zero

One of the last things the site foreman did on the day they handed the house over to us was to cut the top off the plastic pipe that was jutting out of the earth just by the side of the house, leaving about ten centimeters protruding from the earth. It's the pipe coming out of the old well, which was found in excavating for the foundation. On the day of the jichinsai (above), when the Shinto priest made his blessings and asking the gods for their cooperation, he made a special effort at the well, which is where gods are believed to have their residences. (We've got two other old wells that have been filled in long ago, but this one still had well water in it.) So we had it filled in, but left the pipe for the god to have access, and the foreman didn't want to be the one to cut it off completely or fill it in. I'm not going to either.

This is the last post from the Tokyo house. The trucks are due in sixty minutes, and the next time I'll turn on the computer will be 61.3 kilometers from here. Bye.