Screw the Azaleas

When I first started visiting Akiya, there was a mountain village nearby that could only be accessed by one road that lead from the beach. The mountain was forested—real forest, not cultivated—and the houses were old, a few still with thatched roofs. They built a road over the mountain a decade ago, and pretty much shaved the entire top of the mountain bald as a goat. Then they put in a development of houses based on American suburbia, absent any yard space, and called it an International Village. Most of the open space was then planted in azaleas, acres and acres and acres of azaleas. Azaleas as far as you could see. Someone really liked azaleas.
Or hated the International Villagers.

They forgot that, with all the trees gone, the offshore wind would have nothing to slow it down, so now it screams up the valley and howls over that mountain top like a banshee, frequently so strong that it’s difficult for the residents to go outdoors. Not that they would want to, since there's only a bus stop, a supermarket that has an entire aisle of chips but, strangely, no vegetables, a “resort” restaurant, a Family Mart convenience store and a few hi-tech looking research facilities.

The irony is that one of the research institutes is focused on reforestation. When a colleague of mine mentioned last May that she was a volunteer with the institute and that they were having a tree-planting event there on the mountain, we signed up. The head of the NPO is a man named Miyawaki, who has developed a way to reforest very quickly, with a high success rate. There are some photos here that show how quickly he’s developed forest areas in a number of countries—China, Malaysia, etc.—as well as Japan. Some of the photos I’ve seen in brochures, where an entire forest appears from an empty space in ten years, are hard to believe.

The event was held in an open space next to the institute’s parking lot. The plan was to have the volunteers that showed up plant 3000 trees. It was surprising to see how little land would be covered by that many trees—surely not more than an acre, maybe closer to half. The Miyawaki method, as I understand it, is simple in concept, but it does take a lot of preparation. His people had already spent several days at the site, removing all the rocks, plowing the ground, putting stakes in, and hauling in the 3000 seedlings. There was an instructional lecture describing the different trees we’d be planting because one of the main tenets is how important it is to use local trees. Another directive was to mix them up, and make sure there was no pattern, although we were to plant them relatively close together. He believes that competition between the trees helps them grow much faster and taller.

So many people showed up—over 500—that everyone, including M and m and I, who planted perhaps two dozen trees, finished in 45 minutes. After spreading mulch, and roping it down with stakes, there were a few cheers, and we were done. They had even supplied the gloves and shovels.

It’s not a lot of land compared to that given over the azaleas, but it felt good to do something proactive after shooting my mouth off for many years about how they destroyed the old forest. And it was great to see all those people come together—way many more than they’d expected. My friend said this happens with every event they do, regardless of the country: the word spreads and people come out of nowhere. I just read on their blog that some of the members of the institute had been up at the International Village site weeding and checking. I’m going to have to contact them and tell them that we’d like to be involved if possible in keeping an eye out on the plot. We’ve got some investment there.