G-g-golden Week!

Lest my dear readers think that I spend all my time toiling on my plot to grow fruit and vegetables, I present this little photo report of our Golden Week visit to the mother-in-law's. Belying its name, "Golden Week" is possibly one of the stupidest national vacations imaginable since it includes two business and school days, rendering it useless for serious vacationing. However, we make the most of the hand dealt us, and try not to fume too much when the man on NHK news declares that we are entering the 'Ogata Renkyu' -- the Big Collection of Days Off, Interspersed For No Good Reason with Days On.

Anyways, we got in our old car and drove to Matsuno on the border with Kochi Prefecture. There isn't much in Matsuno except rice fields, running water, dogs, monkeys, an onsen, a sake brewery, an aquarium featuring river fish, a farmer's market, and a very useful service whereby loudspeakers play a tape of 'physical jerks' at 6:00 am. Yes, that's really 6:00 am, when one generally hopes to be asleep. However, with help from the products of the sake brewery, one usually manages to sleep right through the physical jerks by the second morning.

The highlight of my trip this time was a visit to Nametoko Gorge, about 20 minutes by car from Matsuno. I went by myself this time, because apparently, on previous occasions, I’d made myself obnoxious saying things like, "Do you think we could make it to the next bend in the river before turning back?", and "One day, I'd really like to go right to the top", and "Oh, for Christ's sake, stop moaning everyone!"

Nametoko was a riot of colour. Mostly greens and browns in fact, but with some interesting, unseasonal red.

Some effort had been made to Shinto-ize the absolutely enormous rocks, but this petered out the further the pathway traveled from the carpark.

Where the Shinto stopped, the informal stupas started.

The fairly small river that runs through the gorge has cut some fantastic shapes out of the rocks. This little cove is often full of little children swimming in the summer, but it was too cold for that in May.


I was fascinated by the weathering on these rocks, but I'll understand if you're not particularly impressed. Being there and seeing how the hollow of leaves had left their stain on the rock told a compelling story of the Passage of Time.


I took a side route marked "Bad Path" that went straight up the side of the gorge to a waterfall that we've never visited before. Other than being steep and giving no indication really of where it was going, the path was superior in many ways to some that I've followed in life.

The trees along the way were certainly spectacular. This variety stood out in the sunlight like a streak of lightning.

The waterfall that the Bad Path led to was this huge wall of stone that the water ran down every which way. Somehow, most of it managed to pool at the bottom again to continue on its way.





The meandering path taken by the waters creates environments that appeal to certain forms of life that we don't generally run into in the normal course of things.


I was taken aback to hear what I thought was the distant barking of dogs. For a moment, I thought I might find myself in the middle of a boar hunt. But when I focused my ears, I realized that the sounds were much closer, and the whole bank of rock I found myself in was populated with no see 'um frogs hiding in the dripping wet cracks. My mobile phone video doesn't really do them justice.

The trees were in a magnificent state of confusion. Many seemed to be refusing to die in spite of calamities like being knocked over at 90 degree angles, finding themselves atop huge rocks without any soil for yards around, being crushed under fallen boulders and logs that actually succumbed, or being split and twisted by some unrecorded event in the 70s.

River of moss and stones

This tree, somebody had painted with great care.

If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you

Nietzsche might have said, "If you gaze into a giant rock, about 25 meters across and maybe more, the giant rock also gazes into you". The phrase doesn't have quite the same ring to it, but the effect of the gazing is, I think, much the same.

Rooting success, actually

Not so long ago, I declared that my attempt at propagation had ended in failure. Not so fast! Although the leaves fell off everything and the twigs looked thoroughly dead, there was in fact life on the inside. (Well, in some of the twigs anyway.)

Four out of six of the wolfberries rooted, and one out of three blackberries survived. The boxwood and peach cuttings all died. Now I'm going to have to think carefully where to plant these little babies. Things are getting a bit crowded around here.

Flowers and fruits in season

The almond that was seen flowering robustly in March has now produced a little crop of fruit, at least a couple of which look promisingly large, even allowing for a certain amount of skin on the outside. This is a self-fertile variety, and it gets good sun for most of the day. Since the missus has developed a penchant for baking with almond powder recently, I can't help thinking that we're pretty much all set.

The big one

The 'Handkerchief Tree' has not been idle either. I was worried for the whole winter that it might be dead, in spite of my careful attention every night of the summer with the watering can. But after putting forth leaves, it promptly flowered, with the exactly four of the rather ridiculous-looking blossoms from which it takes its name.

I put the heads of last year's poppies in the compost which I then spread here and there in the garden and veg plot. Obviously my compost didn't get hot enough to kill seeds, because here are the poppies again this year, everywhere that I put down compost -- including in close embrace with one of the citrus trees which is also flowering.

These are a variety known as 'peony poppies', for a rather obvious reason. The whole business of flowering appears to happen in time lapse with these plants. Magnificent, they are. I'm tempted to use some of the seeds to make these tasty-looking Central European pastries, although the quantities of the seeds available may not be quite be sufficient.

Neem oil

Neem seedlings appeared in garden shops a few years back, advertised as having remarkable insect repellent properties when mashed up and used as a spray. I can't remember the details of the process, but I had my doubts that I'd ever be bothered to try it. However, I bought a couple of seedlings out of curiosity, and both died with the autumn cold.

Recently however, I read that neem oil 'may be' effective in treating powdery mildew on wolfberry plants. My wolfberries put out some very pretty green leaves this spring, many of which were promptly affected by this dusty mildew which makes the leaves shrivel and fall off. I also noticed legions of sex-crazed leaf-beetles copulating all over the shrubs, which means their horrible turd-coated offspring will soon be eating what leaves the mildew spares. I wondered if neem spray would solve both problems.

Powdery mildew on wolfberry leaves

So I found a place that sells sprays, Ide Shokai, and bought three bottles of spray. They recommend spraying every 3-4 days. I tried spraying the tops of the broad beans that were invisible for green fly, and the spray made them drop off with almost comical alacrity. Then I sprayed four wolfberry bushes, focusing especially on the mildewed parts.

Greenfly on broad beans

But I realized that already, one of the three bottles was half empty. At a rate of every 3-4 days, this method is not going to be economically (or environmentally) sustainable, however well it may work. As a slight application of scepticism, I tried spraying greenfly with plain water, and lo! they dropped off with exactly the same alacrity. It remains to be seen if the neem will actually suppress the mildew. I have tried milk and water spray in a 3-7 mix which is supposed to work, but my testing wasn't rigorous enough to tell. I could try some slightly scientific tests to see what actually works. The milk option would surely be cheaper if it actually has any effect.

Another very tempting option is just to do nothing and see if everything is still tolerably productive...

More car talk

Today we went looking for cars again, and this time we test-drove a Subaru Impreza, a Toyota Prius, and the Honda Fit again. It looks like we're going to have a Fit (ha ha).

The Subaru Impreza is quite nice to drive, but we weren't very imprezzed by its declared fuel economy, nor by its price (about 1.9 mil. yen). The new tax breaks for 'eco cars' apply to the Impreza, but they don't result in spectacular savings. The Impreza shown in this rather pointless snap also had the new car smell at a level that most normal people would find alarming, and which caused the young master to hold his breath (and mysteriously expostulate on the chemical stink at the same time).

The Toyota Prius we drove was the highest grade of the current version, and it's a very nice car in many ways. The quote for the soon-to-be announced EX version was 2 mil. yen as near as dammit, although sundry desirable maintenance offerings would push up the price a bit more. Also the missus wants to dazzle other drivers with diffusion headlights, and the pleasant but slightly robotic Toyota salesman didn't recommend installing a non-Toyota brand kit.

But we're not big drivers, and since the Fit is significantly cheaper, we figured we'd need to drive the Prius for ten years before it paid off the difference in price from savings in petrol. The 'Highway' version of the Fit is on offer for 1.5 mil. yen, and it comes with diffusion bling lights, a built-in ETC highway card system, and rain dissipating windows and mirrors. Also, it has the jolly, dodgem-car like handling typical of a kei-car which I really like. The new tax regime favours it almost as generously as a hybrid, making it something of a no-brainer. (Once one has become acquainted with the very unexceptional Fit body, one can't help noticing that there are an awful lot of other people with no brain too. They're all over the roads and supermarket carparks.)

It feels disappointing to be buying yet another petrol vehicle, particularly at this juncture when EVs are finally supposed to making a reappearance after an interval of about a century. But they're going to cost 4 mil. yen, and be largely unavailable anyway. While hybrids are attractive in many ways, they seem like technical overkill for limited driving. However, we take some solace from the fact that the new wheels should get about twice the mileage of the current set.

We also test drove a pair of Harleys* with extra small fuel tanks and little pig figurines on the disk brakes, but they had nowhere to put shopping and rice husks.


* This is not actually true.

Goya sun curtain

In the summer, my north-facing office window gets blasted by the westering sun from 4 o'clock until sunset. And pretty though it may be, it makes the room very hot. Having whittered on at length about the merits of passive solar architecture, when it came time to build our house we couldn't resist putting most of our windows on the north where the spectacular views are, so now we get the full effects of north winds in winter, and afternoon sun in summer.

This year however, I plan to take shelter behind a curtain of green leaves and weird knobbly gourds. Goya, or bitter gourd, grows prodigiously and climbs up anything. The gourds themselves are very good to eat too, principally with tofu. The plant itself does give off a rather pungent smell when agitated, so it will be interesting to see if the breeze wafts the funky scent of jungle weed into my room.

A couple of hooks in the deck and some more on the roof gable with some string between should provide an adequate support for the goya vine. If all goes well, the missus won't have to ask, "Do we have any goya?" She can see the lovely grotesque gourds a-dangling there when she goes out to hang out the washing.

When I was planning the growth pattern of my goya, I couldn't help humming the melody to Making Plans for Nigel. "Nigel's whole future is as good as sealed... di-doo-doo-doo"

I did think about growing another mokkobara (Rosa banksiae) in this spot as a permanent measure to protect from the sun and wind, but they like full sun in summer and winter. This place only gets full light from around now when the sun is high enough in the sky to reach over the house. If you know of a good plant (vine or evergreen tree) that would thrive in this situation, do let me know. Bamboo of some sort?

New green

Now this season is more like it! The garish cherry blossoms have all blown away, and the brilliant new green leaves are bursting out. And it's consistently warm. This morning as I was making the coffee, I glanced out of the window and did a sudden double-take when some bright-green thing in the middle distance caught my eye. It was the new leaves on one of my fig trees, with the early morning sun providing vivid backlighting.

When I go out to get the newspaper on days like this, the song Morning Has Broken always comes to mind, not that we have blackbirds here. We were forced to sing it at primary school and it annoyed me because it was just another part of our wishy-washy Church of England indoctrination ... until I realized that it's a damn good song about the real joys of mornings.




The bay tree in the outsize terracotta pot is also sprouting new leaves. One day soon it might outgrow the clover that quickly invaded.

Bling! Today's new poppy. These are springing up all over the place, and they look a bit goofy with the two halves of their green pods stuck to their petals -- like a bloke whose shirt tail hangs down behind his business jacket.

The pomegranate is bucking the trend by leafing out in red. The cabbagy-looking 'North Korean poppies' beneath it should be flowering soon. In the background, the blueberries are putting out very pale green leaves and purple flowers.

Gosh, the pond looks very murky all of a sudden. What to do with this nasty-looking water? But there are some green shoots appearing in the middle, and there are still fish, frogs, and insect larvae in there. Should I refresh the water maybe, or just leave it?

Praise for the singing, praise for the morning, praise for the breakfast, tra-la-la!

Cherry blossoms

There's nothing particularly 'eco-home' about these pics, but they may be diverting nonetheless. I'm not that crazy about the cherry blossom thing because it's usually too cold to sit around enjoying them, there are lots of people making whoopee and the smell of burnt meat, and the pressure of the expectation of enjoying cherry blossoms often leads to disappointment. However, we managed to have a passably pleasant cherry blossom experience this year.





Getting a bit more secular here, with some 'guts pot food' in a park with thousands of other common folk.

Abject rooting failure

My attempt to grow saplings from cuttings has ended in abject failure. I watered them with solicitous care, and tried to keep them from being blown all over the place by the spring wind, but they all just went brown and curled up.

Next time I'll try putting them in pots of water to see if they do any better. One lot will have some rooting powder dissolved in it, and another lot will be just with water. Hopefully this will prevent the instant withering that occurred with the first try.

Honda Insight vs. Toyota Prius

Our gas-guzzling Subaru Impreza is coming up for its shaken again this year, and the replacements get more expensive each time, so we're looking to get a new car. So last weekend we went to test drive the new Honda Insight hybrid.

A few years ago I test drove the Toyota Prius and was very impressed. Apart from the poor visibility out the back window, it felt like driving a normal car. Indeed, the quiet inside made it feel like a luxury car. The integration of the engine and motor is seamless, and if you don't look at the display which indicates which is in use, it's impossible to tell.

The body of the Honda Insight looks a lot like the Prius (which actually copied an earlier version of the Insight). Inside, it has a very 1970s space-age 'driving interface'. However, when I lowered the steering wheel to a relaxed position just above my knees, I couldn't see the speedometer at all. The engine and motor are not perfectly integrated. Indeed, there's a distinct jolt when the car switches between the two. This even happens when you have your foot on the brake waiting to turn -- the car just jolts on the spot of its own accord. This is disconcerting, and not what you want a car to do.

I took the car up a steep hill and it totally lacked poke. I wasn't able to put my foot right down to see if more power could be got from it because there was a kei-truck in front of me, but the Insight didn't feel as though it had power to spare.

When we got home, we calculated the likely economic benefit of buying an Insight, and unless the cost of petrol more than doubles, we'd be better off buying a cheaper car. Since we don't drive far or often, a normal car seems like a good choice. No electric vehicles appear ready for the market yet. The Insight has sufficiently obvious deficiencies in driving characteristics that buyers must convince themselves that they're doing some good in the world by driving it. I don't think the same thing applies to the Prius which offers grounds for smugness all round, albeit at a commensurate price.

On a side note, the difference between the Honda salesman and the Toyota salesman corresponds to the difference between the cars themselves. The Honda salesman was chatty and keen to sell. After a short while in our company, he felt sufficiently familiar to talk about his two-year old daughter. Somehow I don't think the sales gentleman from Toyota would have unwound himself so far.

Faggot fence

I have long wished to make a fence of bamboo faggots, and since our bamboo fence is showing signs of its age and lets in animals freely, I decided to tie bundles of bamboo twigs to it. What I didn't know when I started is how many twigs are actually required to make a worthwhile barrier. The answer is: several million. Indeed, planning a bamboo twig fence only seems worth it if you have a number of slaves at your disposal, which I don't.

Going to the bamboo groves and cutting the twigs is not itself unpleasant, but they often have leaves attached, and waiting for them to fall off is time-consuming. Baling six or seven twigs into a faggot with two bands of galvanized wire is also quite satisfying. However, attaching them to the fence would be easier with three arms instead of two, and there's a lot of "Gosh! Another millimetre and that twig would have stabbed me right in the eye" moments. The final effect is really quite attractive -- in Japanese we say "soboku" -- rustic and unsophisticated. But generally only achievable with slave labour.

Last year, two birds persistently ate the blueberries, and this year they've come back with their offspring. By planting this bristly fence in front of the blueberries, I'm hoping that the birds will find other gustatory options more tempting. However, it will be interesting to see what effect adjusting the microclimate in this way will have on the blueberries' health.

To dog, or not to dog

Today I got in considerable trouble for transporting rice husks and bamboo twigs in our car. Apparently they leave a residue which sticks to female clothing. It was suggested, with some ferocity, that I vacuum up the residue in all haste. When I went out compliantly with the vacuum cleaner, there was a little dog of the shiba variety standing on the corner.

I squatted down in the regulation 'Approach, Dog!' position, and the woolly little critter ambled up with a very matey look on its face -- up to within just out of reach. After a long period of negotiation, he came up to fingertip range, and started doing 'Paw! Paw!' For a dog, this is getting things in the wrong procedural order, because a bit of stroking definitely comes before 'Paw!', but it was extremely fetching behaviour for all its wrongness, or perhaps because of it.

Clearly, this was once somebody's pet, and obviously it could very quickly become somebody else's pet. I'm quite partial to dogs myself, although there are things about them that are inconvenient. I quickly canvassed opinion on the matter indoors. The missus (who is not partial to dogs in the least) said "We don't need a dog", and then relented saying, "You can keep the dog if you don't want to go back to England in the summer", while the young master noted that the said dog, who was often seen at his school, was renowned for being stupid.

A dog guarding the door looks surprisingly good

Actually, as soon as the dog came within inspection range, I couldn't help noticing that he had a largish tick embedded just under his ear. I hate to be regarded as calculating, but when Jack (as I came to think of him) was taking a familial interest in my vacuuming, I did wonder how much vets charge to remove ticks, and how much a month of dog food costs.

Jack makes himself at home, temporarily unfortunately

Country of the gods, innit

Not so long ago, the hapless ex-Prime Minister of Japan Mori Yoshiro declared "Japan is a country of gods with the Emperor at its center". He took a lot of stick for saying this. I don't think he was really right about the latter part, but as to the former, who can say the old duffer was far wrong?

If you look carefully, you can see some yellow and pink gods in this scene (Hint: they're hiding among the green gods.)

These ghastly scenes of witchcraft and superstition are to be found in the bamboo grove where I cut my culms. The one below is a well, while the one above is a..., is a... umm, I'll be damned if I know really.

If I had a productive well on my property, I think I'd want to celebrate it somehow too.

Botanical imperialism

My recent experiences with "Lady Banks' Rose" and "the Duke of Argyll's tea tree" got me thinking about the horrid parochiality of these names. I'm not especially keen on political correctness, but as a republican, I don't like to recognize the Nobs, especially when they're linked almost inextricably to the names of Asian plants. Until very recently, I didn't have a clear idea who "Lady Banks" was, but I felt it strange that a Chinese rose that I know of as 'mokkobara' (scented tree rose) should go by the Latin name of an 18th Century Englishwoman. Since the rose and the berry in my acquaintance have long Asian histories, it seems wrong that they should have British names, especially when these are codified as taxonomic names. Rather coincidentally I became aquainted with the Banks' in a book my parents sent me, The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes. As someone who danced naked with Tahitians, Mrs Bank's husband Joseph was a thoroughly cosmopolitan man, and so one doesn't want to be too hard. But the Latin name of the mokkobara still rankles. I was very surprised though to find a footnote in The Age of Wonder that almost perfectly expressed my feelings on the matter.

The psychology of collecting, ordering and naming specimens could be seen as a form of mental colonising and empire-building. 'Taxonomy, after all, is a form of imperialism. During the nineteenth century, when British naval surveys were flooding London with specimens to be classified, inserting them in their proper niches in the Linnaean hierarchy, had undeniable political overtones. Take a bird or a lizard or a flower from Patagonia or the South Seas, perhaps one that had a local name for centuries, rechristen it with a Latin binomial, and presto! It had become a tiny British colony'. Anne Fadiman, 'Collecting Nature', in At Large and at Small.

My yellow and white Rosa banksiae are presently very small. Indeed the white one is almost invisibly small (did I actually pay for these two leaves and bit of stalk?).

White rose: Left drainpipe

Yellow rose: Right drainpipe

However, given a few years, they should look like this:

(Well, I hope it won't look like a really crap 5 min Photoshop job, but I think I saw a house in Bristol last time I was there with roses up it, and it looked cool and wonderful.)