A Day in The Life

Despite living the "relaxed" life in the country, I have no time to write a long post about all the things I want to write about. I tell myself that this is because we just got here and there is a lot of work to do -such as painting and scrubbing an drying futons, as well as getting back to people who have offered to help out with the kaya harvest.

Is "life in the country" really slower? I don't know. I guess it depends on what you make of it. Our rent is free, but we are spending money on making the place livable. Averaged out over one year, this may be equivalent to about 15,000 yen per month - so it is not free. It *is* however, much cheaper than an apartment in Tokyo.

The photos here are of our current life in our new really really really dirty home. It looks a bit worse that it really is because these photos were taken at night.When some sunlight is streaming in it look a bit better. Once the walls (which we spent two days cleaning and sanding to prepare for tonight's paint job) are white it will look much better.

We eat breakfast and lunch in our yard next to our pond used for melting snow in the winter (can't wait for that!). Dinner is usually in the dark, tatmi-less living room.

Tomorrow we will head to our field to plant the sprouts we started in Hakuba. Everyone says it would be to late to plant seeds in the first week of October, so we started while we were in Hakuba, but we are going to plant a row of seeds tomorrow as well - and then another next week - to see how they turn out. They are all winter veggies, of course, daikon, nozawana, carrot, hakusai, etc...