scott's lot

This is Scott and the house he and his wife Reiko built on a secluded, awesome piece of land they found in the hills of Chiba. They are the only friends I know who made their own place from scratch, and their house is a beautiful mix of Japanese and Western that matches the location perfectly. (There is a small lake out back, and theirs is the only home on it.)

Seeing this place convinced us of the worth of living outside of the city, and hearing about the struggles and joys of building made us believe it was possible. In the train on the way home we decided to go forward with building and moving (and since it was delayed, giving us a three-hour ride, we had plenty of time for it to sink in). That was almost two years ago, and I still have dreams about the slope of the tiled roof, the big living room, the expanse of deck and the water beyond.

goes the sun

IT WAS A VERY GRAY day today, pissing cats and dogs when we got up, and after a pantomime show that m's day care center had arranged (which wasn't as insipid as I expected), we headed down once again to see the on-site situation of the house. m passed out in the car, which gave M and I plenty of time to do some more . . . wait for it . . . staining. And if anyone who's reading this is not as tired of it as we are, they are not human.

When we arrived we found that the glass had been put in the main entrance door, the paper had been applied to the shoji, and we were looking at a completely different house than we had left last weekend. We closed down our staining operation due to darkness about the same time as the chimes of the village loud speakers rang out. The waves were high and still dotted with surfers andM and I took our respective cameras out to record the end of the day.

And suddenly the sky exploded throwing light all over us. As we walked to the car, I looked back at the house and found that the horizontal light had lit the interior as if someone had flipped a switch. (No, the electricity is not even hooked up yet, even if there were fixtures.)

sardinia

AS OF MIDNIGHT tonight, we have five weeks to go before Moving Day, and the beginning of our life in a place where more of our neighbors will belong to the fish community than the

village social structure.

And since today was one of those days where I'd rather be "with the fishes" along with Luca Brazzi than be working "with the humans" at the office, that's something to look forward to.

the "looking down boards"

WE FINISHED A huge part of the staining yesterday--all of the shitami ita clapboard siding that makes up the base of the mountain side of the house. It really soaked up the stain, but we're happy that it still shows the grain of the wood as well as the color shadings. It has the deep reddish tone that I was hoping for, and it really goes with the slightly off-white mortar and the dark brown of the roof, the gutters, the eaves, and the windows, not to mention the main entrance door. We're really happy with how it turned out, and Yamada-san of Kagatsuma said, "It really makes you want to look back at it when you leave."

 

Our fingers recently have been in a perpetual stained state, but there's still quite a bit to do of the interior, so I'll leave my cuticles in their "old brown" condition.

bowl-a-rama

BEFORE WE LEFT TO go down to the site and finish staining the clapboard siding today, we were gifted with the perfect timing of a delivery we've been waiting for. We had asked M's mom some time ago to make a bowl that we could use for a hand sink for the second floor toilet. Last month when we visited M's parents in Nagano, we went by the ceramic workshop and kiln where she makes her pieces and she showed us a number of different works, all done in different glazes, so that we could chose the tone and color of the bowl. (Of course, she let us know that we'd be at the mercy of the firing, since even the same glaze has all kinds of permutations depending on the winds, tides and number of fairies present at the time.) But we picked a glaze that we liked very much for its blue-gray ocean tinge, and gave her the measurements that the small toilet could handle.

And this is what the courier delivered. 

When we got down to the site, we unpacked it and placed it on the wood shelf that has been waiting for it the last few weeks, and saw immediately that it is a beauty! The carpenter will carve a hole  and set it just slightly into the wood, the plumber will attach the fitting for the drain and the faucet. And we'll have a very unique basin to wash our hands in. Guests, of course, will have to use the very pedestrian Toto sink downstairs. (I'm not being unkind, there's just no room in the narrow toilet on the first floor.)

plastered

THIS IS THE INOUE family, sakan-ya (or plasterers) of the finest order. After finishing the outside mortar of our house a while ago, they're back to do the interior walls in keisodo, which--as I think I've explained several times--is a plaster made of clay rich in volcanic ash and fossilized plankton. It been used for centuries as a fire-resistant clay for making stoves and burners. Recently it's been increasingly used as a wall plaster.

It's not an easy application, at least for an amateur. This is one of the son's tool box, where he keeps his entire collection of trowels of all shapes and sizes, and next to it is the palette with the small, narrow size trowel that he let me try. I was able to do an area of a couple square feet, but the plaster is gritty and digs into the edge of the tool. So he stepped back in and took over and the three family members finished about half of the house in one day. (They end up doing two layers, although when finished, it is only 2 or 3 millimeters thick. 

The keisodo absorbs moisture when it is humid and expells it when it's dry. It cuts down on noise, smells, mites, is fire-resistant, and is full of holes 4 nano meters wide that let the walls breath. I'm sure there's something bad about it, but I haven't found any reports yet. 

It has a very rough texture, almost like adobe, and it looks great against wood. It's bright white, but when the late winter sun hit it this afternoon as everyone was cleaning up, it turned the walls into yellow gold.

 

day and not-so day

Above and below is why, as much as I love mountains, the shore never ceases to intrigue me, despite the fact that I don't surf or sail--though I do like to swim and body surf. But the way the view can change so dramatically in a matter of minutes is probably closer to my emotional makeup than the more stately change that takes place in mountainous areas. Though I'm sure that there are hordes of hill people that would disagree.

In the actual sequence, "below" came before "above."