Minka - Our Japanese Farmhouse

Country breakfast

Fresh farm eggs and bread, pulled enoshishi, sweet potato pottage, and some salad. If asked, we'll deny having cheesecake for breakfast though.

Kururi town

Wild verbena

Secret rindo exploring

Showa hip

Private swimming hole

Ichihara minka and kura

Summer exploring

With the recent rains, the rice in our gun (郡) is really coming along, and exploring the cooler mountain trails is great.

Though the namazu (catfish) is typically part of earthquake warning lore, here they are asking to not discard gomi (rubbish) in the named rivers. We assumed because it would interrupt their detection sensitivity...

Usagi shrine

Chiba wildlife spotting

The last few days exploring, we've seen two usually elusive hakubishin, too many shika to count, a gang of pesky saru, one nosagi, a bittern of some sort, two enoshishi and an uribo, a tanuki, multiple kyon, a badger, and more than a few of the smaller birds above.

Neighbors' tanbo

This week's ikebane

Nostoc management

Brooming, vacuuming, scraping, nothing seems to work on nostoc in our lawn better than just adding lawn sand. It allows the grass to grow through, drains well, and deprives the nostoc of standing water. A lot - not all - nostoc dries up, withers, and blows away.

The lawn, from what was a driveway of old rock, a small pond, and sometimes muddy mess, has progressed nicely over the years.