Eco photo » F1N

In the field

Jonathan — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:34:00 +0000

Tabuchi is one of the japanese people I wwoofed at. This was in the end of february. I had some holiday from school and it was still a bit cold outside. Although this day we would harvest some beans that was leftover from last autumn. The beans he grew was soybeans. There were several type of soybeans he grew, at least four different types.

When we think about eating food we think about the stuff that’s possible to buy in a supermarket. But when coming to more rural areas where they actually grow food there is this huge plethora of vegetables that you’ve never even heard of. Isn’t that curious? Are we heading towards a society with less diversity in our food culture?

Branching towards water

Jonathan — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 16:03:30 +0000

A visit to the world of trees. This reminds me of interconnectedness there is everywhere. The circular flows that exist everywhere in nature. The water is needed by the tree but sooner or later it is returned to be used by someone else.

We, humans, seem to have a habit of breaking these cycles. Did you know for instance that a pair of jeans use up 10 000 litres of water to produce? If those jeans are produced in a country where water is a scarcity and moved to another country that country’s water cycle is broken and crops and other necessities would suffer. Life is indeed intricate

Old man

Jonathan — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 17:00:20 +0000

As I mentioned in another post I was Wwoofing close to Nara and that’s the place where I met this old man. I never understood what he talked about, he had the most incomprehensible dialect I’ve ever heard. It didn’t really help that he was also murmurring and speaking in a quite low voice.

He had been living in that village that I visited for all his life as I understood it. Now the village was but a shadow of its former self. Although the people I lived at moved there to become farmers, but that’s a rare thing. Most of Japan is urban, in fact 1/3 of all the people in Japan live in Tokyo and 78 % of all people live in urban areas.

Whenever you go to more rural areas you see these old people with stories to tell. Albeit in this case and in many other cases I wouldn’t be able to understand them because they speak too difficult. Which is really a shame. I bet they have some good stories to tell.

Kitchen slippers

Jonathan — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:00:25 +0000

In Japan it’s a custom to always wear slippers whenever you come inside, so as soon as you entered the house you were met with a line-up of slippers and an earthy floor. It wasn’t disgusting at all, but felt very natural the upside is of course you didn’t need to vacuum anything at all except for an occasional sweeping with a broom.

When you entered deeper into the house you stepped up from the floor made of earth to a plateau made of wood and then entered the living room where the dinners were held. So in this house the only place you actually used your slippers was the kitchen area with the earthy floor. But it’s kind of refreshing to have the opportunity to feel the earth to your feet in the morning.

Traditional dinner in Japan

Jonathan — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:42:41 +0000

I was digging through my archive today and found a couple of photos from my visit in Japan. What I remember most fondly was the visit to a WWOOF (world wide on organic farms) farm. In total I stayed there for two weeks. This is from one of the dinners we had there.

It was in february and still cold, so everyone was huddling under the kotatsu, a type of low table with heating under it. I loved sitting on the floor huddling there. What also amazes me is that kind of invention encourages company and talking with the people you live with. At the same time you can keep the other parts of the house cold and thus avoid wasting energy. However traditional japanese houses are very poorly isolated, but that is an entirely different story…