REALLY LOCAL NEWS 

• Wild pig invades property, ravages nothing in particular: “Just for fun of it” 

• Leaves filling culvert and accumulating on roadside await attention 

• Hornets nearly the size of  your hand invade carpenter bee nest in front eave; aftermath recalls Punic Wars 

• Crow stops using chestnut tree outside upstairs bedroom window for nationwide dawn announcements 

• Garden growing feral, organizing; home committee shorthanded, indecisive 

• Deer enjoys nightly snack of beautiful pumpkin leaves growing in all directions from compost pit outside garden fence; “succulent blossoms a special treat” 

• Fall of deceased oak awaited, chestnut going piece by piece 

• Green wheelbarrow with yellow handles full of broken garden pots; mental committee allegedly forming 

• Cherry limb that should have been trimmed a long time ago now popular woodpecker resort 

• Uncleaned rain gutter bitches and moans even in light rain 

• Brady hears loudest thunder in his life, in clear midday, right outside house; suspects unilateral attempt at stimulus 

• Mushroom logs confused by weather have no idea where they are 

• Anonymous midsized bird begins enjoying Brady cucumbers 

• Water pressure falls unexpectedly one morning for no reason 

• Generous village neighbor leaves some of her surplus sweet onions beside our door 

• Local farmers visit upmountain paddies now and then  

• All calm as rice grows 

A TRIP THROUGH THE VILLAGE

You drive down past the junior high school sports ground at the foot of the only cleared mountain slope faceted with rice paddies all the way up to where the mountain forests begin, roll on down past the public rice-polishing machine and the kitchen gardens left and right of the village houses - must be nice to grow onions, no monkeys down here - past the new log house across from the village hairdresser, then past the village doctor's office on the corner of the street that if you turn north leads to the workshop of the late Shimizu Uichi, a famed local potter, but today as you continue east the road slopes downward beneath the imminent annual pink rainbow of blossoming cherry trees that arch softly overhead, on past the metal workshop to the intersection, take a right onto the national lakeside highway, head past the two ancient boat-launching shrines, roll on past the marinas and the sailing school, then the nice old shrine by the small piney beach, with the kitchen gardens all along the narrow road back there-- you have to slow to 40 when you get past that shrine anyway, as it gets more residential, with the houses close to the road in the old-fashioned way, elderly folks walking with canes, kids bicycling along the narrow walk, and there's the famous old Arare senbei shop, then the gas heater shop and the sake store; the rest is mostly houses of the old kind that give the charm to these rural villages (our new neighbor way across the paddy slope says she moved here because she loved driving through that village, wanted to live near there).

It's still a narrow road, about as wide and curvy as it was a thousand years and more ago, when it was the only central way from one sea to the other via Kyoto, a way crowded with traffic of commercial and noble retinues, along which road folks of all classes also came out from Heian (later, Kyoto) for the summer coolness of Lake and mountainsides combined, went to famous old beach places like Ogoto and Omimaiko, where they could party, watch fireworks and stay cool in the hot times, which folks still do, come from the sunbowl of Kyoto over the mountain pass - what a journey, though, in those old woodwheeled oxcart days, jarring over the stony roads with the noble ladies' luxurious sleeves hanging out beneath the screens; slow travel, and dangerous; they had to have a retinue of guards...

They'd stop and visit the old and far-apart temples along the way, the ride would take them days and nights and days and nights over a distance we traverse in half an hour or so by train or car - though I'm driving a shorter distance this morning - you gotta wonder as you move along this way in the brightness, looking out the window and visualizing these things, what it must have been like to live that slowly, with no alternative in sight, but here I am already, just on time for my dentist appointment...

 

STRONG STUFF

Freewheeling down the winding road this morning into the rising sun of an enlightening day - the edgy kind, with an early bonechill but already intriguing aspects to it, even in the scent of the air - as I came to the open portion of the paddied slope just below the last curve through the forest and out into the open, I  could see ahead of me, below the Lake - as odd as that is to describe - the earliest farmer this year out readying his paddy for Spring tilling.

He alone of all the village rice farmers was out there at first light with his long-handled shovel, clearing the irrigation trenches, inlets and outlets all around his paddy, soon to be filled by the water that would gravitate down from the mountain by way of his neighbor's paddy above, and then from his own would flow down to fill that of his neighbor below. An important task to be done each year by each farmer, and so to be done well, to sustain this whole mountainside of good will.
 

He was working at the corner of the paddy above the road along which newbie I would pass on my motorcycle. Hearing then seeing me coming, he paused in his labors, leaned on his shovel with the sun at his back, we shouted good morning to each other and I passed on by, leaving him in the kind of deep, nature-fed silence you can only get out in the countryside, as opposed to city silence, the merely welcome absence of sound.

As I rolled on down the road, although  he turned again to his labors he remained imprinted on my retina in silhouette, burned there by the sun like an icon of some kind, which I suppose he is-- perhaps of responsibility that goes back 20 generations or more, has made it this far, and naturally plans to continue. 

 

Strong stuff.

 

 

MR. K.

Mr. K., one of the original folk around here, who lives in the village and has a very nice garden a few road curves down below, came ambling down the road the other day on one of his long mountain walks, towel wrapped around his head as always, was just passing the house as I stepped out on the deck to give the Carolina jasmine another brush cut.

In his mid-eighties, Mr. K. is tall and thin, vigorous and kindly, wants a new house but it's just a dream for now (hope I can dream like that if I ever get into my eighties), so for the moment he has a nice house-garden in his mountainside vegetable garden, with rocks, small pines and a classic stone lantern.

He stood in the driveway and we talked and laughed until I finished trimming, then I just leaned on the rail as the sun began to set and we continued on about the past (we moved here 15 years ago!) the kids and where they are now, what they're doing; his cute and perky but long-ago dog, through whom we first met Mr. K. when the kids and I were out walking a dozen years ago or so (he says it's too much for him and his wife to take care of a dog now), his garden, fencing, fertilizers, firewood, vegetables, monkeys, deer, wild pigs, he said he feeds his garden mostly with aburakasu (soy oil meal) plus a little chicken and cow manures, no artificials, and has an electric fence like I'm thinking about getting as part of Plan Z for next year.

He had a long way to get back home before dark, so we said goodbye and he walked off down the road with the cane he doesn't really need.

A few days later he left some vegetables by the door.

ABSOLUTELY FREE

This morning when I went out into the golden air to put some compost atop the potato mounds to see if I could protect the plants against the first frost due any day now (I put some early compost into the potato hole at planting, too), thinking the warmth might keep the temp up just enough, on my way there (I finally did get there and do that), as usual I couldn’t pass up all the chestnuts lying on the dewy ground, shining in the sun in that gemlike way they have, calling to those childhood yearnings in me to invent all the things there are to do with beautiful chestnuts absolutely free, you cannot just leave them lying there) I had to pick them up, even though we already have far more than we can use this year-- I figured T-san, the lady who lives right in the heart of downtown Kyoto and comes out a couple of times a week to tend her piece of land just above us, might want them; she usually stops by on her way home and gathers wild herbs on our land, and chestnuts at about the right time of year, but came early this year and found none, only the brown empty early reject husks.

Haven’t seen her since, so I figured I’d save these for her before the bugs got to them, filled my cargo pockets and wound up walking around with bulging thighs while splitting wood and listening to a solitary but loquacious frog in the bamboo who heard something deep and moving in the bass impact of maul upon iron wedge into thick-barked oak and simply had to respond, so the frog and my labors had a sort of conversation, a rhythmically perky exchange that gave an uplift to the proceedings, frogs have much to say, and need someone to say it to, so I was happy to fill that need, happy to listen to such natural eloquence coming from a cloud of green leaves…

Now and then all through the day the occasional wafts of kinmokusei fragrance would come drifting along on the air and lift me from whatever level I was at the moment, the kinmokusei trees not sending out their heartstealing scent constantly, they’re smarter than that, somehow know that our weak noses would soon get used to the fragrance and stop smelling it, so they send it out in waves every just-right now and then, to stop us in our tracks and make us reel with appreciation, remind us of that big thing we’ve forgotten about again, which is even more effective at the end of the day when your mind is empty as a desert sky and you’re carrying firewood to the stack in the dusk as the birds are giving their evening concert with insect lyrics, your body carrying you along without complaint, your back, upper arms, forearms and hands pretty much used up after hours of gripping, swinging and lifting…

I was in the work-meditative groove and didn’t want to stop, the moments were perfect, like the air and light-- so I just walked back and forth between the split pile and the new stack carrying one split in each hand, stacking them and then going back for more at a slow pace like a mill horse, rambling around in a circle, allowing my absence off in that mindcloud somewhere, when T-san showed up at dusk and I gave her all those chestnuts; she gathered some more that had fallen since, then on the way back to her car held up the bag for her little dog in the back seat to see, said kuri, kuri! the dog barking in delight, she said the dog loves kurigohan (chestnut [cooked with] rice ).

Then I wrapped it up: stacked the last, put away the tools, watered the garden and let tiredness rule its hard-won kingdom.

LANDOWNER FEELINGS

I was standing outside when an elderly couple came down the mountain road, apparently collecting wild herbs; they asked if they could cross my property to get to the other road, and I was caught unawares as a landlord; I was so unfamiliar with the fact, let alone the social niceties of property ownership, I stammered and said "Sure!" in English. They stared at me in Japanese. Then I said "Dozo!" Then they walked across "my" land. What strange feelings it involved.