Living expenses in Japan and farming

Today morning me and Jackie went out to do a cycling around the village to explore a little. It is an hour ride out and we manage to reach Teramae and stumble into a supermarket. Grocery shopping is expensive for us. Just simple 2 meals and some snack will cost us $30 - $60. It don’t even last us 2 days. Living in Japan can quickly add up I think $150 for a week or $600 a month would be decent amount to put aside. A side note is that being vegean is difficult in Japan due to the high price on vegetable and fruits. 

Rental is kinda expensive too. I believe $1,500 a month you can get quite a small single apartment. The basis is that we can only find daily apartment at the lowest of $30 given only if it was low season. On weekend the price run crazy as much as 10x the usual price. Crazy right. Don’t think I am exaggerating as the hotel can really go into $300 - $400 range on weekend like Friday and Saturday. Last time i asked it was due to the crazy amount of traveller coming in to Japan as they claimed that “Japan is cheap”. I don’t know where they got the idea from. So our solution to spend the night on weekends are using their spa during the night and sleep at their sofa area. Also some recommended us to use mange cafe to spend the night although we hasn’t try that yet.

“Sorry Sensei, we are wrong” , Bow before me~~~

Today our job is to do some quick gardening and the thing I worked on is compost, which is mixing the green and brown so they get to compose to some great stuff for the soil. What we are doing is the cold method which need least attention but longer to convert. We just find some weed and bad grass, cut them and throw it to the compost area. Layering chicken shit in between them and give them little watering down and sunlights. In time this will provide soil for us to grow more fruits :) 

I start loving the farming way of life and will want to learn more on permaculture for days to come.

First day farming at Kamikawa amazing

Today in the house I saw the book making small farms work by Richard Perkins publish in 2016. The book belongs to Mark our new host and is talking about permaculture farming. Sustainable farming method which I will be interested in the further if we are starting our own farmhouse in either Kulai or Japan. So bookmark this for future me. Another book is the vegetable & herb expert by Dr D G Hessayon and the author had also written a series of works’s best selling gardening books.

Our job to be done today at the farm was very free and easy. We had to erect some wood pranks and make a barricage to build up a compose bin for some waste composition. After ward we had to rearrange the log at the site so that they are space out properly for airing. Those logs are heavy and it looks like they are part of a previous building for the roof and structure. The owner source it second hand so that he can build a shed if he needs to.

After work the showering is amazing. We are wondering to use the solar panel to heat up the water tank however it doesn’t work as the water were just dripping a bit before it just stopped working. The owner was kind to leave a hand pump shower for camping style. OMG i start loving this life as this is a preparing for me to do a car camping in my Alza in the future.

This is our host farm house in Kamikawa

 This week recap on what's happening. 

Gardening

On my way to renaissance man, I had joined Jacky to do a community work at a community garden. This is to give my to community and also extending my social circle boarder and not confine in just my working networks. Giving back is a good way to feel better about ourselves.

1st week, I met up with Felicia, she told us main tools we need is a shovel and a cutter. She introduce us to the layout of the garden. We helped in washing some veg with ETL solutions. And we get to harvest longevity spinach and eggplant. Then we are tasked to distribute some to the household for presidents to enjoy and raise awareness to the community garden there. Therefore inviting them to come to the garden to ask for more harvest from the volunteers and of course come and volunteer for garden's manpower.

2nd week, as usually we kept our schedule to 9am to 12noon. We started off my restarting the soil for another pod, namely Cai Xin. Felicia shared 

• the closer the seed are planted, the smaller the root and hence the veg will be smaller too
• a seed and be harvested 2 to 3 times, rather than rooting it out, just cuts off all leaves leaving 2 smaller sprout for photosynthesis.
• Cai Xin life cycle from seed to harvest usually is 4 weeks, she manged to harvest it within 18 days
• To grow healthy plants, need to watch their PH 6.5 which is neutral and the soil quality. Remove pest by covering them with nets.

While she mentioned that she is proud that this community is harvesting at a faster rate due to some special formula of hers. She encourage and motivate us to learn quicker and harvest faster as this community garden is the faster growing within the hundreds of garden around Singapore.

However, this makes me question about this capitalism world. Everyone is now focus on competition over collaboration. It is a toxic cycle come to think about it. Many will agree that having "healthy competition" is good for the world / corporate / community. But I see this will eventually turns into hurting the world just like all the big corporate did. Nestle, Shell, Apple etc. The uncalled for competition just motivate company to use extreme methods of agriculture, industrialized methods that end up causing issue like carbon footprint.

Within the community is fine, all teams are willing to share tip and trick to help each other. But we just end up creating unreal competition with other communities. Therefore it is not advantages for us to share among inter-community. I hopefully can advocate we should not compete. Focus on the real why you are doing this and like about collaboration instead. Volunteer work wise of working wise.

Week 1 of work

Back to my new job. Love and hate for the first week. 

I love it as they are not as toxic as the place I came from before. Colleague are willing to set aside work and mentor me. That doesn't happen in my previous place. I guess is due to the unreal expectation from the top management. Also from the 奋斗逼. 

I am tore between choosing central area where a lot of experience colleague around or somewhere at the suburb heartland mall where our team starts at the same place and learn together. You know, the pro and con between learning things faster vs taking things slowly.