There’s no getting around it: this house is its own little ecosystem apart from and despite the official residents. There’s the seed-bearing weeds that grow in the mud of the tile roof; the takaashikumo, (Heteropoda venatoria) the Japanese variant of the Huntsman Spider, with its quick and alien triangular body; its prey, the various and sundry visitors from the phylum Arthropoda that wander though; the meter long aodaisho, Japanese rat snake, that roams the garden and the crawlspace; the cute little round faced feral ghost of a kitty that lives in the eaves and walls and show up from time to time… But until the other day, I had no idea we actually had rats in the kura basement. Or at least one.
Betty began making an eerie mewling and sniffing at the door to the basement in the kitchen. Mika let her down and switched on the lights. We stood at the top of the steps peering down, content to let our wild girl from Yusuhara handle things. Betty disappeared and there were sounds of her poking about the hoes and rakes left down there from grandpa’s day. Scufflings. Skitterings. Then Betty’s tail in full fluff. And then something… a bit smaller than Betty, a bit darker than her, shot across the lit square of basement floor and vanished behind some plastic buckets and was gone.
Betty spent the next several hours down there pacing, poking in the corners but to no avail. Whatever it was–and it was a rat, surely–escaped through one of what must be countless vermin routes into the old granary. How could there not be scores of unseen largish critters roaming through this old house? And I’m not even thinking about the teeny tiny critters that must make up the overwhelming dominant populations here. No, this is a little world unto itself with generations of inhabitant species, only one of which pays the property taxes.
And you know what? It’s okay. I’ve fully gotten over my suburban middle-class phobia of critters. I’m not particularly fond of cockroaches, but I no longer feel physical revulsion. And I know the takaashikumo are simply freaky, but not particularly dangerous to a huge meat bag like me. I have no love for the clan mosquito, but since we’ve taken to sleeping under the kaiya, we’re cool.
We inherited this splendid garden, and though we’ve lived here more than a year, I still feel I’m just getting to know it. The design decisions were made long ago by other people, and taken all together, they serve as a kind of gardening lecture. I’m still a newby, but I really do enjoy spending time learning to take care of this beautiful space.
Last night the storm drove ‘cross the Sound and rain
Blew through the seams into the crowded tent.
We tried to huddle-sleep, all soaked again, but
Martine is coughing, hard. All sleeping went
When Julie left at 3. I wish she’d stayed.
She said we smelled like mold. Like socks. Like ass.
Like us she’s mostly hungry and afraid
Till first bell rings and we can go to class.
This was a joy to build, for many different reasons, from beginning to end. First there was the way it came into existence: Mika’s desire to bring the altar and the attendant care out into our lives. It’s right and good. The design process was nothing special (“make her about yay high, and yay wide and yay deep…“), but retrofitting the stretchers was a satisfying challenge and when the unit snapped into place, I had a moment of deep relief. And finally, most importantly from my perspective, was the confidence I felt in doing most of the work with hand tools. I was able to cut things quickly and by eye mostly, or maybe by feel is the better word. I made a few mistakes, but they were brain-os that were small and easily repairable. At any rate, it’s done and it looks very nice, I think.
This represents a new way of working for me. I’ve had the freedom to build this to rough dimensions so I haven’t measured very much, have relied on eyeballing things, cutting dovetails quick and roughly true. Part of the reason I’ve gotten away with this relaxed approach is that the wood I am using is a breeze to work. It’s color makes scribe lines a bit hard to see, but it planes up so beautifully.
I’ve done more handwork on this project than any I have done in a long time. Except for drilling the mortises on the drillpress fitted with a router bit (that was weird and dicey), the only power tool involved has been my contractor’s saw. Mostly, this has come together with my Japanese planes and saws and scraper blades. Nice.
And finally finally… okay, this is a bit weird to admit… there was an element of revenge involved in this project. Grandpa was not all that into his granddaughter marrying a stinking butter-eating barbarian. He was, in truth, downright rude to me and all my barbarian ancestors. Now, all these years later, I have his ihai sitting on a stand I made out of wood he left behind. Oh yeah, old man? I got your barbarian right here! Enjoy the Shaker furniture!
Ever since I saw the first video of the Saw Stop table saw, I wanted one. Not just for safety’s sake — though fingers are lovable enough to justify a purchase — but also the desire for a dead-on tablesaw with real dust control. But alas! Unless I am willing to cough up the 300% markup the sole distributor in Japan has heaped upon the saw to bury it well and good, I am S.O.L.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, so go all the moments of our lives, in the shop or out, each a blur, precious and irretrievable. The question: given the freedom to chose, how do you spend those ever-dwindling coins in the sad little purse of your life, eh? This question, in particular, has long weighed on my mind. I’ve loitered many a year on this threshold or that, yet the tyranny of caprice notwithstanding, one must chose. And that I have!
For there is another way to save one’s fingers, lungs and work from the industrial demon of a mid-market contractor’s saw, and that is to do it by hand. Cut with a hand saw. Mill with a plane. True with a shooting board. Slower yes, but finer, safer, and infinitely more rewarding. Will I sell the power tools? No. Not yet. But will they set an idle? I do believe they will.
My current project, of which I have yet to relate, has progressed with almost no electrical usage, save the fluorescent lighting and the ipod. Are things as flat as they would be having been run through the thickness planer and the jointer? Probably not. But I can chop a tighter mortise and tenon now, and saw a truer dovetail than ever before. That, by itself, is justification alone.
& after awhile, you mostly get fed up
Accommodating surprise!
Why should you? Why should I?
Sandpaper, take note, young man,
Is The Lord’s very answer to sharp corners
And what that won’t cure? Out!
Once you’ve understood & made clear
Your intentions / instructions
Where everything definitely goes,
Which jar, which shelf, which cabinet,
Fitted every wrench & screwdriver A, B, & C
To its exact right spot on your pegboard…
There’s no need, no need!
Just leave it!
Christ!
Now you’ve hammered and caulked
& checked twice on twice every seam
So nothing’s getting in or out,
Then you get to sit back & nod
With approval because, rule of thumb?
Old people do not travel.
I been rocking Mr. Dave ever since my man C clued me in way back in the way back when. Never seen him live, though I was strolling through Kobe one afternoon and came across Chicken George’s with a poster informing me that, sadly yes, Himself had played there the week before. Drat!
This is our fist winter in the old house. And yes, it is cold. We’ve had several sub-zero (just barely, but sub) nights and days where the hottest part of the day didn’t get above 5°C. The logic of having shrinkable rooms (rooms that can be subdivided with sliding doors) has suddenly become obvious. It’s quite remarkable how good an insulator paper can be. I wouldn’t have guessed that a paper-covered door can actually hold the heat.
But, Lord, it is cold. Nights are the worst, of course, and I sleep in my sub-zero sleeping bag. It’s toasty warm, if a bit eccentric for most Japanese folks. In the old days, the only heating in the house–other than passive solar–was a single metal hibatchi burning charcoal. (Folks were clearly tougher back when.) We have several (five) of the ubiquitous “air-cons” stationed throughout the house, but they are relatively expensive to run, and because they are mounted at the top of the wall, don’t do the best job heating a room.
Mika has long wanted to fire up the old hibatchi, so over New Year’s, she kept it burning all day, burying a live coal in the ash when we went to bed, then reviving it first thing in the morning. It sort of works, but what a creosote-y stench! Plus, it looks like a major fire waiting to happen.
Finally broke down last week and bought a fancy new kerosene heater that really does the trick, but, man, does it drink the kerosene! These houses are definitely more comfortable in the heat than the cold.
I’m stymied with my kotatsu table because I haven’t bitten the bullet and tried to negotiate my way through a wood deal at the hard wood mill. That’s going to take some doing since the old guy, cool as he is, speaks a very thick version of local dialect, which means I have to rely on Mika, who’s never keen to haggle over anything. Also, he’s got the idea that I’m going to show up with several trucks and buy — I don’t know — thousands and thousands of dollars worth of wood.
One of the last remaining big projects for the house (how sanguine and assured I am as I indulge in, no doubt, wishful thinking) is a table for the horigotatsu. A kotatsu is a low table, often covered in winter with a heat source underneath. For people with knees that bend and sinews that stretch, sitting on tatami at one of these low tables is quite comfortable. For the rest of us, a horigotatsu is sunken area where we can put our legs and sit comfortably for a long stretch. Not quite a comfortable as sitting in a chair, but a definite improvement.
When we had structural work done, we had a horigotatsu made in the formal tokunoma room (a suggestion from an older friend.) The only trouble is that the kotatsu we have is really too small. It needs to be quite a bit longer and just a little bit wider. I’ve known for more than a year that I had a table to build.
I’ve been drawing for some weeks now, and have come up with a design that uses short cabriole legs. I’ve never done cabriole legs before, and to be honest, I’ve been looking for a chance for years. The design I came up with seemed rather extreme, so I decided to build a test leg out of scrap just to see it in 3D. Here it is:
My bandsaw’s blade is really for resawing and can’t cut an arc with a radius smaller than about 12 feet, I’m guessing. This means most of the curves have to be done with rasps and files. Not a problem, really, just slow. What’s sort of amazing to me is that despite the massive top-heaviness and the extreme curves, the leg sits balanced just fine. I don’t what that means, exactly, but I take it as a good omen. At any rate, I think the shape is hunky-dory. The trick will be finding good wood with proper grain orientation (without, that is, spending a ton of dough.)
