In the Pines

明けましておめでとうございます！ This year I welcomed the New Year in Kyoto with my in-laws. I want to say thank you to all of them for their unceasing warmth and kindness. いつも、ありがとうございます。 In particular, I would like to say thank you to my mother-in-law for always working so hard to make the New Year holiday special--your food is incredible, as always. I would also like to express my deep gratitude to the people of Otaki Village for their amazing kindness and support. Moving to Otaki and being allowed to learn about the people and their environment has been wonderful beyond what I ever expected. I've grown deeply attached to Otaki's landscape and people and feel anxious about having to leave in 3 short months. 皆様、今年も宜しくお願いいたします。 Also, I'd like extend my condolences to the family of H-san, the head of Otaki's village council, who passed away unexpectedly on the night of the 29th. I only met H-san a couple of times, and only talked with him at any length once. However, in that single...

In my previous post I wrote briefly about the wood plank roofing that used to be used in Otaki . These days most homes are roofed using sheets of red tin (I still don't know why red). The tile roofing that is common throughout most of Japan is rarely used--the heavy winds and snows of the area are not friendly. Wooden planks make sense in Otaki because the village is surrounded by forest. From what residents have told me the planks they used in the past came from the Imperial Forests--known as 御料林 go- ryourin . Sawara cypress was the variety of tree most commonly used for planks. The wooden planks were laid on top of a roof frame in a staggered pattern with planks on top overlapping those below them, ensuring a watertight covering. Wood-smoke from inside the home would then work to treat the underside of the roof, while the upper-side--exposed to rain and snow--tended to rot. The roof would, therefore, be periodically disassembled and the planks rotated so that exposed sect...

A couple of days before I left for a trip to the U.S., S-san invited me to come by to see her family's waterwheel and mill. I thought I might be too late, but she assured me they would be using the wheel into the first week of December. I arrived at S-san's on a sunny Wednesday morning. She said she had just been on her way to grind some rice, so the timing was good. S-san's family owns the only waterwheel that remains in Otaki, though it appears that in the past many families operated their own wheels. Every year family's from all over the village bring rice to be ground into flour for making dango , manju and other treats. After briefly showing me the contents of the wheel-house, S-san walked up above to open and close gate s in order to divert water to the wheel. The sound of rushing water that had been constant since I arrived paused. A moment later it resumed. And, a moment after that, water began spewing from the mouth of a pipe situated next to the wheel...

A recent post on KenElwood: Rewilding in Japan about crows reminded me of a TED talk that a friend had sent to me some time ago--also about crows. In the talk, Joshua Klein speaks to the intelligence of crows; and to the lack of intelligence on the part of humans in "dealing" with crows. Klein's point about taking time to rethink our relationships with other animals is well taken. What's the use of evolving such large brains if we're not gonna use them. Some more fodder for thought is an article in Orion Magazine by Susanne Antonetta in which she describes her experiences meeting Chantek , an orangutan capable of using sign language to communicate. Many humans in modern society arrogantly dismiss the intelligence and depth of other animals--especially wild animals. KenElwood began his post by alluding to an elder who might reference a crow story. Many cultures have stories concerning animals, there wisdom and connection to humans. Many people in modern socie...

Fog slinking through the building tops, makes me remember the hip chill of San Francisco.

The blog One Hundred Mountains recently contained a post Weighing up Walter Weston , that explores the validity of Weston's title as "the father of the Japanese Alps". Weston's place in Japanese history has a lot to do with what was happening in Japan at the time as the Meiji government was creating a political space that required a reconfiguring of the entire landscape. Berkeley geographer Karen Wigen takes up this topic and argues that the mountains of central Japan were "discovered" as the alps (アルプス) and reconfigured to meet the political and social needs of the Meiji regime. Here is the full reference Wigen K. 2005. Discovering the Japanese Alps: Meiji Mountaineering and the Quest for Geographical Enlightenment. Journal of Japanese Studies 31 If anyone wants the article, but can't find it online, I can email a PDF.

I'll be leaving Otaki in March of next year, and I'm not sure if I'll have a chance to climb Ontake-san on the other side of winter. I've wanted to see san-no-ike (三ノ池), Ontake's third pond, since I arrived here in Otaki. So, though it was late in the season, on Halloween day I decided to give it a go. This is the Ontake-san that had peaked out at me the morning of the previous day. . .irresistable. I had been busy until about 10:00 that morning, but should have gone--the weather was perfect. Instead I kept my eyes on the weather forecasts and decided that the next day would be best for an ascent; I could get an early start. I was climbing the road to Ta-no-hara 田の原 by about 5:30 the next morning. When I reached the clearings of Ontake 2240's ski hills I could gaze clearly at the first stirrings of the morning swelling up behind the Kiso Range. At Ta-no-hara I climbed from my car and took in my first breaths of the cool air there. I looked up at Ontake-s...

An article in Northern Woodlands Magazine entitled, A Forest for Every Town , talks about the Vermont Town Forest Program , which aims to ensure common forestlands for municipalities in Vermont. The program's idea has grown, in part, out of movements, such as the slow food movement, that strive to use local products. It sounds like the program is quite successful so far. From the article: Hinesburg’s forests exemplify town forest potential. They have recreation: world-class mountain biking trails, along with skiing, hiking, and horseback riding. They also serve as outdoor classrooms, both for local teachers and for the University of Vermont, whose students have conducted dozens of projects there. And the older forest also has active forest management: one recent harvest took out white ash, which was then milled and kiln-dried locally and installed to replace the floor of the Hinesburg Town Hall, which had been sanded so many times that the tongue of each tongue-and-groove boa...

The following is a link to a paper providing a brief overview of my research that I will be presenting during a panel discussion entitled, "Graduate Student Collaborations and Engagements in Environmental Change Research", at the American Anthropological Association (AAA) meetings in San Francisco this month. Take a look if it's of any interest. Socio-natual resilience: Anthropological engagements with environmental change research

*I've received comments from observant readers informing me that 赤カブ akakabu are not in fact "red beets", but rather are a member of the brassica genus, and therefore a variety of turnip. To order Otaki "aka-kabura-zuke" or "sunki-zuke" please write to otakimura@gmail.com . My good friend TS-san invited Chizuko and I to come watch her and two other women from a cooperative called "Himawari-market" (ひまわりマーケット) prepare tsukemono . "Tsukemono" refers to a huge variety of pickled vegetables that are ubiquitous in the Japanese diet. In Otaki, there are two main types of tsukemono. The first is "aka-kabu" (赤かぶ), which means red beets in English. The second is a type of tsukemono that is unique to this region, called "sunki" (すんき). This tsukemono is made using the leafy tops of red beets and is peculiar in that the process requires no salt. We arrived at sunki-n0-sato (すんきの里)--meaning "house of sunki"-...

time slipping by; writing and preparations for this and that. . .behind on work. . .so it goes. My friend, T-san, had been offering for some time to take me out and show me some of the sights around Otaki. Originally, the plan had been to go fishing, but the good season passed without us ever getting a date set. So, last week we finally forced each other to schedule a time when we could take a walk together to enjoy Ontake's fall colors. On the scheduled day T-san arrived at my house at 8:00 on the morning. A thick haze that had been sitting in the Otaki Valley when I awoke that morning, had all burned off by the surprisingly penetrating rays of the fall sun; now we had blue skies. Chizuko accompanied T-san and I as we all crawled into his van and took off down the valley, skirting the south side of Ontake reservoir. The water was smooth and glassy, offering a parallel set of hillsides alight with autumn's palette and topped with a sky of deep azure. We descended from ...