Maybe about the farm?

Well, I thought maybe I should add about the onsen that it was quite a bit more relaxing without children:) but they enjoy it alot too, so it`s still a good experience, just less relaxing! Sage especially loves them, Lucas is hard to keep up with as he tries to go from one place to another. It can be a little slippery and dangerous, so gotta keep a good watch. It`s helpful to have grandparents along!
It`s Sunday afternoon and Lucas is napping. Kenji is going to a hardware store to "look around" and see what`s there as we plan to do some modifications to the house we`re moving to soon. We`ll go to another onsen this afternoon, on with an outdoor onsen pool that looks like a beach, and is like a swimming pool in that it is mixed and you wear bathing suits. This hotel onsen has a "wedding chapel" and Kenji`s dad works there marrying people as his retirement job. Many people like to get married in a "western" way, meaning in a euro/american style church with the typical wedding dress etc.
We got a crib for Lucas last night finally. After the initial exhaustion from jet lag was gone it was hard enough to get the other boys to lay down and sleep on the futon mattresses on the floor, but nearly impossible getting him to lay down and sleep without the crib bars he`s used to! And I obviously do not have the patience Japanese parents do, as many of them sleep family style for many years and the kids just kind of get up and wander and they drag them back for quite awhile. Anyhow, Kenji was getting directions to a babystore to look for pack-n-plays from his sister and she knew of a neighbor getting rid of a baby crib so we were able to get one for free! It is like the cribs we know there, although slightly smaller and instead of being raised off the ground on legs, the lowest mattress setting is on the floor pretty much. Safer at least. It will take some time for Lucas to get readjusted to it, and it`s so hard to let him cry in someone else`s house, but happy to have it regardless!
ON to our Naganuma visit. We were lacking an essential document so were unable to register Sage for school or ourselves for health ins. so we are waiting for it to arrive from Kenji`s birth town. It is the koseki tohon, or family registry that everyone has here. Your marriage and children are registered there and it is like birth cert\marriage cert. all together. You have to have a newly issued copy when you do things like the above. Kenji is learning the ropes here yet as he hasn`t lived here as an adult much at all, spent less than two years total here since he turned 18, which was 16 years ago I guess. Almost half his life in Canada and the US. Anyhow, we hope to get the document sometime this week and return to do what we wanted to do last time then along with a school visit. Sage missed the official school visit day for ichi-nen sei, or first graders last week it seems. He is anxious, wondering how he will ask to go to the bathroom etc, we are practicing with him. The three boys who live on the farm will go to the same school and walk to the school bus stop and back with him each day as well as with another first grade girl who is a close neighbor. They have about a quarter mile walk down a gravel road. When we first got to the road we thought surely that wasn`t it and turned a different way, the entrance to the road was totally snow-covered and very steep! Which is why we need a 4WD vehicle I guess! Sage was thoroughly excited when we found we did need to go down that road!
Very exciting to actually see where we will be living! There is a main house where people kind of gather and eat lunch together, etc, then two other houses, ours included as well as a machine shop, a greenhouse converted to a chicken house and maybe two other greenhouses and a few other outbuildings. We didn`t tour everything, but did go in the chicken house. It smells a little, but not like some for sure. If you read the article abouｔ the farm published in Rodale`s mag, you know they use forest leaf litter mixed with the chicken manure on the floor to both heat the house and to reduce the smell. The house we`ll be living in is cute, nice big eat-in-kitchen, a long bedroom and small all purpose room then the bath\laundry area. There is a pretty big unfinished room we are hoping to convert to the boys room too. Kenji says that they told him the house was originally built to be a breadshop/bakery, then converted to a house later. The boys were so busy playing with the other boys and toys they didn`t even want to go see it! The back door looks out on the pony pen. The house is I guess very well insulated, the man who helped to build it went to school for insulating houses or something. The heating is by boiler, hot water flows thru pipes under the floors, so your feet are never cold! We didn`t see another heat source, but I`m not for sure. The people who live there say it is very warm and in summer if you open windows across the house it is comfortable. We sat and visited some and met the various people who live there. There are plenty of English speakers there., hope I can learn more Japanese... there are plenty of Japanese speakers too though.Ray and Akiko Epp, the couple who basically manage the farm and her mother who was an English teacher for many years and has a great accent. Akiko`s parents Ray is American and Akiko lived in the States for quite a while I think. Their oldest son also speaks quite a bit of English although the younger two do not. The middle boy seemed a little territorial and made a comment about learning English being Yada! or no way when his mom suggested that Sage could teach him some! Sounded like Sage when we were in the states encouraging him to practice Japanese. It was interesting to talk with Ray, he was telling us that the roots of organic gardening\farming in the U.S. can be traced back to a book written by an American professor in the early 1900`s who travelled to Japan and studied the ancient farming practices here. He was intrigued by the fact that the fields here were still so fertile after being farmed continuously for 4000 years, and he was in disagreement with the thinking of the American gov. of that time which was that the U.S` resources were unlimited and we could just take and take and not worry about them ever being depleted or if they were just go west. He could see that the soil`s goodness would be depleted in several gen. of the current practice. Other conversation was about how the main couple living there and the couple vacating the house we`ll be in as well as us and other people who don`t live on the farm but help and visit frequently are Christians although most other people who volunteer, are students doing internships from colleges or are members of the CSA(community supported agriculture- you buy a yearly membership before planting season and then get a portion of the harvest of the farm) are not. They have learned that having a community of Christians with others invited to participate who are not Christians, brings questions and interest. He said they have learned that it is not appropriate in this culture to do evangelism the way it is typically done in the US with the different cultural environment. Ray mentioned that the change in the culture from the spiritual based waste-not(the old Japanese way, from farming on out) to one based on efficiency has left a spiritual void that leaves people wanting so that when they see true spiritual community they are drawn to it. He said that with the loss of the old ways which was based on using everything in a cycle, (for instance even human and animal excrement) that many traditional community and relational qualities were lost as well. With the attempt to modernize and keep up with the west many ideas were brought in that do not work in this climate\culture etc. Menno Village is an attempt to educate people about what has been lost and hopefully introduce community from Christ`s viewpoint. Other interesting things, within the last few years the community around the farm was able to gather enough signatures with a petition, to stave off one of the largest cement companies in the country from moving in and destroying the forest. This is unheard of here, it is usually thought that a company like that can not be fought. Then the farm petitioned its members and raised over $100,000 dollars in a few months to buy the 40 acres of forest that were in question so that would not become an issue again. It is part of the Menno Village corp. and the plans are to turn in into a land trust, although I don`t really know what that means! They use 12 acres to farm on and the rest is beautiful forest according to them with many ponds etc.
The view is beautiful, snow covered mountains, a ski resort right behind us and the gravel road is bordered by apple trees from a nearby apple farm. It is definitely farm country, many farms around, farmers markets etc. The school Sage goes to will be mainly farm kids I bet!
The school has about 60 kids for 6 grades and everyone says it`s a great school. The Epps oldest boy said he can help Sage if he needs it, the middle brother`s room is closest and he can go and get him he said!
Well, that should be enough for now! Sorry can`t post pics until we get our PC from the States in the mail, then we`ll have plenty to post!