This Tuesday report will present some insights into life for a westerner (me) who’s working for an prolonged interval at Kyoto College in Japan however who over time of working right here has more and more started to know the language and native cultural traditions.
Farming in city areas
One of many hanging issues about residing in Japan is the dimensions of life – all the pieces is compact – homes, motor autos, outlets (many), small-scale manufacturing, and so forth.
And whereas there are industrial areas situated away from residential areas, similarly to what I’m used to in Australia, it’s also frequent to see a mixture of land makes use of inside residential areas – homes, outlets, factories, farms and so forth.
The place I run quite a bit within the North of Kyoto alongside the rivers, I usually see websites like this inside a residential space.
It’s a rice farm allotment after harvest with the rice hanging up on the standard drying racks – 稲木 (hasa) – though they’re named in a different way relying on the area one is in.
This Autumn apply goes again centuries and the 稲木 are often very giant horizontal poles, initially from bamboo stalks.
However it seems that Japan has traditionally had a spread of drying techniques – drying horizontal poles as within the photograph and vertical poles with the rice hanging off them in bundles.
In some conditions, the farmers used to put the “reduce grain stalks on the sector”, however that system was weak to the climate (rot) and so forth.
Each Autumn in rural Japan one comes throughout this type of scene.
By hanging the ears of rice on the hasa and permitting the solar and the wind to dry the grain, the farmers obtain much less cracking of the grain and a greater flavour.
Rice dried this fashion tastes higher.
Nevertheless, the apply is in decline as a result of the bigger scale farms are more and more utilizing fashionable threshing and drying machines.
I’ve been fairly within the historical past of those racks and the drying huts, that are extra architectural variations of the easy pole racks.
I learn some books on the subject and found that the most straightforward grain drying racks in Europe (a long-standing apply) are similar to these in East Asia (together with Japan).
However because the racks turn out to be extra architectural, the variations emerge in carpentry methods and design.
Given my curiosity in Japanese woodworking and buildings, that was sufficient to require additional analysis.
And I discovered that whereas these constructions may look like uninteresting there’s in truth an entire historical past of educational analysis about them – which is without doubt one of the causes I like being an instructional – we get to dig into all types of issues which may sometimes evade the eye of others.
Studying this e-book – Cereal Drying Racks: Tradition and Typology of Wooden Buildings in Europe and East Asia – which was written by Austrian structure educational Klaus Zwerger and revealed in English (from the German in 2011) in 2020, gives an enormous quantity of data.
I gained’t write intimately right here and in the event you assume you need an entree within the matter I like to recommend this research.
It’s a lot much less time consuming that wading by means of the Japanese language literature, though there are some traditional research by Japanese students that I’ve been studying.
Anyway I’m now very observant after I head out within the northern areas of Kyoto to see the number of small-scale conventional farming methods.
I plan to cease subsequent time I move this allotment and see an individual – to interrogate them about their work.
This type of scene although is quite common all through the areas surrounding Kyoto, the place dormitory suburbs which have emerged because the inhabitants expands combine with conventional farms.
I discover that blend very fascinating.
Serenity by the River
This photograph was taken early within the morning as I used to be on considered one of my typical runs alongside the Takano River, which runs into the Kamo river on the well-known Kamogawa Delta, a bit of south of the place this image was taken.
I used to be heading north, on the west financial institution of the Takano, simply previous the Kitaoji Bridge and looking out in the direction of the mountains, which encompass Kyoto.
This type of expertise is every day after we are in Kyoto and units one up for a fantastic day on the workplace.
スポーツの日 – Sports activities Day, October 13, 2025
I don’t run on Mondays in an effort to give my ailing knees a bit of respite after a tough weekend of working.
So off to the pool I went planning on doing my typical 2 km swim.
It seems the pool was crowded (surprisingly) and I gave up after 1,000 metres and went dwelling.
The explanation was that Japan had its annual – スポーツの日 (Sports activities Day) – public vacation yesterday, which is held yearly each second Monday in October.
The motivation was to recollect the “opening of the 1964 Summer time Olympics” which have been held in Tokyo and its goal is to “promote sports activities and an lively way of life”.
All types of organisations – faculties, companies, social teams – maintain what are known as 運動会 (Discipline Days), which contain a spread of bodily actions, together with formal athletics carnivals in addition to some actually odd occasions such because the 騎馬戦 (Cavalry Battle).
The latter is a really curious subject occasion carried out by highschool college students the place a (Supply):
… staff of 4 rivals work collectively, with three carrying the fourth, who wears a bandana (hachimaki) or hat. The staff is defeated if they’re knocked over or, extra generally, if their bandana/hat is eliminated by an opponent.
It isn’t with out controversy and college students can find yourself with severe accidents, together with one recorded case in 2003 the place a pupil ended up “quadriplegic after falling from his teammates’ shoulders”.
Native communities have parades and marches, bands play all types of music and it achieves its goal of giving the residents are break from work.
Sadly, it meant the swimming membership was overcrowded yesterday.
That’s sufficient for at present!
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