of the year which, as everything contains the seed of its opposite, means the beginning of Spring. You’re supposed to throw beans around the house shouting “Demons out,  luck in”  or something. (Demons, or oni represent evil influences, generally, and have horns just like the Western variety.)  I wonder how many people actually do it now – maybe another generation and most of these customs will have died out…

You can check out Edgar Broughton’s rendering of “Out Demons Out” here – real 60s stuff! I keep meaning to have a go with Daihachi Ryodan but it will have to wait till we have a gig at the beginning of February some year. (Probably noone would enjoy it but me anyway.)