I live a rich and wonderful life.

The photos are from one of the breakfasts I recently enjoyed at home. It was Golden Week, and we had visitors from Tokyo and Chiba. While I joined them for a morning walk around the neighborhood, Tomoe whipped up an amazing breakfast.

When was the last time you had fresh-baked, no-sugar breakfast cakes? The green cakes are from our neighbor, who runs a bread shop in the village.

I have so many "projects" in my head. One of which is to make a photo/word display of some of my favorite people. The bread maker who made us these green treats would be one of them - as would his family. I remember a book by Shina Makoto called "Ima, kono hito ga suki". In it he wrote of random people in his life and what they ment to him.

It would be great to have as much time as "a writer" does...

This is the English portion from my new blog documenting the life of my silk-worms. The blog is in both English and Japanese.

Yesterday, the local grade-school teacher gave me a brood of kaiko (silk worm) eggs. Many of them had already hatched, but there are still some eggs left. The silkworms eat kuwa (mulberry) leaves, but I had no idea where to gather the leaves. This morning I awoke to find hundreds of hungry worms waiting for breakfast. Luckily, the sensei appeared at the door with a handful of kuwa leaves, and took me out to show me where to find them on my own.

Today's Silkworm Observation Report
Growth Stage：
Room Temperature：13.5 - 14 c　(however, we do not heat our home, so the night time temperatures must have been cooler)
Length：2.5mm
Weight：To small to weigh

Things I noticed： As I picked them up with tweezers, they were already spinning silk threads. I wonder if this is something they always do, or only something they do when they are surprised or afraid. If it is something they do constantly, they must have an enormous appetite. I have a lot of work ahead of me to gather enough leaves.

While I was looking at one under the magnifying glass, it committed suicide, leaping to its death from my finger in to the carpet. As much as I searched, I was not able to find him among the long fibers. Rest in peace Thomas (that was the name I had given him just before he jumped).

Well, our morning run turned into a hard morning bike ride (easier on my knees which will soon turn 34). What was supposed to be about an hour, turned into three. The the spring veggies within morning walk distance are, for the most part, too old now. Ride a bike to the end of the mountain road, however, and there is still snow and the sansai wild veggies there think that spring has just begun. This is our harvest today.

What you see here:

The first photo in this post is young warabi covered with ashes in order to remove the astringents. While some of the other Sansai are just about finished, this is just now coming out. We have an exciting week ahead of us.

One year worth of tsukushi buds (the flower of horsetail) for pest-control. Thanks to Tomoe's tireless research, we learned that tsukushi is not only delicious (Craig, if you are reading, that is one of the dishes you really liked), but it is also an effective insect replant. The only problem is that you have to find them when they are young and still have the pollen in them. Unfortunately, we did not know about their natural pest-control properties before, so when young tsukushi were abundant in our area, we ate them all for dinner.

Luckily, there was still a secret patch of pollen-filled tsukushi up in the higher altitudes, so we picked what we expect to be a year worth. (1kg - note, this is not enough to cover all of our plants for the entire year, but the same stuff should not be used all year long, and different seasons bring different pests, which call for different plants to control them)

The second photo shows the infertile part of the horsetail, called sugina in Japanese, and yomogi. The bottom photo is dandelion. These too are quite delicious as well, but in this case we picked them for use as a fungicide and to stave off diseases in our crops.

The red flower is Tsubaki (Camellia). This is also for insect control. Apparently, drying them and boiling them to be sprayed around your crops will keep the bugs at bay for a short time. It is said that tulips have the same effect, so we will be collecting tulips from our neighbors as they die, and planting some ourselves for use in the future.

As an aside, tulips are especially popular here because although we have three meters of snow, the ground never freezes, so unlike cold areas, tulip bulbs can be planted quite shallow, and they are eager to shoot out once the snow melts.

In addition to plants for natural pest and disease control, we also gathered lots of goodies to eat.

The photo above is tar-no-me -the buds of the Tara tree. These are excellent a tempura. Our neighbor cultivates these for sale (a great subject for another interesting post) and gives us his left-overs, but when we ate the wild ones it was quite different. Maybe it is just that we picked it ourselves, but somehow they tasted amazing. Tomoe claims that today's was the best lunch she has had all year.

There are other poisonous trees that look similar to tara, but don't have the spikes. These are urushi, or Japanese Sumac. Great for making lacquer, but not so great to touch (or eat!). Somewhere this year, Tomoe and I have both come into contact with urushi, and have itchy spots in various places on our bodies. It is supposed to spread, but we are lucky that so far it has remained in one spot.

In our soup, we had nemagari-dake bamboo shoots. (a type of sasa. These are just coming out now, and the mountain side is filled with these thin bamboo relatives. This is also what we used to make kanjiki snow shoes.

Peel the outer layer away to reveal the tender inside, boil it to remove to bitterness, and you have a sought after delicacy in Japan.

Zenmai (Japanese Royal Fern), is a staple sansai in this area. We have been collecting it for a month now, gradually moving higher in altitude, but still able to find some near our home. Most people around here have a field where they are cultivating the fern. It is a lot of work to dig out a wild zenmai fern and transplant it into a field, but with a lot of fertilizers, they can grow much larger than the wild natural version.

The problem with zenmai, is that you have to process it the same day you pick it, and processing is time consuming. First, you have to peel away all the fuzz on the outside. In the old days, this fuzz was used to stuff pillows and futons. Then, you have to separate the male from female, and pluck the heads off the male. Once everything is ready, you boil them (our neighbor is helping out in the photo above) and dry them in the sun, but have to massage them every hour or so to make sure that they do not get too tough and stringy. Its a big challenge every time we see a patch of wild zenmai - we have to decide if we have time to take care of them that day, or if we should leave them until next time - when it may be too late.

There are two more vegetables we harvested which I did not get good close-ups of this time. The first, the big green pile in the upper right corner of our sansai harvest pile is fuki. Most people know this as "the taste of spring", and its buds are eaten as tempura. The ones we picked are considered to be a little too old, but it is delicious none the less. In the areas where snow still remains, there were a few buds which Tomoe did include in her lunch yesterday.

Finally, there is a small plant in the lower left corner. I will have a close up soon enough, but this is itadori (Japanese knotweed) - a plant that taste very much like rhubarb. Rhubarb is hard to come by in Japan, and I was happy to find this. After some experimenting, I have now learned how to remove all the fibrous materials that make it inedible, and leave only the oh-so-sweet sour flesh. Yesterday I made some "rhubarb" sauce (it is not actually in the rhubarb family), and it is amazing. I can't wait to gather all that I can find in the next few weeks. The Japanese also eat this, but for some reason with salt instead of sugar. Tomoe's theory is that this oversight is due to the lack of availability of sugar in the old days. I just think Japanese people are crazy.

Finally, the photos below show some of the beans Tomoe has been spouting in the hopes of growing our own this year. Anybody know what they are?

From reading my blog and looking at the photos one may get the impression that life here is all happy and cheery - that we are living in a state of bliss, every day a new and wondrous happening.

Not so. In fact, I have gained a bit of weight since getting here (I am not allowed to mention if Tomoe has or not). While it is true that every day has its amazing moments, I also can not remember feeling so much stress.

Part of this is about finances of course. We are on our own here, responsible to creating our own work. Even if we want to go back to the stress-free (at least that's how it seems now) life of an employee, there is not an employer to be found in the village. No, whatever happens, we have to make it happen ourselves. We are fine for a little while, but just getting out of Tokyo was a drain on my bank account, causing much more anxiety than I know it should.

Part of the stress is just having an enormous to-do list. This is nothing new - I have always had too many things to do and too little time, but the difference now is that almost everything on the to-do list is something new for us. Whether it is trying to plan an event in a town we only just moved to eight months ago, or trying to grow rice shoots in a non-conventional way, and having all the neighbors (with full support) tell us "It's not going to grow".

We don't know what to plant where or when. Our neighbors have started planting sprouts that they made in their greenhouse, but have no greenhouse, and we are starting from seeds. Our neighbors use plastic black sheets, while we are using grass, straw, leaves, and other mulch gathered from the mountains. Our neighbors use chemical fertilizers while we are planning to use Tomoe's home-grown organic version. We have no one to look at and learn from in these respects, yet we find ourselves looking around and judging our success based on the size of our beans compared to Shimada's

All this anxiety and stress and just plain not knowing what to do is creating a fierce feedback loop. We wake up filled with doubts and it makes us want to stay in bed. We stay in bed and miss our chance for a morning jog. Knowing that we need more exercise, but were too lazy to do it leads to more anxiety about not "getting done what we want to get done". More anxiety causes us to panic, narrowing our view and decreasing our creativeness. A lack of creativeness magnifies all the problems we are facing for the first time with no answers. Not being able to find an answer decreases our confidence and causes us to procrastinate or "research more". Procrastination means we get little done and we go to bed feeling like losers, and then it starts all over again.

We talked a lot today about how to break out of this. We have decided on two courses of action for tomorrow. 1) We will make sure to get up at 5am for a jog or power-walk into the mountains. Not only will the exercise do wonders, but it will allow me to cross one thing off my to-do list and start the day on a good note. 2) We will take a pile of garbage to the local dump. Something so simple, yet that pile has been sitting there for months as we always felt it would be more productive to work on OneLife, or farming, or something more immediate. The hope is that by picking such an easy task, and one that causes me anxiety every time I see the pile still sitting there, we can knock one more thing off of our to-do list, and there is little anxiety about failure, because we KNOW how to drive to the dump, and the result is immediate.

I'm also going back to the "positivity journal" I used to keep - where I take time each day to write down three good things that happened that day, tracking my negative thoughts and anxieties and consciously asking myself if the outcome of failure would really be as bad as all that, and finally, trying to force myself to take a few moments to imagine the life that I want.

This all helped me get out of Tokyo. The problem I think, is that I somewhat looked at simply getting out here to a place we love as "success", "the end" - and somehow forgot that I still have 60 more years left to live.

Stress levels are running high recently as some important deadlines draw near. We have planted about 1/3 of our fields, having spent a lot of time just getting them ready to use. Some of them were abandoned and overcome with weeds, others were tended by our elderly neighbor who was not able to remove all the big rocks which took us a few days to dig out.

We have so much to do, and so little time. Everything here changes so quickly. I had hoped to get photos to "document" the year, but if I miss even one day, the scenery has changed. I completely missed any photo-op with the cherry blossoms, and the budding of the leaves - when everything is a different shade of green - jumped up on me and is now finished.

We have finally been getting the hang of waking up early, taking morning jogs or walks at 6am (although the sun comes up at 4:30). Along the way we pick bag-fulls of fresh wild vegetables growing on the mountain sides. It is addictive. We know we have other work to do, and it is getting late, but we just cant stop picking as long as there are any in sight - and there always are.

Add to that the fact that every turn in the road is so beautiful that I end up taking photo after photo, and you can understand why ours is the only rice-paddy in the village that is not ready to be planted and the neighbors are all talking.

I have a good feeling that you may be enjoying many more posts here, and that people who email me may enjoy more timely replies.

Using the computer is FUN again! I finally broke down, and against my better eco (and budgetary) judgment, I bought a new, bottom of the line Dell PC laptop. (Mac rant follows. Note: I am not a windows lover, or a mac hater. I am just interested in having my needs met.) I had just grown so sick of the slow response of my iBook. When I first bought it, other mac lovers said "don't worry, you'll get used to the slowness. And other things make up for it." Well, I never got used to it, and the only thing that used to make up for it was having a Unix environment for my programming jobs. Well, I don't program anymore. Now I just want a computer that is easy to type in - one where the letters show up at the same time as I type it. As I try to spend less time at the computer, and more time in the field, I want a computer that can copy and paste in less than 5 seconds. Using Tomoe's computer sometimes only made me more discontent with my own.

I still have to use the iBook for Photoshop, but it is a relief not to have to close it every time I want to write an email in Gmail, which has always run like a snail compared to what Outlook used to be like when I worked in an office.

I don't have Outlook this time, as decline to purchase MS Office, opting for open-office (can't wait to see how it works). To keep it within my non-existent budget I got the bare minimum. It set me back 70,000 yen (how much is that new mac again?), but I figure that my slow replies to potential customers (because I hate using the iBook) cost me much more than that, and my inability to keep up the blog and OneLife website (because I hate using the iBook) has cost even more. It would have taken me twice as long to write this with BBEdit, and now I have my lover once again - UltraEdit.

On top of all of this, there is also the practicality of having a lap-top that actually works like a lap-top. No more external monitor or keyboard to lug downstairs (full disclosure - the most recent external-keyboard I was using crapped out because I spilled water on it). This new computer also has wireless - something I declined when purchasing my iBook because it was already way to expensive. As expected, I never really needed wireless until just about 3 months ago - but by then the iBook monitor had long-since crapped out and wireless would do me no good anyway because my computer has not been portable since 2005.

Anyway, the point is, expect more (and wordier) posts from now on.

The cherry blossoms have come and are almost gone. One interesting thing I have noticed is that people here don't pay much attention to the blossoms. I never saw anyone sitting under a tree drinking. Maybe this is because this is the time when EVERYTHING happens. It is not just the cherry trees, or the mizubasho, but also all the wild spring vegetables, and the new leaves on the trees. The snow is melting and the river is running high. The fish are out and its time for bear hunting. The fields need tilling, there is plenty of cow manure to be spread and some planting has begun. There are ditches to be cleared and gas to be bought (the price goes up 30 yen per liter tomorrow).

Who has time for cherry blossoms when there is so much spring happening?

In an effort not to be out-done by my sister's recent announcement, Tomoe and I went out and adopted an orphan from China yesterday. Needles to say, it had been a busy night. We are leaving her with the neighbors for a few days while we go on our first three-day hiking trip of the season tomorrow.

I know she knew how much I loved her. I know she was happy that I was living the life I wanted to. Still, I wish I would have shared more with her, expressed more to her.

I remember the feeling of her hands on my cheeks as I tried to wriggle away in embarrassment. What a stupid reason. What a wonderful memory.

I have never wanted to just hug someone more than I want to hug her now.

Now we know why Craig hates cats.

Yes, it's been quite a while since posting. In the mean time, the vice-mayor won the election to became the new mayor. My cousin was here to witness the historic occasion and hear the announcement over the village-wide intercom.

In addition to local politics, he also witnessed us getting ready for our first year of farming. He witnessed us buying a wheelbarrow, some gloves and hoes, and even Tomoe trying on some very stylish old-lady gardening caps. In the end, I think she decided to get the old fashioned umbrella hat, like the one our neighbor is wearing in the photo below.

Craig was a hit with the ladies

As always, I am stressing out about too much to do, and as always, getting nothing done. We have such big plans for the farming, the chicken keeping, and also One Life projects, not to mention tours already booked and reporters coming. While Craig (mycousin, and incidentally, the name of our new fish) was here helping us to dig out rocks from an unused patch of land in our yard, Saito-san, from the village office, stopped by with a group of reporters from a large Nagoya newspaper. We had known about it, but completely forgotten. They were happy to get some candid shots of us in our real life.

Craig patiently waits while Tomoe picks the night's dinner from along the road-side, and not even one complaint as we put him to work "burning stuff" in the yard.

I feel a bit bad that we did not give Craig the type of service that we give customers, show him all the great little places in the village, but I am happy that he got to see our real life in all its glory (or lack there-of). He is about 7? years older than me. When we were young we used to play together at grandma's house (or so he tells me), and I remember regular trips to their home a few hours away. The trips I remember, though, were when he was a bit older and often hanging out with his school friends elsewhere. I do remember lots of ping-pong, some b-ball in their front yard, and as I write about it, the very distinct (in a good way) smell of their house. As we got older, we apparently saw each other less, only major holidays. I remember lots of board-games and some card-games - one of my favorite parts of those holiday visits. I remember staying in his room (or was it Andy's - at the end of the hall past the kitchen and bathroom)? I remember spending a lot of time playing a game on theirCommodore 64 in the basement (alone). Though I forget the name of the game, I clearly remember the line "Stay a while. Stay FOREVER..." and the sound of my guys feet as he runs down a metal corridor.

While Craig was here, helping us out, the hoe he was using (Tomoe's brand-new hoe, which she had yet to try out) got mangled on some rocks. She freaked out a bit, but Craig fixed the hoe. This, however, reminded me of the time we threw darts at a wall-sized mural of deer in a forest in his dad's basement - one of my worst memories from their house, as it is the only one I can think of when his dad got mad at us.

We had a great ride in the morning, but Craig expresses his disappointment when I decide to turn back after climbing a big hill. Looking at the clock, I realized that to push on would have us getting home tired and late, maybe even missing the hot bath. My over-ambitiousness is one of the reasons Tomoe often declines to follow me when I say "It'll be fun!" I didn't want to make the same mistake with Craig.

Seeing him also gave me a great chance to remember grandma. Though we did not talk a whole lot about her, she came up and remembering her gave me the best feeling I had all week.

Craig, the water-systems engineer, shows us how to (try to) put together two pipes.

Of course, all these memories are made a bit more valuable by the fact that I have gotten a chance to get to re-know Craig a bit more, and he us. It was great to hear about his family, and his job and just how he spends his days. I am a rather shy guy, and even with family, large groups shut me up. This is the first time to have so much time one-on-one with him. Though I was still nervous (I used to be tremendously nervous about meeting Craig and hisbother Andy - they were always so much cooler than we were), I was more nervous this time about making his detour (he was in Japan on business) worth his money, effort and time away from his daughter.

Helping to create fertilize from Tomoe's secret recipe required gathering clean water and lots of mixing.

While I wish I could have shown him more, we still got in some good bike-rides, lots of hot-baths, some working in the field,fertilizer-making (photos above), lots of Tomoe's home-cooking (while I had a desire to show him "traditional" Japanese food at the restaurants, we also wanted to give him a taste of our life, so opted for eating at home). He was here on three of the most beautiful days this year - completely clear skies, the cherry blossomsliterally came into bloom as he was here, and the light-green leaves are starting to bud. Every day was different, and even today we can see anoticeable change over yesterday. I would have liked to let him try some high-class sake, but was happy that he enjoyed drinking cheap potato booze ( shochu) with me.

As a memorial to his stay here, we have named our new fish Craig. We have been keeping a rescued gold-fish (Lil - named after Lil, whose photos I was looking at when we decided to name her), in a bottle all winter, waiting for the weather to warm and to release her into the pond. We released her when Craig was here, checking her regularly, once finding her struggling for her life as the current pressed her against a grate covering the pond out-flow. With Craig's (the cousin, not the fish) help, we fixed that problem, drank lots of potato booze, and went to bed. The next morning I went to check on Lil but could not find her. Craig (a pond-fish expert) did a search as well and caught something I had totally missed - a small trout or iwanalurking in the shadows. We had no idea he was there, nor when/how he arrived. He must have been washed down from someoneelse's pond (if it is trout), or directly from the river (if iwana), and somehow, miraculously, made its way through the narrow tube into our pond. He is big enough to have eaten Lil, so that is what we assume happened. Sorry Lil. Welcome Craig! At least Lil's last day wasrelatively free, compared to the 4-liter bottle we had been keeping her in.

In the backyard. Craig (the fish) is in that pond somewhere.

NOTE: This post is all over the place, starting with talk about a flower, and somehow ending up with my frustrations about not having a vote here. If the flower part bores you, please skip ahead.

Last week we joined a group of people from our neighborhood on a little trip, organized by Fuminari-san author of a great blog about Sakae Mura (Japanese). The goal was to see the Mizubasho plants that are just beginning to bloom in the snow-melt marshes up the mountain.

It was a great turnout, just over 20-some people. Everyone piled into the back of a k-truck (the little white pickups that EVERYONE has in the countryside of Japan), and drove for about 5 minutes up the road behind our house, into the mountains. Clearing of the roads had begun a few weeks ago as well, to give people access to their fields which are back there, still covered in up to a meter of snow. Eventually we came to the end of the cleared road so everyone set out on foot a few hundred meters over snow. Some of them claimed that it was the furthest they had walked in years, and the next day talked of sore legs. Considering that they appear so active, always outside working in their fields or constructing something, it was a bit surprising. On the other hand, when we consider the fact that everyone but the oldest of the old bent-over ladies drives to the bath instead of walking the five minutes, it makes sense.

The mizubasho were just starting to pop up, but much of their habitat is still covered with snow. In a week or so the flowers will be bigger and taller, and there will be a lot more of them. Some areas in Nagano have mizubasho habitat conveniently located next to the highway. Each year thousands of people pile into buses and come from all over to see them. The bus pulls over for five minutes, people pile out, jostle their way through the crowd for a photo, and rush back so that they have enough time to figure out which of thebuses is the one they came on.

Our mizubasho spot is a bit less popular. I have not yet seen any strangers go by our house (one of the only two roads to the mizubasho), and there was little sign that anyone had been up there other than the plow-man, a farmer or two, and some hunters who had divided amongst them their prize - a wild boar - evident only by a large greasy area in the snow, and a single leg.

We (the villagers) have been trying to come up with ideas to get more people to come here to see the flowers, and managed recently to get a grant to start a preservation project. Of course, having busloads of camera toting passer-bys is something that nobody wants. We have to find a way to appeal to high-quality visitors. People willing to go a little bit out of the way to see the flower, and also willing to spend some time in the village getting to know it (and dropping some cash). We already have congested roads in Akiyama in fall as JTB (Japan Tourism B...?) led bus tours pass through on their way from Shiga-kogen. It's great that people enjoy the amazing scenery, but often those buses do not even stop, so in effect, they are deterring would-be customers for the local inns - people willing to chill and relax and really enjoy the beauty.

How to increase tourism is one of the "hot" topics of the upcoming local election. They look at it as a way to create jobs so young people can come here. Despite our (Tomoe and I) stake in tourism, I wish there was less emphasis on this as something to be relied on to "save" the village from the problems of aging population and jobless young people. If we focus ontourism , though, we would turn into another Disney type tourist town in Japan that has no real "self". The way I see it, working on promoting and enhancing the great things about this village will inevitably lead to more people taking an interest. And those people will not be the drive-by bus tourists - they will be the people who are interesting in seeing a real village that is open to, but not dependant on their visiting.

Yesterday, one neighbor surprised me with her idea to stop all road and utility development beyond a certain point. Anyone is welcome to go back there and build a house and live, but they have to go by foot, or else build and maintain a dirt road. They must get their water from the mountains, and their electricity from the wind or streams. I think that would great! Of course, that is just my bias towards wanting people to move here who are more like me. Another thing my biased view calls for, in order to attract young people here to do something other than tourism, is to get just a few farmers here moving over to more ecologically sustainable farming methods. If it gets out through the grapevine that Sakae Mura supports organic farmers, and that there are already people here who share that ethic and are taking up the challenge, it will only draw more people who share that ethic. I am not talking about a hippy commune. I'm talking about people who are trying to make a business to support their life, and still keep it in line with their values, finding a place that fits those values, with people who share those values.

When asked about their plans to promote young people coming here to farm, both mayoral candidates pretty much dismissed it by saying that farming in this region is too difficult to be competitive. Cheap rice from China and the US means that any farmer here has to have a second or third job to afford life.

My (dreamy?) response: Find people who share the "hippy" ethic, and living life costs less - less expensive chemical fertilizers and pesticides, less waste, less personal shopping, etc. AND... AND... build an image and a brand of Sakae Village as a producer of high-quality, organic, local foods. Japanese people are very and increasingly sensitive about where their food comes from - way more than people in the US. People do pay more for high-quality food, and yet, it is still within the reach of people as poor as Tomoe and I.

Another big issue is that as young couples move out, there are less children to fill the schools. The school in Akiyama will be closed soon as the last of the students graduate. Yet, I can not imagine that there are not high-quality teachers out there who would jump at the chance to work in this environment. What real teachers like to have 30+/1 ratio? While it may not be possible to repopulate the school so quickly, there must also be idealistic parents who feel trapped in their urban life, but want their kids to beeducated in a better way, in a better environment. We have that environment, and should be able to get great teachers. We also have capacity to house students (what better way to create jobs and income). AND AND AND... if the schools can survive, it means that native Sakae young people need not leave to attend high-school, and maybe, just maybe, they will stick around.

Anyway, this was just supposed to be a post about the mizubasho flower, but it turned into a vent of my frustrations at not having a vote in this upcoming election (though truth be told, as is often the case, neither candidate as said anything that makes me say YES!). Still, until I moved here, having or not having voting rights where I lived meant little to me. For the first time, I feel a connection to, and pride in, my place, and for the first time I feel that my voice just might make a difference.

I guess I spend too much time on jealous rants, and not enough working. Golden Week holiday has been creeping up on us and we still have not started promoting our little Japan Countryside Farming & Volunteer Project. If there is still anyone out there who has not decided what to do yet for the four-day-weekend, check out what we have planned and see if its something you or someone you know may be interested in.

Spend your Golden Week experiencing real life in the Japanese countryside. Participants in this program will not be treated like tourists. You will work along-side our neighbors as they tend to their fields and daily chores. You will eat what they eat, bath where they bath, and sleep in the same bed that they sleep in.

In addition to the farming, and volunteer project (fixing an irrigation ditch in the mountains), you will have lots of free time to explore the area on foot or by bike. Its getting greener day by day, so it should be be amazing.

We had been planning this for a few months now, but just getting our neighbors to commit takes a long time. When we first asked what people will be doing with their fields, all we got were a lot of hums and haws, and that sound Japanese people make by sucking air through clentched teeth to indicate that they are trying to avoid saying "no" or "I don't know". Finally, plans are moving and we have enough support that we feel comfortable promoting it. Another fire under our butt is that there is another magazine coming to write an article about it, so we have to find a few more participants so we don't look too lonely.

This program is open to anyone, Japanese or foreigner. No Japanese language skills needed. Hopefully there will be some other bi-lingual participants though, to help us keep communication flowing smoothly.

Some of the photos are from this morning. I went out in hopes of finding some people working in their fields, but the place was pretty dead, with the exception of the campaign trucks promoting Shimada-san, who is running for mayor against... Shimada-san in the firsst election in over twenty years.

Yesterday we had some visitors from Orange Page magazine - a very popular magazine for young women in Japan. Everyone we visited during the day - from the amazing chef at the local ryokan inn, to our neighbor who helped us with some light farm work - had been a somewhat regular reader fo the magazine. It is also the magazine where Tomoe first encountered macrobiotic cooking - a discovery that changed her life.

The column they were interviewing Tomoe for is called "Watapuro", short for "watashi Program", which is about women taking charge of their life and dreams.

They wanted to do as many of the activities we offer, but only had one day - AND they wanted to have a few hours for an interview with Tomoe. Needless to say, trying ALL of the activities we offer in just a few hours is impossible, but we were able to squeeze in a trip to the local hot-spring the night before, a visit to the local geta (wooden sandal) maker, time for an interview in our living room, a traditional hand-made, macrobiotic meal with lots of goodies brought over by our neighbor, a trip to the mizubasho (a rare flower) in the mountains, sledding, biking, and a little farming.

I give them a lot of credit in that they were very polite in the way that they dismissed me, and any part I may have had in encouraging Tomoe to take charge of her life and dreams. At one point late in the interview, however, they acknowledged the fact that that the life we live now is neither something that I could do alone, nor something that Tomoe could do alone. The reason I mention this now, is that I think that if they give an image to their readers that it is somehow "easy" to do what Tomoe did, it is unfair to the reader. Making the decision to change our lives took both of us and it was (and still is) the source of a LOT of fighting. I know the idea of "doing it on her own" probably sells magazines to make individuals and women feel empowered (anadmirable goal), and it may work in some people's cases, but the truth of the matter for us, is that we rely a lot (too much?) on each other to make this life work. This is not about female empowerment, this is about working on dreams - female or male, I don't see a difference.

This tuches on another topic that I had not intended to write about, but I guess this is as good of a time as any. - Living as a foreigner, trying to make a business in this village.

This is a very interesting topic which I hope I can do justice to in this short space. On the one hand, this is a very male-centric village in terms of official policy. People naturally assume that I am the head of the house. They refer to us as "Kevin-tachi" tachi is a plural suffix, so basically they are saying "the Kevin's". This *****really******* pisses Tomoe off when they speak as if everything we are planning or doing is based on only my ideas. Sometimes to the point that we can't even do work for a day or tow until she cools off.

On the other hand, this is also a very Japan-centric place. Although they refer to us as "Kevin-tachi", they usually choose to speak only with Tomoe. This really pissed me off. Even if we are sitting in front of them together, they will direct any conversation at Tomoe and act as if I do not exist - unless they want to practice English or have something to say related to my "gaijin-ness".

Still, this is something I am used to after ten years in Japan, and something that I am willing to accept, so long as the projects we are working on happen. It hurts my pride to have everyone around us think that I am just the "bike and hike guy", rather than someone who is activly running the business, but it is also a relief sometimes that I can just let Tomoe deal with all the crap that I don't want to deal with.

Granted, this is not only the fault of the villagers. It takes me much longer to read any local pamphlets, or fill out any paper-work. When it comes to farming or anything else related to this area, Tomoe is BY FAR ahead of the ball. I can read all the English language books I want about farming in Maine, but there is a big difference. There are no English language books (not to mention all the magazines) with the depth of information as those written about farming in this region. It takes me two days to read what Tomoe can read in an hour or two. She is definitely the holder of all the information. Combine that with the fact that she is the one that neighbors will talk to first (where all the local information comes in), and I become nothing more than a decoration on the wall.

Still, I comfort myself with the knowledge that our main income currently comes from foreign visitors - a result of our English website and my planning from a foreign perspective combined with Tomoe's cultural knowledge and research. I am not indispensable, and all the background work and planning is a combined effort. Even when the local office folks talk to us (Tomoe) about how great it is to bring foreigners, I know they know that it would not happen without me. But it would be nice to know that the people around me know that too.

On to a lighter topic...

Despite making sure to put away my own camera every time she had hers pointed at me, I am sure that I really annoyed the magazine photographer. I am always fascinated by the photography aspect of these increasingly recent photo shoots, and it inspired me to get my own camera out when I probably wouldn't. I tried to stay out of her way, but I can only count on my own pissed-offish-ness when I am taking an otherwise great photo ruined by one of the people in the photo holding a camera to their face.

At one point, she just gave up and took a photo of me taking a photo of the others.

we are gearing up for the summer. This is a photo of our rice fields. They will produce more than we can eat unless the river floods (as often happens) and wipes us out.

Rice growing is a cooperative process here. Everyone shares the tractors and planters, as well as the rice-shoots. Yesterday we helped in the preparation. The plastic trays in the photo above will house all the baby rice plants, and wood beams in the photo below will be used to control the flow of water for growing the rice shoots. Once the shoots reach a certain stage, farmers from the area will begin transplanting them into their respective fields.