Winter in the village

It's early days yet, but the stinkbugs prediction of heavy snow this winter has not materialized yet. We are getting a lot of snow, but its melting pretty soon after falling. Hotei, sitting outside our front door doesn't seem to mind the snow.

My neighbours tea doesn't seem to mind the snow either.

The village rice paddies with my garden in the foreground. Won't be working in the garden today. I don't mind.

My favorite viewpoint over the Gonokawa, about 1k upstream from my house.

It's going to be a snowy winter...

...at least according to these critters! They are Kamemushi ( Turtle Bug), and this fall there has been a much larger number of them invading the house. Local wisdom says this means heavier than usual snowfall this winter.

Members of the Pentatomidae family of bugs, in English they are commonly known as Stinkbugs because of the unpleasant smell they excrete when attacked. Many Japanese women and kids freak out if they see one as if it were a deadly creature, but in fact the smell is a little unpleasant but not that bad. Japanese say the smell of Cilantro is like that of the kamemushi, ..one reason freash cilantro is hard to find in Japanese supermarkets.

In Vietnam they eat the bugs. From personal experience I can tell you that even after cooking they remain crunchy!!

Bounty by the barrowload

There is something deeply satisfying and fulfilling bringing back barrowloads of food from the garden. I am led to believe that shopping is a source of fulfillment to some, but I don't believe that any feelings coming from shopping can even come close.

This year was the best ever sweet potatoe harvest I've had. Not just lots of them, but big ones.

Both sweet potatoes and taro grow easily. Just put em in the ground and wait!! My kind of gardening.

One Wise Monkey

One Wise Monkey

A couple of weeks ago I was showing some American visitors around my village and they expressed surprise that monkeys were sometimes a "problem" for us, so, this little video I shot this morning is for them.

Actually the monkeys haven't been down in a month or so, and this has meant we were able to harvest persimmons this year. This morning, however, I heard a noise outside the window and sure enough there was this guy.

I suspect he was a scout. Often I've seen a single adult male come down to the village to check out what's "on" at the buffet. Usually a day later the whole troop will come down.

This guy was no dummy though. He didn't rush back to the troop to make his report, but stuck around half a day and filled his belly with the ripe fruit.

I say "guy", but I didn't get to check out his equipment, so it may have been a she. Seems in japan at least the female monkeys tend to be smarter. It was a female who discovered hot-spring bathing, and it was a female who discovered how to wash food.

Typical Japanese Landscape 25

The display of Fall colors begins. Today in my village.

On the path to being Tarento....

We had a rehearsed spontaneous visit from a BSS TV crew last Friday. When we first moved here we were on TV 3 or 4 times, but not for a few years.

This crew was travelling around Japan making a program on empty houses.

Apparently 1 in 8 houses in japan are empty.

As we had moved into an empty house they were interested to see what we've done in terms of remodelling, redecorating etc.

They seemed particularly interested in Yoko making some pumpkin muffins..... and then me eating them.

The program is scheduled to air nationwide at the end of October or early November.

Then I shall sit back and wait for the flood of calls inviting me onto more TV shows.

Garden views.

I was struck by the late afternoon sun shining through the leaves of the satoimo plants.

Called taro in English, they still have a month or more before we dig up them up.

The unused land around my riverside garden was taken over this year by a neighbor who planted sesame as a cash crop.

Called goma in Japanese, he is hoping to make a good income from it.

Monsters in the garden

Found a whole bunch of these critters under some rotting wood.

I gave them to a friend's sons, because they ( the critters, not the boys) turn into.....

...one of the most popular pets for young boys in Japan, Kabuto Mushi.

It's the biggest beetle in Japan, and Kabuto means "samurai helmet".

In English we call them Rhinocerous Beetle.

I found this monster after it had eaten half of one of my tomato plants. We get a few every year, but this one was the biggest I've seen,... it was as long as my hand. If it was in the U.S. it would become a Luna Moth. Not sure what they become here.

What's all the noise about?

No, this is not going to be a rant about the loudspeaker vans passing through the village electioneering right now. Actually we don't get them very often, and being surrounded on 3 sides by mountains mean the slogans echo and reverberate and kind of sound like a Charles Ives piece.

And I'm not talking about the hot-dogging, top gun watching, U.S. airforce jets that scream overhead just above the trees.... though what a huge waste of resources they are......

I'm talking about these guys....

...Cicadas, or "semi" in Japanese.

Just as the frogs quite down they are replaced by the calls of the cicada. By now they have reduced their sound to a random buzzing, but when they first start up they start up in unison. It can be quite eerie, standing in the garden when suddenly all the cicadas in a few hundred metres of forest start up simultaneously.

There are about 30 different species of cicada in Japan, and they have long been celebrated in song and poem. The sound of the cicada used in a movie ( or drawn in a manga "nim nim nim") lets the viewer know the setting is the heat of the summer.

Scarcity and surplus.

Every year the garden is different. Some veggies grow better some years than others. It depends somewhat on timing, but more importantly on that enormous set of environmental factors that we call the weather.

This year has seen some unusual weather in this area. July was the wettest July in over 50 years. It was also the July with the least amount of sunshine.

The word is that many types of vegetables are going to be pricier this year. I expect to see lots of cheap Chinese veggies relabelled as expensive domestic produce.

Compared to our neighbors we have done well for pumpkins/squash this year. We will end up with more than 50 of them, and they store well through the winter. These are a cross between the Japanese kabucha and a butternut squash. The butternut is tastier ( to my palate) and the kabucha is bigger, so they are a nice balance. They make great soup, and of course pumpkin pie.

The other crop that finally came on recently were the tomatoes. I plant a lot of plants and let them run wild. A lot of fruit gets damaged by the rain, and the crows take some, but still we have enough to need to process them every few days. These are jars of home-made ketchup. Incomparable to factory-made stuff. We also can a lot of pizza sauce.

The strange weather was good for one crop this year... zuccini! usuall the zuccini plants are eaten and killed by a little orange bug by the end of June, but this year the bugs didn't arrive until just recently, so I had my best ever zuccini harvest. Now if only the damn eggplants will fruit I will be able to can gallons of ratatoille.

Defending the garden

Before moving to the Japanese countryside, my experiences of gardening were all in the desert, so learning to grow food in Japan has been a long learning period. One of the main differences between gardening in Arizona and in Japan is that there are few animals and bugs in the desert. Here in Japan it is a constant battle defending the garden against critters. I don't mind sharing,.... I expect to lose a certain percentage of a crop to other critters, but there are some greedy critters.

Caterpillars of the white butterfly (called Cabbage White in England) will consume all the brassica family, cabbages, cauliflower, brussel sprouts etc. Most Japanese gardeners will use pesticide, but for me growing brassicas under net works perfectly.

The only other bug that is a real problem is a little orange bugger that feeds on the leaves of squash plants. Pumpkins will usually recover, but every year my Zuccini plants have been completely eaten and killed by the orange bugs. Every version of organic pesticide I've tried has been completely useless, so I now grow zuccini under net also.

My village garden now has a metal fence around it. The village put it up recently around the rice paddies, and my garden is in the same piece of land as the paddies. The purpose of the fence is to keep wild boars out. Not sure how much damage boars do to rice paddies, but if they get into a garden they will dig up and eat all the sweet potatoes and as many pumpkins they can find.

Down in the riverside garden the ripening corn needs a net to protect it from the crows. They will sometimes eat tomatoes, peas, and other veggies, but they really love newly ripened corn.
The blue fence is to protect against a creature I never knew existed in Japan, the Coypu, or Nutria, sometimes known as Beaver Rat. It is originally from South America, but has spread around the world as people raised them for their fur. It likes to eat cornstalk.

In the bamboo grove next to the garden is a foxes den, and people say the foxes damage the gaedens when they dig around for food, but they have never given me any trouble.

Both gardens have moles, but again they have not caused enough trouble to worry about.

Both my gardens are too far from the edge of the forest for the monkeys to raid, but my neighbors are constantly losing food to them. They particularly like daikons and onions.

Umeboshi,... an acquired taste

Umeboshi, pickled plums, can most often be found in bentos, where a single plum is placed in the center of the rice to look like the Japanese flag.

After picking when ripe in June, the plums are mixed with salt and shiso leaves (to give the color) and packed with a weight on top.

Later the pickled plums are sun dried, like these of my neighbors in the photo above.

Actually Ume are not true plums, being closer to apricots.

Not fond of umeboshi myself, though umeboshi-flavored candy is OK.

Season of the Frog Part 2: Egrets

With the flooding of the paddies in late spring, there is an explosion of frogs. This has effects on other species in the vicinity, not the least of which is us gardeners. There are dozens of frogs in my garden, and as frogs eat insects, I'm quite happy about that.

Snakes come out from the forest and feast on the cornucopia of small frogs, and this afternoon I watched a flock of egrets come in for the feast. They don't mind vehicles driving by, but will up and fly away if a human gets within 100 metres.

The egret, related to and often seen with herons, can be found all over Japan, and in total there are 18 different species, but I'm not ornithologist enough to be able to tell which species these were,

In the streams that run through villages and urban areas, the herons and egrets are less skittish.

Another post on egrets

Down the river to the sea

A few weeks ago, before the onset of the rainy season and its attendant humidity, I took a little bike ride 20kms down the river to Gotsu.

The Gonokawa (Go River) is the longest river in West Japan, and is only 194 kms long. Now tamed by a single dam upstream at Hamahara, it is still a very pleasant river.

For most of its length there is a narrow ride running alongside the railway line, and a larger 2 lane road running along the opposite bank. The 10k from my village downstream to Kawahira is the only stretch that doesn't have the small road, so I cycled down the main road to the bridge at Kawahira.

There is not a lot of traffic, maybe one or two cars an hour, and just a few small settlements. Its not unusual to see troops of monkeys exploring the edge of the rail tracks.

Every few K there are Jizo altars, often looking the worst for wear, but still maintained by some of the locals.

Geologically speaking, the Go River is very young, and has yet to form an estuary or delta, but it does get a little wider and deeper as it turns the last horsheshoe bend before reaching Gotsu and the sea.

It was at this point that I discovered something quite remarkable, something I've driven past hundreds of times and not noticed. That's tomorrows blog.

Season of the frog

Starting in April, you can find frogs everywhere,...in the house, in the garden, on the roads.

I first come across the frogs in early spring when I start tilling the gardens. Unfortunately the tiller digs up some of the frogs that are hibernating about six inches underground, and more unfortunately it often injures them.

In late April, when the paddies are flooded in preparation for rice planting, the chorus really begins as thousands and thousands of frogs start their calling for mates. We live in a narrow, dead-ending, valley, and the noise at night is tremendous. My neighbor says that when his kids come back from the city for a visit they can't sleep at night because of the noise.

Saw this monster on our Katsuragi walk, in English a Bullfrog, in Japanese Ushikaeru, Cow frog. In earlier times they were eaten, but rarely nowadays.

The gardens in May

A couple of video, with commentary, on what's going on in my veggie gardens right now.



The first is from the riverside garden, and the second from the village garden

My back yard.

Nothing much exciting this post, just some views of my backyard! Actually we don't have a backyard, our house backs directly on to the mountainside and forest. The mountain is 254 metres high, and no-one knows if it has a name. There is supposed to be an old charcoal-makers hut on the top, but as yet I havent made it up that far.

There is a small graveyard/cemetery immediately behind the house, and this section is planted in cedar, but the rest of the mountain is mixed forest. I havent gone up there much simply because it is very steep. Its the domain of the bear, wild boar, monkey, badger, weasel, marten, civet, among others.

The mountain belongs to the local shrine, but in the years I've been here there has been no work done on or in the mountain, no thinning or planting etc. I plan on talking to the priest and some of the old guys in the village and see if I cant go in and tend the forest a little and get some firewood in the process.

Typical Japanese Landscape 20

The last 2 weeks has seen a flurry of activity in the countryside as rice paddies are prepared and flooded and the rice plants transplanted. At night the chorus of thousands of frogs echoes up the valley.

These photos were taken in my village.