Miscellaneous photos again

Shall we have a miscellaneous photo post?

 My neighbor's yard is full of hollyhocks!

It has been raining so much that I feel sorry for the outdoor cats and so we have let them visit the Sunroom (which I will have to call this room now that the forest is gone and there is sun streaming in!) and they are very happily cuddled in a rattan chair.  That is Patora on top and Toi on the bottom.

They do NOT like John however and John has been whapped a few times on the nose when he goes into the sunroom for a visit.

The forest is slowly going away but sometimes in the morning before the workers arrive Tetsu walks the area to see if there are any chunks of wood that have been left by the wayside.  He has gotten permission to glean these odd slabs that will not make it to the lumber yard.  I don't know what WE are going to do with them but maybe he can make a plant stand or something from one or two.

I made John pose in a fern bed.  Green is his color!  He gets lost in there as he is shorter than the fern! 

"Okay, I posed.  Where's my treat." 

All of John's behavior is controlled by treats.  If I have a few in my pocket he is almost always willing to listen to me.

Ah, two different cats.  These are Mi and Chip enjoying a snuggle with Tetsu.  That only leaves Cleo who was probably upstairs under the blankets.

And this just happened a couple of hours ago...  Tetsu was recognized by the Nikko police for his help in returning the man with dementia to his home last week.  Tetsu tried to refuse the honor saying that it was all part of the work he had done for 30 years working in elder care (he can't count how many times he had to go looking for someone who wandered away from their home after being returned from day care) but the police department insisted, and he was given a splendid certificate. 

Somehow my name also got added to the certificate (Tetsu had mentioned my cheery role in persuading the man to rest awhile with us) and Tetsu was interviewed by the local newspaper...  He was sweating bullets!  Tetsu would rather stay in the background but the thought is nice.

Soba noodle making

Marlene invited me to her community center's monthly gathering on Monday and so I joined their festivities though I knew almost no one there.  Marlene was busy in the kitchen so I was on my own to chat with the neighbors...  No one has ever accused me of being shy.

Marlene's husband, Kohei, has set in motion a regular monthly activity in their neighborhood community center aimed at getting the older generation more involved in community life.  He and two other neighbors began a once a month community cafe serving a snack to residents and giving them a place to sit and socialize....  Kohei is very good at getting things going and also at getting a lot of volunteer help.  Marlene and her friends end up doing a lot of shopping, a lot of cooking and Kohei sends out notices and acts as the master of ceremonies throughout the proceedings.  Once they had a cookie and coffee afternoon, once they had manju (bean cakes) and tea for their snack.  This month the menu was soba (buckwheat noodles) and tempura!

There are three main types of noodles in Japan.  Ramen which is actually Chinese in origin, udon which is made with wheat and usually are thicker noodles, and soba which is made from buckwheat.  There is a whole art and culture around making soba noodles and soba restaurants abound and gain popularity because of the purity of the buckwheat and the skill of the noodle maker.  I can have quite a long conversation of where the best soba noodle restaurant is in my district...  Soba noodle makers have a definite sense of pride on how fine they can make their noodles and at Kohei's community center a group of "Lovers of soba noodles" was invited to share their talents this day.

This was the lunch we were served.   Cold soba noodles with seaweed sprinkles on top.  Cold broth for the noodles to be dipped into.  My ice coffee (I had just come from teaching at the preschool and was thirsty!)  Vegetable tempura.  A rice ball and some cucumber pickles.

While we ate and chatted the Soba Lovers group made another batch of noodles and so I joined a few interested people and took pictures of the progress.

The soba maker brought all his own implements for the noodle making, including the table which was sturdy but portable.  He puts quite a lot of his weight into making the noodles so the table needs to be sturdy.  This was an interesting smooth wooden bowl that he had made just for the purpose of making noodles.  The correct amount of buckwheat flour and water was measured into the bowl...  the way the water was added seemed very important for the success of the noodles, and the day's humidity and temperature were taken into account when deciding on how much water was going to be needed.

After a lot of mixing with his hands, the noodle maker ended up with a very dense, moist ball of buckwheat dough.

This he then rolled out using this very long smooth rod as a rolling pin.  No handles on a Japanese rolling pin!  The weight and the circumference of the rod is also an important factor as well as the length of the rod.  The dough has to be rolled out in one smooth motion at a time. 

 There were a few of the neighbors who took quite an interest in the process.

By this time the noodle maker had rolled his dough into a uniform square which he rolled around his rolling rod from corner to corner, continuing to roll the dough out thinner and thinner in this fashion.

By changing corners and continuing to roll the dough around the rod, he finally had a perfect square of dough.  The shape is very important and is proof of the skill of the noodle maker.

The dough is lightly folded over twice to make a long sheet and here it is ready for cutting.

The huge noodle cutting knife is a treasured implement in noodle making and I overheard one neighbor in the group ask if he could take a try at cutting the noodle dough with the knife.

"I am very sorry but I would NEVER let anyone touch this knife.  It is that valuable to me and a point of pride that I am the only one to ever use it."

Okay....  We'll leave the noodle making to you...

The width of the noodles is determined by the slight slant the noodle maker gives to his knife after every cut which moves his wooden stabilizer back a millimeter or so each time.

The noodle maker will determine the serving portions at this time, usually 7 servings for one batch of dough, and he will cut just the right amount and get it ready for boiling.

"Noodles should be boiled 34 seconds.  And no stirring is allowed."

A thing of beauty and you can feel the love and care and skill put into each batch of soba noodles.

I will appreciate soba noodles even more now when I go to the local soba restaurant!
 

A report

Today is Sunday.  All is quiet in the neighborhood. 

As decreed, the destruction of the forest behind us began on Wednesday sending me into depression.  I really do have a screw loose and more and more I find I have quite a few screws loose...  about things other people don't think twice about...

I finally took off for the swimming pool around lunch time on Wednesday.  I had escaped to walk John in the morning when the tree cutting had begun but there is only so long one can walk the hills far from home.  I wasn't much interested in swimming but it gave me something to do, got me out of the house and gave me an excuse to linger over grocery shopping afterwards.  Still, once at home I had to endure the power saws, the crunch as tree trunks were forced to breaking and then the crash and house shaking when the tree fell.  That is going to go on for a couple of weeks...

Thursday it rained which called a halt to the tree cutting.  I took hesitant glances through my windows to see how much of the forest was gone.  A quarter?  A third?  I again escaped to a friend's house and dawdled in the afternoon delaying my return home until late.  The tree cutters do their jobs from 8:00 to 5:00...  It is hard to stay away from home for that long when I don't have a job that takes me away...

Friday the buzz saws and crunching and crashing began again so I went back to the swimming pool but called Marlene ahead of time hoping she would give me refuge for a few hours at her house after the pool.  (She did.)  I cried and expressed my frustrations and my wild plans to move to other parts of Japan or even America.

"I would rather move to an apartment and look at a wall that I've never seen before than look out on the scene from my windows so changed from what I remember!"

I am getting dramatic.

Tetsu is still trying to make me see the best of things.  He tries to shelve my crazy plans to move to say...  California! or Michigan!  and tells me to look for good things.  To get my mindset shifted.  I am trying.

There was a Miyazawa Hayao animation movie that I loved in the 90's called Omoide Poro-Poro. Miyazawa Hayao-san's animations are always so beautiful and he captures scenery and nature exquisitely.  The gist of the movie was that this city girl went to spend the summer in the countryside of Japan and she LOVED all the nature around her!  Gorgeous!  Japan was gorgeous!  Nature was gorgeous!  She went on and all about all the nature around her.

(From the Internet.  "Only Yesterday" in Japanese "Omoide Poro-Poro)

And then the farmer who was taking her around said,

"It's all man-made you know.  There isn't really anything natural here.  All the mountains have been planted with trees, all the fields have been carved out of hills.  What you see is just the result of our forefathers and their efforts to tame nature."

Well, something like that.

So I'm thinking that I am so distraught about my forest; all the nature that I love, being destroyed...  but generations ago, some land owner actually planted that forest.  Even I know that Japan is very good at cutting and seeding and harvesting and replanting forests.  The hills around me are actually very beautifully regulated with their rows of different species of trees...  Humans (the forest owners) have just decided to add their hand and to change the scenery of my little farming community again. 

It gets done all the time and I frown about it but don't get quite as upset as when it is LITERALLY IN MY BACKYARD!!!

And this IS the view from my bedroom window, looking over the backyard.

I find the stumps of the trees left in the forest the saddest to look at.  The surfaces are wet, not from rain but from the futile attempts of the roots to bring water to the tree that is no longer there.

I'm not doing a very good job of changing my mindset.  I've never been good at accepting change.

Tit-for-tat

My neighbor friend, Mrs. Y is rather an outspoken, opinionated person.  She was telling me of a shopping experience she had the other day.

"I've gained so much weight!  Just look at me!  I can't let anyone see me naked with all this fat!"

This is not so odd a thing to say as ladies in Japan go to the hot spas and public baths and don't think twice about being naked in front of other women.  Mrs. Y, for all her complaining is still a rather petit woman in my eyes.

"I've had a run of funerals to attend and my mourning outfit was getting tight.  I decided it was high time to go buy another mourning outfit and my cousin and I went shopping at the local department store.  Can you believe that the clerk told me that I should try on a size 11!  I've never had to wear a size 11 in my life!"

I know the feeling of having to buy larger clothes in Japan.  I too need to buy size 11 or 13 if I am shopping in Japan.  In the States I can get by with an 8.

"So I tried on a size 11 and do you know what?!  It was too tight across the front!  How can a size 11 be too tight?  I complained to the clerk that the sizes are too small these days!"

I have had this exact feeling.

"Do you know what the clerk said to me?!  She said, 'Madam, the dress isn't really too tight.  You have sagging breasts and the cloth bunches there.  You need to push your breasts up higher.'"

Oh dear...  I wouldn't be happy either with that comment.

"I said to the clerk.  'What did you just say?  Did you just say I have sagging breasts?  That might be true but that is a terrible thing to say to a customer.  How long have you been selling dresses?  You should know by now that choosing your words is important.'"

I can just imagine Mrs. Y shooting sparks off the top of her head.  She can get very excited sometimes.

"I told that clerk that if I was any other customer I'd say 'stuff it' and go buy my dress somewhere else but that I would forgive her this time.  And then I asked her how old she was.  She said she was 62.  She should know better.  When she is my age she will have sagging breasts too but she didn't now.  And so I said, 'For that rude comment, let me see how firm YOUR breasts are.' and I touched her breast and do you know she was rock hard!  I said, 'What all do you have in there to push your breasts so high?'"

Oh my goodness...  Mrs. Y is verging on sexual harassment.  Or maybe the clerk started it...

Situations

I am having a rough morning with all the buzz saws going next to our house...  Tetsu has talked with the cutters and requested that the trees not be left like "headless soldiers" and the two of us (actually Tetsu is just trying to comfort me) have talked about the great possibilities there will be for our yard when we get more sun...  Positive thinking....

Do you want to hear a funny story or a sort of unfortunate or fortunate story depending on how one looks at it.

The unfortunate/fortunate story.  I don't have the heart to relate a funny story yet.

Tetsu was outside sweeping the street yesterday morning (this was before the announcement about the forest) when he looked up at some older man who was standing there watching him.  Tetsu said hello and the man answered but kept watching.  Tetsu stopped what he was doing to chat with the man but something seemed off...  The man wore good leather shoes though flattened at the heels which didn't go with his t-shirt and sloppy pants.  He also had on two baseball caps and was carrying a large flashlight and a folding metal ruler.

Our next door neighbor came over to talk and whispered to Tetsu that he had seen the older man wandering around the neighborhood earlier, heading into the forest, coming back out, wandering different streets.  Tetsu asked the man where he was headed... and the man didn't know.  He knew his own name but he didn't seem to know where he was heading and couldn't explain where he lived.

Tetsu called for me to get him his cell phone while the man headed down the road towards the rice fields and out of the neighborhood.  Tetsu and the neighbor tried to stop the man but he was happily insistent that he didn't want to take up any more of their time.  Tetsu accompanied the man chatting and suggesting he stop and rest at our house for awhile, all the while motioning me to call the police!

I got in touch with the police and gave them our address and Tetsu's cell phone number and they said they were sending a police car immediately.  They also called Tetsu so that they could pinpoint how far he and the man had gotten along the road.

By that time however Tetsu had managed to turn the man around and they were back in front of our house so I hurried indoors and brought the man a glass of water.

"You must be tired.  Relax before you head out again."

We guided the man into our yard and gave him a seat at the garden table Tetsu all the while assuring him that destiny had brought them together to share stories and they drank water and ate snacks I'd brought out.  Our neighbor kept them company and leaned over the fence and chatted while we waited for the police.  

Tetsu is very good at this sort of thing as he spent 30 years working with elderly residents with dementia.  He convinced the man to show him his wallet and found an expired driver's license.  He also took the ruler away from the man in case he got upset about something.  

Finally the police arrived and with them people from the city hall associated with community care.  It took a little doing but they convinced the man to join them in the community care vehicle (he did not want to get in the police car) and off they went.  The man's family had already contacted the police about his disappearance so all ended up well.  Great that Tetsu and the neighbor were so good at keeping the man occupied, great that the man was happy albeit confused.

When everyone had gone Tetsu and the neighbor talked a bit more and Tetsu said to me,

"That man and I are the same age.  He is only 65."

And our neighbor piped up.  "He is five years younger than I am.  He still has a lot of stamina left in him."

The story ended well...  Unfortunate that the man has dementia but fortunate that he was found safe and returned to his home.

A strange kind of sadness

I had a shock today and have fallen into an odd sort of grieving...  This morning a man came to my door to let me (and other neighbors on my block) know that from tomorrow the forest behind us will be cut down.  I actually had a moment of dizziness and got nauseous.

When our family was looking to buy a house 27 years ago, I wasn't too excited by the prospect of living so far away from friends and the school that we were used to in the nearest city.  We had actually come across the house we now live in when it first went on the market and though I loved the thought of living near so many trees, I didn't really want to move from the city we were in.  It didn't matter because we couldn't afford the house anyway.

Two years later Tetsu discovered that the house that I had liked was still for sale and that the price had dropped to half of the original.  We decided that day that we would make this our home and in Japan buying a house really does mean our forever home.  Buying a house and selling later and moving to a new house just doesn't happen in Japan.  (One reason is that housing value drops to zero after it has been lived in....)

I found that I LOVED our house and the surrounding countryside and I especially loved that we were surrounded on nearly all sides by trees and forest.  I love hearing the birds in the morning especially the nightingales in the spring.

I know other people look at our house and yard and think, "how dark it is there.  That house doesn't really get much sunlight." and that is true but I guess I'd rather have trees than sun.

Many, many years ago part of the forest extended near my sewing room window (it was Leiya's room at that time) and one tree's branches dipped low over our roof constantly dripping moisture onto the roof eaves.  We asked the homeowner's association if they could have someone come and cut back one or two branches.  What happened was that four or five big trees were cut down and I've always felt saddened and guilty that those wonderful trees were destroyed just because I complained of dripping.  (And yes, I tried to stop the woodcutters but they had their job to do and remarked that what were four or five trees when I had a whole forest behind me.)

I just like trees.

So this news of the forest going down is devastating to me!  Will I even want to live here if the forest is no longer there?

Of course we have no say in what happens to the forest.  The land owner has made the decision though no one in the neighborhood really knows who the land owner is.  He has left his forest alone for decades and who knows why he has decided to have it cut down now... 

On the edge of tears I am trying to think positively about this upcoming change.

"It is true during the last typhoon three or four trees in the immediate neighborhood fell crashing to the ground." 

"It is true that when we have strong winds we will often choose not to sleep in the room next to the forest.  The cutting of the trees is maybe saving us from unknown future dangers...."

"Think of how much light we will get once the forest is gone."

"Maybe our backyard with get enough sunlight so that we can plant a small vegetable garden behind our house."

"I have had nearly 30 years of these wonderful trees.  Rejoice in that great blessing.  Don't think about loss."  See I am grieving.

"Maybe we will have scenery to look out upon, the mountains, the rice fields."

Of course I'm trying not to expect too much from the change either...  In my experience, in Japan the cutting of trees means just that.   WHACK!  The tree is cut off in the middle of the trunk and the bottom half is left standing to look like a headless soldier.  I HATE that look.

I went down the street leading to our house (the first house there at the curve in the road) and touched each tree briefly...  

Tomorrow maybe I shouldn't even be here when the cutting begins...