Dough-Donuts

This Saturday I explored the Momijidori section of Utsunomiya. It's fairly close to the Tobu department store, but because it's not between the main shopping area and downtown, it has been off the radar screen for lots of folks. Recently it has undergone a slow revival owing to its stock of old, quirky buildings ripe for small businesses such as cafes and accessory stores. Another and equally important reason is the vision of a young realtor who has seen the potential of this area, its proximity to downtown and the new vision that many young hip Japanese are chasing; the independent business with a modern sensitivity.

One of the places I went to that day was a donut shop. I must admit that, for the most part, I am not a big donut fan. I normally find them cloyingly sweet, often akin to eating sugar with a little bit of greasy dough. The donuts at Dough-Donuts were not too sweet and not greasy. I was impressed. The presentation was beautiful too with the doughnuts wrapped in large white bags, the shops logo tastefully printed in small cursive on the corner. Very sophisticated. Other people, they seemed to be regulars from the neighborhood, came in to order donuts and chat a bit. It felt very homey. 

I'll be back.

apple donut. Goood!

maple sweet potato. Yum!

A Bit of Hawaii Comes to Utsunomiya

Yesterday, on an early November Saturday, there was a hula exhibition at the foot of Futaarasan Shrine. I had just left Parco department store to go home when I heard the sound of Hawaiian music from across the street. Curiosity piqued, I went to see what was going on. As I imagined, there was a hula show taking place.

Dancers were out in their bare feet swaying to the music this cold day. Their dedication to their art was impressive. I wouldn't have wanted to dance on cold stone pavement with the threat of rain in the air. There were a number of dance teams, each dancing to a different song. The songs were sung in Hawaiian (recorded), but the dancers seemed to know the words and were singing along. It was fascinating to see the almost trancelike states that the more advanced dancers achieved. They seemed to be truly telling a story with their hands and body. I noticed how centered the good dancers were. It was like watching a religious dance, which it probably was originally and perhaps continues to be in Hawaii itself.

The troupe leader and emcee was explaining the context for many of the dances and it was enlightening to hear themes such as harvesting seaweed and taro and other daily activities. The hand gestures and lower body movement of hips and feet were very evocative of their themes. I couldn't help thinking about the commonalities of Japanese dance and Hawaiian. At their foundation they are about telling stories and they are about the linking of the sacred with the mundane. It was touching to see something that was so expressive and joyful. This is what great dance is, isn't it? Whether it's flamenco or Japanese festival dancing, it expresses our feelings about life wordlessly through movement.

And the little girls were adorable.

Temma

I love Osaka. And in Osaka there is a section called Temma, that I love a lot. It is full of bars, but it's not creepy, or sleazy or sketchy like some bar districts can be in other places. It is a very blue collar, white collar, middle class place. There is a large mix of buildings, but most of them are old, wooden and a tad tired looking. A friend and I had just eaten dinner at an Italian place that looks just like a run-down izakaya and not at all Italian restaurant-like from the outside, although they have great Italian food. We were wandering, exploring the neighborhood and I wanted to take in one more place before going back when I ran across the Inada Sake Shop. We parted the noren curtain and entered a very neighborhood stand bar. There was oden, and other bar food and since their main business was selling sake, they had a wonderful selection which we took full advantage of. After having our oden and sake we left at the same time as another group who were intent on telling us non-Osakans what a great place this was. "Very Osaka! Very Osaka!" Which having been to numerous bars in Tokyo, I can assure you was, indeed, very Osaka. The customers were friendly, the staff was friendly, they catered to my desire for something medium dry and they didn't overcharge us. Thank you Temma! I'll be back.

Kyoto Calligraphy

I was in Kyoto over the Culture Day holiday weekend. While I was there I was caught by the profusion of interesting calligraphy that abounds in the temples, shrines and shops in that city. Here are some examples. It would be great if I could read them all, but I can't. I enjoy them all on an aesthetic level. Here is what information I can give. 

Taken at Tenryuji near Arashiyama

Rakushisha, the falling persimmon hut of Kyorai, Matsuo Basho's number one acolyte. 

I have no idea what this means. It looks very zen. 

This was above a temple gate. I can't read it, but I like it. 

I like the motion and line quality of this. I will have to ask my calligraphy teacher if she can read it. 

Bringing in the Sheaves

Today I had a brand new experience. I harvested rice. I had been looking forward to this day all summer and I wasn't disappointed.

handing out sickles

It all started in May when my friend Tanakasan, a farmer and photographer in southern Tochigi asked me and a lot of other folks to help him plant his rice field. I was out of the country, unfortunately, but for the rice harvest I was free. There was another invitation in the beginning of August and I gladly jumped at the chance to do something new.

I had met Tanakasan through the Noendan, a group of young farmers in Tochigi, looking at new ways to make a living through agriculture. He impressed me with his warm and gentle manner and his curiosity. Also the fact that he was dedicated to pesticide-free farming was very attractive. So this was part of the fruit born from that meeting almost two years ago; a day of harvesting rice by hand.

the rice field

About twenty adults and ten children came to the event. Most were from Tokyo and  a smattering of Tochigi people. Tanakasan provided the tools, the rice field the know-how and the food and drinks. We provided the labor. It was a fair exchange.

a pre-rice sheaf

The harvest started at ten. I put my bike on the train at Utsunomiya and got off at Mamada station at 9:30. I rode past rice fields, over the Omoi River, past more rice fields, plant heads heavy, waiting to be harvested, until I finally reached his home in the little town of  Fujioka machi about twenty minutes later. I registered for my rice and then we left for the rice field to start harvesting.

Harvesting is a two step process: cutting and drying. Cutting is the easy part. Drying is the more difficult.

I mentioned earlier that Tanakasan provided the tools and know-how. Well, he and his dad did. First we learned how to cut the rice plants at the right height. (Not too high). Then we learned how to stack the plants. About three groups of plants are cut and laid on the ground and then two more groups of plants are cut and laid on top of that in an X. This will be bound as a sheave late to be hung to dry on a bamboo rack. Cutting took about an hour and a half to complete. Then it was our first break and treat, lunch.

Lunch was amazing. Tanakasan's mom, along with about three or four others from what I could tell, had made quite a meal for all of us. There was simmered Chinese melon, squash and sweet potatoes simmered in soy sauce, cucumber and eggplant pickles, slightly salted, but still with their vegetable sweetness in the background, inari sushi, sweet deep fried tofu skins stuffed with Tanakasan's rice, three kinds of fish, freshly cooked rice which had been cooked outside over a fire, and finally for dessert, cold pear apples, grapes and figs. Everyone was stuffed after lunch. Many of us probably would have preferred to take a nap to going back to the field, but back to the field we went.

what we gleaned

Round two took more time. We made sheaves and hung them to dry. We tied the bundles with straw which had been wetted and thus was pliable. I was the first one taught how to do this, so I wound up being the instructor for many of the Japanese. The process is quite simple. Take about five strands of straw, wrap them around the bundle and make a half-hitch. Tighten the bundle as much as possible and then bring the ends together, twist them and stuff them behind the half-hitch. It's easy.  It's efficient.  It uses materials at hand. It's ingenious. It's a dying art.

hanging sheaves to dry

After making sheaves we hung them grain side down on the rack. The aim of hanging them this way is for the sugar in the stalk to flow down into the head as it dries giving it more starch and thus more flavor. It took about two and a half hours to bundle and hang the sheaves and then we took about twenty minutes to glean the field. There were a lot of rice strands that had fallen or hadn't been cut lying about so we picked those up and added them to the sheaves. No waste is a virtue.

home grown figs

We returned to the farmhouse, had one more tea and set off for home. The Tokyo people went back home by car. The carless were chauffeured to Nogi station and I set off for Mamada station again on my bike. Back past rice fields, over the river, past people harvesting rice with machines until reaching Mamada. Then the ritual of folding my bike, wrapping my bike, putting it on the elevator, waiting on the platform for the train, tying it to a bar in the train and sitting down, sure of the fact that no one would ever touch it, then reversing the process after getting to Utsunomiya.

What a great day it was. Useful work. Mixing with nice people. Learning new skills. A great day indeed. I am a lucky guy.

Kasama

On Friday I woke up early from jet lag. Not wanting to waste my morning I decided I would got pottering somewhere outside of Tochigi Prefecture for a change. It was a beautiful morning. Not too muggy. You could tell that the worst of summer was behind us. Past those days when you didn't even want to go outside because of the heat and humidity. No, Saturday was a nice reprieve.

Threw the bike on the train and set off for the neighboring prefecture of Ibaraki. Prefectures in Japan are about the size of counties in the States, so going from one to another is not far geographically, but it can be psychologically. I shook off my cabin fever and satisfied my wanderlust by getting MOVING.

First it was off to Oyama, my transfer point about 40 minutes south of Utsunomiya. I got on the Mito Line for the first time, not really knowing what to expect. It was a very local line. About four cars, a few passengers of  mainly old and young, but not too many middle aged folks and no reader board to look at for station names. I had to listen for them over the PA system.

The train didn't take off immediately. Local lines never do. There was about a fifteen minute wait and then we set off. Oyama is near the Ibaraki border so it wasn't long before our westbound train crossed the border into Ibaraki. I passed through Chikusei, famous for its pear apples, known as "nashi" in Japan. They are at their best in September and October, with two favorites, the Hosui and the Nijuseiki.
But today wasn't for Chikusei, it was for Kasama.

On and on the train went. Through rural countryside of ripening rice fields, small sleepy villages, bamboo groves, woods and low mountains. Many of the stations along the way were unmanned. Paying or swiping one's train pass was on the honor system, a system that is scrupulously upheld here.

After an hour or so I arrived in Kasama. The area around the station was not particularly busy. I put my bike together in front of the station and was off to the old part of town. Town development in rural areas takes on a common pattern in Japan. Usually the stations in older towns and local cities are located far from the original town centers. This was done for safety reasons as in the days of steam locomotives, sparks from the train could start fires in densely packed housing areas. My guess is that Kasama is an example of such development as its station is far from the more interesting old core.

The old part of town is about a ten minute ride from the station, fifteen if you're not sure where you're going. The central part of the city has an eclectic mix of many old buildings, some of them from the feudal era such as the shrine and some from the early modern and modern periods. A lot  of these older buildings now house shops and restaurants. Antiques and accessories seem to be big businesses here.

Kasama was a castle town at one time and though it no longer has a castle, it does have many potters. In feudal times potters provided tea-ware for the nobility. Each area had its own local pottery aesthetic determined by the color of the clay, types of kilns used and tastes of the local lord and other tea ceremony aficionados.  These days of course their target audience is the tourist. Kasama-ware is light gray and very restrained as befits a style originally meant for tea ceremony culture. There are many pottery galleries in town.

I had lunch at R Hana, a cafe and accessory shop, and then walked around the central business district taking in the huge shrine to the fox god, the god of business here in Japan. The shrine is home to many homeless cats who approached me with hungry meows. In a corner of the wall a mother cat was nursing kittens. Japanese aren't very good at having animals spayed and the results can be heartbreaking.

After walking about a bit, I rode back to the station, folded my bike, threw it on the train again and headed back home. I found Kasama to be a great little town, worthy of another visit. If you have friends or family who like pottery, antiques and old buildings, Kasama is worth a stop. I also found out that they have rental cycles so that will be an option when I go again with

Much Ado About Nothing

There is a lot of road repair work going on here in Bellevue. There must be at least six or seven repaving projects going on within just a two mile radius from my house. I have noticed that the improvements are not really improvements however. In essence, all that is really happening is a repave. Two of the biggest problems in Bellevue, in my opinion, aren't addressed with these "improvements".

First, no new sidewalks are being built. In a community as rich as this one you would expect sidewalks pretty much everywhere. On the other hand, status in this community is car-centric. What you drive is who you are and those who need to walk for errands or to public transportation are invisible here. It is dangerous to walk to many places in this city.

Second, the shoulders are not being widened. As a cyclist I know what conditions are like here. Some streets are busy and shoulder-less. Others have shoulders which suddenly disappear at intersections. Making left-hand turns is an act of faith. So, seeing construction which essentially maintains the status quo is disheartening. It says a lot that nothing is being done for cyclists.

I am heartened by things that are being done for cyclists in places like Indianapolis and Davis, California. It takes time and vision to change a culture. The inertia is still on the side of the car in most of America, but I'm seeing cracks in that facade here and there. I'm not sure what it will take for the nation as a whole to get on a sensible transportation path, but when it comes I'm sure it will be fast. We can end up like the Netherlands or Mad Max. Our choice.

Paying Attention Even in the Heat

It's been very hot here in Utsunomiya for the past few days. Hot even for me. While virtually everyone around me was commenting on the summer heat, I noticed that it had been raining almost every evening for the past three weeks. This made evenings bearable until about three days ago. Since then, the heat has been oppressive even at night and I finally broke down and used the air conditioning.

I have avoided using the air conditioner for as long as possible this year. One reason is that I know that most people in the world don't have the luxury of using it. Another is to test to what extent living with it is just cultural conditioning and to what extent its an actual necessity. Also, I'm curious as to what I miss by using it. I realize that there are things I love about summer that I cannot experience if I am in an air conditioned environment. There is a certain sensory deprivation that comes from being surrounded by constant air conditioning.

Today was a good example. I came home and decided not to use the air. There was a breeze which gradually picked up. The sky became darker and a lovely rain fell which cooled things off immensely. The cicadas are singing again, sometimes on a long straight refrain, at times the pitch rising in intensity, at times falling, a natural music whose rhythms I cannot understand, but love possibly because of its unfathomable structure. So now I have the sensation of a breeze on my neck and the cicadas noisily competing with each other. Summer's lovely chorus.

Without air conditioning I have begun to think about where I'm comfortable naturally. I have begun to put together a mental map of places to avoid and places to seek refuge from the heat. Sadly there is only one street in the downtown area that is truly tree lined. It is fairly short, but the drop in temperature is noticeable when walking down it. Walking along the river is nice too. The sound of water has a cooling effect and the water mitigates the heat somewhat. It would be even nicer if there were willows or some other trees along its bank.

I hope that Utsunomiya can learn from its past to cool itself off naturally. I hope that it can use more shade trees and its river so that being outside is bearable even in summer. I hope that it can provide facilities to enjoy being outside such as cafes and benches and a bit of space between the street and people. Perhaps when fuel becomes more expensive we will rediscover some simple ancient answers to enjoying this time of the year. Japan has a summer culture born out of low-tech solutions to the problem of staying cool. It needs to take it seriously again.

The Gods Must Be Crazy

There are times I don't understand Japanese sensibilities. Today was one of those times. There was a car show at the foot of Futaarayama Shrine. It was not an ordinary car show, but rather an anime car show. There were about twenty cars all together, each painted with comic book characters. I'm not sure if the characters were actual comic book characters or if they were the creations of car owners. Obviously a lot of care and detail went into each and every paint job. In addition to the cars, the owners were dressed in costume. They had my pity as it was a beastly hot day. As is usually the case, these type of events attract a lot of people who are into this sort of thing. The cosplay crowd was out in force. There were the girls in frilly dresses and guys in anime/comic book costumes. They would pose and people would take pictures. There was a stage with girls dressed in school uniform-ish attire singing J-pop, probably something from the AKB48 repertoire. It all seemed fairly silly and innocuous. In a sense, it reminded me of how peaceful things are here. All innocent fun without a trace of irony. At least to the participants. I understood why it was on shrine premises: all events that need space are held there. It just seemed slightly...sacrilegious. It's my mid-20th century upbringing rearing its ugly head perhaps. I'll post some pics. You decide.here.

Vienna

I recently went to Vienna for a bicycle conference. The conference was great as was the city of Vienna. Of course, I expected Vienna to be a nice city with great food and palpable history. There are rows upon rows of impressive stone buildings fronted by bronze and stone statues. Vienna has a lot to commemorate. It was besieged by the Turks twice, once in 1520 and again in 1683. It was home to Mozart, Freud, Klimt and the Hapsburg dynasty. It has great beer, good food, awesome sweets and friendly people. It struck me how most Viennese spoke great English. I sometimes feel guilty that I'm not able to speak the language of the country I'm in, however, I've come to realize that it's much easier to learn other languages when you live in countries that are the size of states rather than the size of continents. Vienna is close to the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary and most Austrians are at least bilingual if not trilingual.

Increasing pedestrian space

The street as one's living room

Protected sidewalk cafe

  As an American, I immediately begin making comparisons between American cities and European. And now that I live in Japan, I add Japanese cities to my points of reference. It's easy to get caught up in the pleasantness and beauty of European cities and forget something important about them. The reason they are so pleasant is because they are designed as if people mattered. Sidewalks are wide and tree lined. Cafes, an extension of inside to outside space and vice versa, are everywhere, the central plaza is closed to cars all year round and elsewhere, priority is given to bicycles and public transportation of which I saw a number of modes: bike-share, subway, trams, articulated buses and trains. 

 European cities are proof that city life doesn't have to be unpleasant if you put people first. I believe that it's only a matter of time before the United States wakes up to this fact as well. In fact we're already starting to see signs of it in New York and Washington D.C. with their popular bike share programs, widening space for pedestrians and cyclists and shrinking room for cars. With the Republican mayor of Indianapolis introducing a connected cycle network in just the past year, we're seeing a real sea-change, proof that people friendly transportation is possible given some foresight and the political will.

People, bikes, trams, cars layout

Bike pedestrian path

Vignette

Today I took the Nikko Line to Shimotsuke Osawa and walked to a new restaurant. The food was good, the owner was pleasant, we had a nice chat; he told me that he was moving into an old style Japanese farm house in December. He's doing all the work himself. Mentioned that he was a carpenter as well as a cook. I look forward to eating there when they open.

What struck me today was a vignette on the train home. I was seated opposite a young family of six. That in itself is unusual. Usually two children seems to be the norm for most Japanese. Four young children is unusual. As we chugged along, the oldest girl, maybe she was six or seven, was being very attentive to her little brother of perhaps one. He was motioning that he was thirsty so she gave him a drink from a sippy-cup. He beamed at her. She beamed at him. He was in a good mood and she played with him, smiling, scrunching his cheeks, mentioning to her mom how cute her little brother was. He beamed and beamed. Her little sister of about three, obviously thought I was either strange or fascinating. She slouched on her bench and looked right at me. I waved at her and said hello. She became very shy then, turning to her mom for reassurance. The whole family was so good at taking care of each other. No one seemed stressed out or cranky. Does this just happen? Did I happen to catch them at a good time? They seemed very authentic. They exuded an aura of calm and innocence. It was my balm for the day. Just what I needed.

Electric Vehicles (EVs)

An electric car is still a car with all of its inherent problems except the exhaust from the tailpipe. It steals space with roads and parking. It's a fast, dangerous piece of machinery that shouldn't mix with people, but is allowed to. It doesn't solve a basic issue with cars; the privatization of transportation. It doesn't make us any slimmer or get us exercising more. It still needs insurance, fuel, and maintenance, and still causes traffic jams and stress. It's the illusion of a new green panacea. It lets us assuage our consciences without making any basic changes. With it we can stay in the suburbs, cling to our old lifestyles, and gain the panache of change without the substance.

ピッツェリーアヴィアナポリ

今日、お天気がよかったので、突然魔が差して、”ピザが食べたい！ポタリングしたい！”と思って、矢板へ向かって行きました。初めての矢板でしたが、予想した通り小さな都市、（大きな町？）です。ま、でも矢板見物を後回しにして、今日はピザを食べに来ました。先日、ローカル誌に載っていたヴィアナポリというピッツェリーアがまあまあ駅の歩ける距離内にあって、（第一条件満たされた）、そして美味しいピザを作るにはなくてはならない石釜がお店に置いて有ります。こんな店が矢板に有るのはちょっとびっくりでしたが、トライしてみようと決めました。矢板は宇都宮より更に３０分北にある町で、駅を出て、携帯の地図を見ながら１５分ぐらい歩いたら、お店にたどり着きました。結構賑やかで、満席だったのでウエーティングリストに名前を書き、呼ばれるのを待ちながら隣に座っていたお客さんとおしゃべり。ちょっとすると、タイミングが良かったせいか、あまり待たないでテーブルへ案内してもらいました。ロマーノピザ（モッツァレラチーズ、バジリコ、アンチョビ）を頼み、先ずサラダが出てきました。折角の日曜日なので、久々のビールも。ピザが来たらサイズにおったまげた。大きい！アメリカンサイズみたい！でも、お店の方は残した分を持ち帰り用にしてくれました。デザートはノッチョーラというヘーゼルナッツのジェラート。最後にエスプレッソをもらって、失礼しました。僕の条件は全部クリアーしました。１。食べ物は美味しかった。２。対応はフレンドリー。３。お店の雰囲気は居心地良かった。４。お店まで楽に歩けた。又，行きます。

矢板駅

サラダとイタリアンビール

ロマーノ

持ち帰り用の残り物

ジェラート

エスプレッソ

Autonomy

Autonomy. 

Recently on Streetfilms I saw a video describing a progressive narrowing of children's range of mobility over the last forty to fifty years. Children who once had the freedom to explore and roam their towns and villages are now restricted to their streets, virtual prisoners to small proscribed areas in their neighborhoods.  The cause, a car centered transportation system and ultimately federal, state and local policies in thrall to the car. 

When I was young I had a great deal of autonomy in my mobility. My parents rarely had to chauffeur me anywhere. I walked to school, walked downtown, rode my bike to friends' houses and stores. I was not a rarity. It was the norm for children in my town to be independent. I was free to explore woods and fields and make little field trips. This independence nurtured autonomy:  planning what to take, contacting friends and what routes to take. Coming and going were up to us, within reason. Our independence gave us and our parents the freedom to be free of each other for a while, a healthy need. 

Children in Japan still have access to the autonomy which has been lost in America. School buses are not the norm here. Students are expected to get to school on their own. They walk, bike or take public transportation. In most of Japan, chauffeuring your children doesn't even occur to parents. Movement is one's personal responsibility here, from elementary school onward. Safety is not a concern as Japan is incredibly safe. (Safety is a given here). And most children move in groups. As a result, like me when I was a child, their activities place much less stress on their parents than their American counterparts. 

If we wish to give autonomy back to children, we must give them safe, car-free ways to move about. We need more road diets, more human-interaction-friendly streets, more separated bike lanes, more public transportation and zoning reform. This would allow the facilities children, and by extension all people, use daily to be reached within safe walking or biking distance and those long haul errands done by public transportation. 

A life of autonomous mobility recognizes our need to provide transportation that serves a broad set of values: health, equity, community, environment, safety, work, and pleasure. When we recognize that car centered design is more a burden than a liberator, then, hopefully, we will take action to change it. 

There's So Much to Learn

I started gardening again last May after roughly a 40 year absence. I don't remember gardening with much fondness or enthusiasm when I was a child. It was a chore. An inescapable duty as a family member. This was due to youth perhaps. Wanting to be with friends rather than weeding or rotatilling or watering or the hundreds of other things that need to be done to make a garden productive. 

I was in my head much of the time then. And gardening requires attention. To be successful at it requires active participation. Thoughts of drawing, Mad magazine or Saturday morning cartoons were distractions. Unfortunately, they were also my mantras. 

My parents had no such distractions. My dad loved work in general and coming from a farm family had the requisite knowledge for gardening: what the best fertilizer was (aged horse manure), composting, making sure any wood ash ended up in the garden, when to till, how deep to plant, when to plant, when and how to thin, what to plant next to what to keep away pests, what to grow yourself and what not to waste one's time on. 

My mother knew much of this also and was in charge of provisioning us through the long New York winters. From late August to October she was busy canning beans, tomatoes, pickles, and applesauce. Our basement shelves were lined with jars of yellow, green, red and pink. Like so many jarred vegetable soldiers waiting to be called into action. Our root cellar was full of white and red potatoes, onions, apples and squash. Our garden was a cornucopia; I slept walked through most of the experience. 

So, here I am. Approaching my sixth decade and just now rediscovering gardening. So what's different this time? It's not the solitary activity it once was. My mentor, Mr. Maeda, is generous with his knowledge and patient in teaching me about gardening. We talk and I learn anew or am reminded of things buried in my subconscious. How to use a hoe, how to thin, how to plant, when to plant. But, of course, some things are different. I've learned how to construct a hotbed to give sweet potatoes a jump on the gun. I know how to plant and thin daikon radish, a skill unneeded in the an American garden. I've planted sweet potatoes and peanuts for the first time, learned that peanuts don't need chemicals or pesticides to thrive and are therefore safe to eat no matter what their country of origin. The drives to and from the field are filled with conversation about topics I didn't know previously: rice fields are kept full of water until about two weeks before harvest to keep the weeds down; sweet potatoes and peanuts will not grow much further north than where we live; northernJapan is too cold for most root vegetables; there are two kinds of fireflies in Japan. It's all very edifying.

I know so little still. If I had to survive on my present skills as a farmer I wouldn't last a year. That knowledge gives me tremendous admiration for the millions of small farmers around the world who manage to feed their families year after year. It also explains why farming is an inherently conservative occupation. One doesn't meddle with success until what you are doing doesn't work any more. Tradition and experimentation in equal parts. It's a constant puzzle to figure out how to stay ahead of the game. 

There's so much to learn. 

The Pea Patch

As usual, Thursday was field day. It was warm, but not hot. It had rained a little earlier and had fortunately spared us in the field. We hilled potatoes, dug up and transplanted green onions and harvested what was ready. The beans that we planted and and trellised about a month ago are now coming on. The beans are difficult to pick as they are the same color as the leaves. You have to constantly change your angle to see them.

As I was picking, a little salamander skittered out from the leaves. He must have been hunting insects. The bean patch is a micro-jungle full of all sorts of tempting delicacies for a salamander, I'm sure. He stayed very still and I reached over the top of the trellis and shot this.

The pheasant was very vocal, crying from various places on the perimeter of the field. I glimpsed him briefly in the next field of pampas grass. I did not see his mate, but then she blends more easily with the dun color of the pampas.

It is interesting how quickly vegetation becomes an ecosystem for whatever critters are in an area. We have a type of badger that makes its appearance in the summer. It's nocturnal so I haven't seen one as I'm there only in the daytime. The badgers love what people love: corn, tomatoes, eggplant and peanuts. Insects are prolific and are a major problem in an organic garden. Last year most of the potatoes were ruined. A type of lady bug decimated all the leaves on the plants and stunted the potato growth. The harvest was a disaster. Most were hardly bigger than the seed potatoes we originally planted. Mr. Maeda says that can't be helped. You have to figure in a certain amount of loss in organic gardening. He said that if he was doing this for his survival he would judiciously use pesticides as needed. But he isn't. So he doesn't. He prefers not worrying about it and being able to eat his produce without the concern of chemicals. It's obvious that the wildlife prefer it that way.

Hunger

In 2006 I went to Guatemala for three weeks of Spanish language training. I didn't learn much Spanish, but I did get quite an education. I got a front row seat to globalization. It wasn't pretty.

I spent three weeks in Antigua, a popular destination for tourists and Spanish learners. The language school was staffed by locals who may or may not have known anything about pedagogy, but it provided them income and most of their students, me excepted, were fairly comfortable in Spanish anyway. The city was old, the first capital of Guatemala, and therefore full of historic churches, a lovely square, and cobblestone streets. Amidst the historic grandeur of the past, however, my fellow students and I were constantly accosted by people selling beads, hand-woven clothes, and knick-knacks. They were overwhelmingly women and children and they were everywhere: on the street, in hotel lobbies, in cafes and in restaurants plying their wares until they sold something or were chased off. 

My host family provided two meals a day, breakfast and dinner. Meals were simple and good, but I noticed at the market that prices were expensive. My fellow students and I sometimes went to restaurants at night on weekends; Not fancy places, rather average. Surprisingly, prices were not any different from prices in the US. There were almost no Guatemalans to be seen in these establishments other than the staff and the ever-present women and dirty, barefoot children selling things. Our host mother said that life was hard for the average person. The wealthy were doing well, she said, but that was only a tiny fraction of the population. According to her, most people were struggling. 

The children I saw were gaunt. Hollow cheeks and rather short in stature, attesting to a life without enough to eat. One evening two children approached the table where some fellow Spanish teachers and I  were having dinner to sell us beads and hand-woven bracelets. Although we didn't buy anything, my Spanish speaking friends began talking to them. "Where are you from?", "Where are your parents?" (No parents. Grandmother took care of them.) "Where do you live? (Under a bridge.) We let them sit down and ordered dinner for them. The Guatemalan waiter didn't look too happy about two little waifs of maybe ten and eight sitting at the table with us, (we were surrounded by other tourists), but since they were there at our invitation, he didn't say anything to them. Toward the end of the meal, the grandmother came along and put the remains of the meal in a plastic bag. She looked very tired and very old, although I don't know for sure how old she was. They said thank you and disappeared into the night. I still remember their faces. 

Other than learning Spanish, the main purpose of our trip was providing school supplies to a school in a small Mayan village. We had all brought pencils, pens, paper and articles of clothing such as T-shirts, sandals, and jackets for the children. Their school was a small two story concrete building that had been constructed with aid from a German NGO. It seems that the Guatemalan government does not see  building schools and providing texts and teachers to poor Mayans as its responsibility. The teachers lined their students up for the supplies that they had organized into bundles.  The students were grateful. The teachers were grateful. I felt inadequate and quite humbled. But I could leave. They stayed. It was dizzying to look into the maw of poverty and exploitation

Guatemala changed me. I saw people hungry in a land of plenty. Most of the land was under the cultivation of multinationals. Rows and rows of bananas, broccoli, mangos, etc. People in the country walking miles to springs for clean water. Pickup truck "taxis" full of people in the back, roadsides littered with plastic bags ands water bottles. Roads you had to be careful on because of bandits. Tiny plots tilled on mountains because the best land had been confiscated for bananas. And then coffee. And then asparagus and broccoli. Gaunt children and a drunken man staring at our bus at a rest stop. Like Native Americans everywhere, the Mayans of Guatemala are exiles in their own land. These were the images of in-your-face globalization that have been branded into my memory. It's not happy. It's not up-lifting and it's not democratic. Guatemala's gift to me was to let me witness it first hand. 

The 5-2 Diet

I stumbled across an article on this diet reading the Guardian the other day. I was thinking about my health and was fairly satisfied with the progress I had made here - losing weight, walking more, riding my bike, eating and snacking less. However, somehow, this diet made sense to me for the simple reason that it didn't really seem like a diet. It doesn't require anything I can't do. On this diet you fast two days out of seven.  Two consecutive days of fasting is not encouraged. I've fasted in the past and was able to do it as long as I kept busy. My first day fasting was busy. I worked, and followed my usual routine minus breakfast, lunch and dinner.  There were no particular urges to run to the local convenience store for a snack or raid the fridge.

I looked at the Wikipedia page on the Fast Diet and under criticism was the following:

According to the UK National Health Service there is no evidence that the diet meets its claims of benefit and that "due to the very real uncertainties about the 5:2, especially as little is known about whether it could be harmful to health in the long-term, most health professionals would recommend you stick to the tried and trusted methods for weight loss and disease prevention."

NHS goes on to label it a "fad diet" that can be "bad for your health." ^[5]

I am usually skeptical of diets, but I'm even more skeptical of government organizations that are critical of something that would have profound impacts on the way we eat, purchase and choose food. It would seem that there is a vested interest in preserving the status quo. 

For most people, tried and true methods of weight loss and disease prevention, that is, diet and exercise, don't work. We have been seduced by sweet, salty, fatty foods. Exercise is something we have to add to our life rather than it being a natural part of it. Essentially, we have to go out of our way to be healthy.

The beauty of this diet is that it does not require us to make any radical changes other than cutting down on eating for two days of the week. Why is this bad for your health? Westerners eat too much in general.  The real threat is probably the harm it might do to major supermarket chains if people go to the store less, not if  "you stick to the tried and trusted methods for weight loss and disease prevention". For most people those tried and trusted  methods involve medicines with rather severe potential side effects. They also do not allow our bodies to use their potential to heal ourselves. If the possibilities of treating cancer, heart disease, lowering cholesterol and blood pressure, and controlling insulin levels can be ameliorated with something as simple as fasting, then long term clinical studies would seem to be warranted. I hope the NHS plans to carry some out. 

In the meantime, I will take the plunge. I already live in a culture that doesn't believe in overeating. I just want to take it to the next level to prevent problems that might be lurking down the road; My mom developed diabetes and was battling with weight control in her last years. She had had bypass surgery, high cholesterol and high blood pressure. That gives me plenty of motivation to try a regimen that can help my body control those risks naturally. Given the alternatives, fasting doesn't sound so radical to me. 

Refuge 2

Religion is a facet of Japanese life that lacks religiosity in an American sense. In Japan, religion is less about professing faith, than it is about incorporating its forms and mores into one's day-to-day life. In Japan the gods are everywhere as evidenced by the many shrines throughout the country. Every house has a kamidana, god shelf, which protects the family from harm. There is a talisman for fire in many kitchens. To make matters more confusing (at least for Americans),  most Japanese households also have a Buddhist altar for departed ancestors. Ancestor worship, furthermore, is an important component of Confucianism, a philosophy which gained importance during the Edo era (1600-1868).  

Japanese religion can be highly syncretic in practice and form. Most Japanese are dualists in their relationship with Shinto, the native animist religion, and Buddhism, the import from the Asian continent. These two religions have coexisted peacefully for most of their 1400 years together here. Both play different roles in rites of passage. Birth is commemorated by a visit to a shrine with the baby. Weddings are performed in shrines (Although, now, in a further syncretic step, many Japanese get married pro forma in a church in order to wear a wedding dress, although the bride often changes into a kimono at the reception later). Funerals and death related events e.g. death anniversaries are the territory of Buddhism. This is due to the Shinto view that death is unclean. 

It's interesting that Christianity, since it's legalization in 1868, has never regained popularity here. In the 1500s when it was introduced by Spanish and Portuguese missionaries it was wildly popular. So popular that it frightened the highest levels of government who saw it as a fifth column plotting to open Japan to colonization. (They were probably correct.) It was outlawed from roughly 1620 to 1868 and practiced in secret on remote islands in southern Japan. Instead of a resurgence of Christianity after it's legalization (it hovers at about 10%),  the Japanese pick and choose those "Christian" traditions which appeal to them. In this case it is all of the secular trappings of Christmas: Santa Claus, gift giving, carols,  the Christmas tree and illumination. 

Finally, it is worth noting that Japan has never had a religious war. The Japanese trait of tolerance, fascination with new things, and imbuing foreign imports with Japanese values has somehow managed to blunt tendencies toward dogmatism and intolerance. Whatever the reason, I'm truly grateful.  

a temple gate

Trees are sacred. What a concept!

A Shinto corner inside a temple grounds. Syncretic!

A typical Shinto gate separating the outside and sacred worlds.