Farmer Justin 2!

Remember back in June when I made that post on planing rice? Yes? No? Maybe? Well, 4 months have passed since and it was time to make a return back to the fields and make the harvest. Me, Ono, Helen, Alex and Iinuma-san hopped into Iinuma-san's car and we were off at 8:30 to somewhere in Kawasaki-machi to head on over to Shigeo's farm to help out with the rice harvest. All by hand. I posted why Shigeo did everything by hand in the last post so if you're not entirely sure why, go back and visit the last post. He's a very interesting guy, from Economist to environmental conservator. He's working with a bunch of people to setup an NPO in the area for sustainable development and education.

His background in economics is quite fascinating with the combination of environmental conversation because he's explained to me how making a country more self relyant interms of energy and resources is quite important. Japan imports 60% of all it's food ant 97% of all it's energy. Comparing that to places like Germany where they produce 107% of their food and France is in the ball park of 200%. No, this wouldn't be a comment you'd hear from just your average farmer, he's an educated farmer!

This time around we spent most of the morning and afternoon harvesting rice all by hand. It was quite the work, but it went pretty fast. By lunch with about 10 people, we had harvested an entire rice field, tied the rice into many bushels and then hung them outside to dry.

Alex harvesting rice!

By noon, we were all crowed around nice wooden but worn benched outside snacking away at a hearty meal of rice balls, veggies and soup.

The wooden benches. Simple, yet functional.

By the afternoon, we started on another field and got 1/4 of the way though and called it a day.

The group of friends I was with got invited out to one of the volunteer's house to have coffee that afternoon. The guy is an architect who had completed his home by a very nice lake about a year ago, all out of wood harvested locally. The idea was to build a house using only local material and also very environmentally friendly.

The house! Looks like something you'd find in Canada!

I learned plenty about the design of the house that day. For example, beneath this house, is a very huge pit of charcoal. Charcoal is good at absorbing humid air and air filtration. If exterior humidity was 100% outside during heavy rain, the interior would remain at about 75% (all of this data was metered).

The house also has an open celining between the first and second floor, allowing hot air to escape from the bottom and rise to the top. A window at the top can be opened to let the hot air flow out of the house and small vents at the bottom are opened at the bottom to allow cooler air to flow in. During the hot summers the house can be kept at 28 C dispite the outdoor temperature of 35 C with no airconditioning.

The windows, while extremely big, are all quadrouple paned to prevent loss of heat during the frigid winters. The floor is heated with a water boiler during the winter. In addition, the house is also equiped with a very sweet home theater system with exceptionally big speakers. See the picture below.

That's Ono, sticking his head into the speaker system.

Fortunately the house is located in a remote section of the mountains and the neighbours only come to their cabin once in a while, leaving the owner of this place free to blast his music as loud as he wants, when he wants. It would be really neat to have a house like this.

I've also posted a photo album online. If you've got a chance, check it out!