The previous post looks awfully like a badly written thesis objective. What I really want to blog here is about swimming in the ocean before work, exchanging veggies with neighbors, how a house in the countryside is never exclusively yours but that's enjoyable too, how my friends are trying to make their dreams come true and by only listening to them I feel part of the process, etc. Or what I just had for breakfast.

Hi All,

I am Setsuko Nakayama, an ABD in anthropology/area studies stationed as an assisstant professor at Noto Gakusha, Kanazawa University, under the "Noto Satoyama Meister" Training Program. This blog is about my daily encounters and musings as I slowly accommodate myself into life at the tip of Noto Peninsula, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan.

大きな地図で見る
Why am I keeping this blog in English when it's not my mother tongue? Well i said so in my job app so i have to;) While the term Satoyama Satoumi seems to attain international recognition, very little has been written over the topic in languages other than Japanese outside academic, international organizations or civil society movement circles. Those who seek information about Satoyama or Satoumi will invariably run into somewhat romanticized images of Japanese rural life that has been or is about to be lost -- and occasionally, critiques of such representations. Such representations -- and their critiques -- do capture certain aspects of life in rural Japan and their production landscapes; however, they elide for the most part the complex realities of life itself or the larger political, economic situations they are placed in. Moreover, they seldom foreground the creative, innovative endeavors that are currently unfolding on site. 
In hope for a more balanced coverage I am going to add my voice --and later on, my friends'-- on this blog from the Noto Satoyama Satoumi area of Japan.

Three months

It's been three months since I joined this workplace, and two months(!) since my last post. Can't say "I'm new" anymore, can I? 
High time I "launched" the blog. So here I go:

Konchan

Konchan is the name of our idol, the peridot-eyed redhead that haunts our neighborhood. This morning at 4:30 I saw her harassed on the beach by a gentleman on patrol. She came running my way, through the narrow gap between my house and the next, and onto her rumored home behind the temple. "She comes for the salt water," the neighbors say, "I have seen her with her cub." The corridor must have been her favorite since the two houses had been vacant before I moved in a month ago.
Foxes had been introduced into this area for vermin control; now they have propagated to become the new vermin. Whatever Konchan has done to receive this kind of treatment, she always jerks me out of the "Haidarii". Bright-eyed bushy-tailed we are, leaping from the sea of green.

Run, Konchan, run! (Where is she?)

"Haidarii"

"Haidarii" is what you say here when you have done everything you could-nothing has ever worked nor ever will-you feel destined to live in eternal lethargy.

... is what you say when you have toiled over the forest floor trying to get those red pines and mushrooms growing again, and when, after so many years of work, all you have is a bed of pale pink lilies on the hill overlooking the pond.

When the view is magnificent enough to well you up, you give in to the "Haidarii".

Mushiokuri in Sutta

Last night was the mushiokuri event in Sutta, Wakayamamachi, Suzu City.

Mushiokuri (虫送り) is an agricultural rite that had been widely practiced among Japanese rice cultivators to chase away (送るokuru) bugs (虫mushi) that infest the paddies at this time of year. With the spread of agrichemicals and recent changes in socio-economic arrangements in rice production, however, the significance of the event has faded away. The Sutta version is said to be the closest to the original form in the area.
Nevertheless, local 5th and 6th graders were called in to join the torch procession led by the lantern, the nusa carrier, the drum and the Shinto priest.

(will add pics and texts)

The children thus sung:

Unkamushi, unkamushi, tondeike
Sadono shimamade tondeike

Fly away, (unka bug),
Fly away to Sado Island.



--Why Sado?

Soyogo (Ilex pedunculosa)