asazuke

Life in Japan, food, music, whatever…

Farmlog 3rd August 2009 4 August, 2009

Filed under: countryside — johnraff @ 2:46 pm
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Last week we couldn’t even get up to the farm because torrential rain had caused a landslip and blocked the road. Sunday started out the same way; the rain followed us most of the way, rivers were swollen and brown with mud, but we got through OK.

Chinese Trumpet Vine or "nozenkazura".

Chinese Trumpet Vine or "nozenkazura", typical summer flower in full bloom in front of the house.

  • Hey! No leech encounters this time! (relief)
  • Monday turned out to be the first day of Summer – hot and sweltering. The weather bureau got tired of answering “when will the Rainy Season end?” and officially announced it was over, although we’re due more rain on Wednesday and Thursday…
  • Sinister footprints inside the Green Zone netted off and supposedly deer-free where the chillies are trying to grow. Hmm, no damage to the plants yet, so I closed off any gaps I could see in the net, but I’m not sure how they got in, if they were deer footprints. Fingers crossed…
  • Min temp unknown (I forgot to check) max 25°C
 

Where’s our Summer? 27 July, 2009

Filed under: Uncategorized — johnraff @ 8:26 pm
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Hey, come on, the Rainy Season should have ended around the 20th, and by rights we’d now be basking in day after day of blistering sunshine, with temperatures peaking in the high 30’s (°C). Hmm… well there’s been another outbreak of devastating floods in Kyushu, with people killed, houses destroyed and over 20,000 taking refuge in school halls. Meanwhile, yesterday we gave up trying to drive out to the farm as the road had been washed away in one place, and here in Nagoya it’s been rain every day, as the humidity goes up and up.

According to the weather forecast we’re in for another straight week of cloud and rain, and no particular guarantee of Summer starting even after that! There’s an “El Nino” phenomenon going on apparently, so the usual Pacific high pressure area is not doing it’s stuff.

(-sigh-)

 

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.
 

“Warm moist air from the South” 19 June, 2009

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
 

Guerilla Rain 4 September, 2008

Filed under: Uncategorized — johnraff @ 2:57 pm
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Guerilla Rain is what they call those sudden fierce downpours that seem to be getting more and more common. What we’d call flash floods I suppose. In July they had an attack in Kobe, where four people were swept away, then in Tokyo five sewer workers.

Last Thursday night we had a taste here in Nagoya. It suddenly started pouring, water came in under out garage shutter, and while we were nervously watching the TV news we noticed a pool forming under out living room window. I ran out and pulled off the dead leaves that were blocking the drain hole of our veranda (got soaked in the 3~4 seconds that it took) and the 15cm of water that had built up soon went down… They were saying later that in Nagoya about 100mm of water fell in that hour. Down the road in Okazaki they got 140mm, many houses were flooded, and again two people were drowned. One old lady was found washed up on the coast 40 Km away. More recently, some places in the area have had 400~odd mm of rain in 24 hours.

These are serious quantities of rain when you think about it. 500mm is half a metre of water spread over many square kilometres. No wonder little streams turn into raging torrents, and mountains crumble. While Japan certainly gets plenty of rain, this is unusual for August, or any time for that matter. The cause seems to be that the Pacific high pressure area that usually brings the hot but clear Summer weather has given up, swathes of hot moist air are coming up from the South and colliding with cold air from the Asian continent – right here.

Still, there have been no typhoons up this way so far (touch wood) so we’re luckier than people in the Caribbean who seem to be getting hit by one cyclone after another, not to mention India, where a river has changed course. Back in the day, everything used to be blamed on The Bomb, now it’s Global Warming, though that seems more credible.

unfortunately

 

The Rainy Season starts here… 3 June, 2008

Filed under: Uncategorized — johnraff @ 2:46 pm
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OK it’s official, yesterday most of Japan entered the Rainy Season. Everything has a season here (“…turn, turn, turn…”) but this is not one of my favourites really. The new green leaves are beautiful and lushness abounds, but you can have too much lushness and everything’s so damp and mouldy… As we get into July the humidity and temperature will go up and up until it’ll be impossible to use the computer without worrying that the keyboard will get shorted out by the sweat dripping into it. However, I once heard someone say that living through the tsuysu was the basis of Japanese culture (“梅雨のすごしかたは日本文化の原点”) so I’ve obviously got some work to do…

Summer is even hotter, but at least it’s a bit less sticky and anyway we North Europeans like it hot. Asians seem to associate heat with work, sweat, tired… but if they had our cold damp winters they might understand why we enjoy a bit of warmth. Actually, here in Nagoya the weather’s not really that bad. Winters are dry and often sunny, with maybe just a couple of snowfalls and some chill winds, Spring is beautiful and starts in March, Autumn can be gorgeous too and from late July to early September it’s as if the whole place had been transported to Southeast Asia ( the heat here can be quite similar to Bangkok, for example ) – like going on summer holiday without moving!

Except you have to work of course…