Inukai Farm

We`ve got peaches! And lots of weeds!

Welcome to Inukai farm, easily accessible from the forested hills and just a hop skip and a jump from the craggy river bed. We`ve got peaches, rice, apples, strawberries, zucchini, eggplant, onions, garlic, leeks, potatoes, watermelon, sunflowers, pears, peanuts, soy beans, grapes and tobacco all within a five minute bicycle ride. And weeds!


I met Shigeru Inukai two years ago while he was busking with his contra-bass in front of a downtown city bank in Matsumoto (Japan) on a starry Sunday. We played music together in a coffee shop and in his music studio. Often, his very talented pheoncae will play her ukulele too. When I was preparing to leave Japan for my trip through Asia he invited me to come back and live on his farm for a while if I found the time.

So here I am, up to my neck in mud and weeds, surrounded by a green dream. He doesn`t use chemicals or plastics so we have to fight extra hard against overgrowth. Tired, full of green tea, My mind is easy as the clouds floating though the shallow valley. Clean country air is slowly washing away the metro smell that was stinking up my life.

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Shigeru and his family live on a piece of land formerly used to operate a sizable mushroom factory. Their family mushroom business was driven out by a conglomerate a few decades ago and the former storage and processing shed became a store room for generations worth of odds and ends. In the former factory are several large walk in coolers, each approximating the size of an average bedroom. Two have been transformed into music studios for rehersal and recording. Awesome and diverse musicians play there and I get to hear them all (whether I like it or not!). I`ll take a recording next time and put up a video.

Even with the development of the two rooms, there is still tons of space just collecting clutter. He allowed me to transform two of the rooms formerly used as offices into living space. I even got to use tatami (!) for the floors. He has everything in that factory...somewhere. The other day he pulled out a bucket of miso paste, a gallon of homeage plum wine, a table, a mountain bike, an electric guitar and some plastic bowls from some dark corner. Anyways, here is the living room, the bedroom is just a tatami floor with my futon and clothes.


And the pantry:



Shigeru is quite busy with a full-time job, keeping his veggies at market and playing with two performing bands so it is nice that I can help out with some of the more time consuming chores (i.e. weeding the jungle AKA `kuso kusa` which is my pidgin Japanese that translates to: `Shit...weeds.`) Its really a great place, and the farming pace is so healthy. Rising early, eating fresh vegetables, sleeping when it rains...

I will spend the rest of my time in Japan based here with a few possible trips to the Japanese Alps. It`s an oasis for my spirits, the boost I needed after the grey and dreary soul-sucking outlet mall of Metropolis.

I`m charging my engines for another flight across the equator coming up midway through August when I`ll be headed back to Oceania.

Nothing deeps to say :) I`m just happy to be here.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That`s kind of the feeling.

Visiting Memories

I draw from the well
whose diminishing returns
soon has me thirsting
before it`s dry

And so it seems I`ll live my life:
a finger-food diet
grows hollow bones
with which to fly

-


Visiting memories is like hunting ghosts. You can feel them there, but always just out of reach. I don`t feel this hollowness when visiting people because most are running along side of me at a relatively equal pace. It`s the places, these intricate settings for my personal drama, that bring a strange empty feeling - like I`ve gotten on the wrong bus and ended up too Far East.


Its the external memories of a place that are most haunting. I never took the energy to infuse my brain with full accounts of the moments of life, but the places - like some subtle archive - have scripted small and detailed memories into their very molecules. Stone walls are inscribed with feelings of release, bamboo is etched with gallant independence and university chalkboards are streaked with purpose and fullfilment ~ memories that reinvigorate my direction and purpose.

A revisit is like a diagnostic meter. How is the engine running? How many miles have you registered? How often have you hesitated, which grinds your faith away like break pads? I`m here for a tune up. I remember where I was, I more clearly see where I am and things lost in the doldrums have resurfaced as distant flags just within sight. I feel reinvigorated, juxtaposed with the past, to continue climbing and descending the dune landscape of the future.

I struggled at first with not being the same as I was during my first visit to Japan. I still burn but without the molten heat of early twenties optimism and recklessness.
After three months I`ve found my adaptation uplifting and a signal that I`m on a road; whether it`s the right road or not, I`m going somewhere. I think somewhere is better than nowhere, which is where I may have been heading if I never left home. I disagree with the statement, `whatever doesn`t kill you only makes you stronger` in favor for `whatever doesn`t kill you can either makes you stronger or weaker depending on how you deal with it.` (I know it doesn`t have the same ring, but poetry, too, must bow before prudence.)

Echoes of the past still hum between the tatami fibres and thin Japanese walls. I feel gifted with an external memory as vast as the world, with each alley I`ve taken, each mountain I`ve climbed and every sacred place retelling me my own story. The seasons cast their familiar frame upon the chaos with which I have grown so comfortable. And here we go.

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Home is where I want to be
so I have to go where I want.