entry nº 42 // 20180828

on the way back from miyazaki we took the inland route up through kumamoto, and stopped by to stay the night at LITTLE COUNTRY. this place, wow. i don’t recall how shoko found out about it… maybe naoki told us? he tends to know about this kind of stuff. anyway, you, the reader, certainly wouldn’t care the least about that, so i guess i’d best just move along here. basically, the owners (who, incidentally, used to live real close by where we live now, except, maybe like a decade or two before we lived here, i think?), kind of dropped everything when they were in their 40s, bought some land down off the beaten path in kumamoto, and from scratch, more or less, using inherited tools and found/scavenged materials, built themselves a house, restaurant, workshop, guest house, tree house, etc., and on and on and it’s all pretty incredible, when you get there and see it. 

we stayed the night in this roughly star-shaped bungalow. really cool lofted/suspended tatami room up above the little kitchen/living area. total camp cabin feel. it was awesome. handful of bees in there, though, which wasn’t ideal, but on the other hand w/ this kind of place you kind of expect stuff like that. luckily they seemed real soporific and i was able to get them out of there one at a time using a small glass and a pamphlet.

blueberry bushes all around, and blueberries were popping off when we were there. big and juicy. little country owner mom let the chickens out and they went straight for those blueberries, jumping up to grab them off the bushes. i, personally, had never thought about chickens jumping, specifically, before. super cute. 

little country dad was out there working away at a new building, all post+beam construction, puttering away at this or that. explaining the natural heating/venting system he was building into the floor. and wait, holy shit there’s a mod trials bike hanging on the wall? wtf? i got weird feelings when that thing caught my eye, because already i was mentally in omg this place is like a dream come true, and so of course if it’s actually going to be a dream come true, there’s a trials bike around somewhere, and then it actually was there? one of those times when the interface between imaginary mental universe + outer real universe seems to get a little blurry for a moment, and it’s a bit strange. 

across on the other side of the property was his huge workshop, full of basically every large power tool you could dream of – jointer, planer, drill press, band saw, you name it. i think he got them from a friend of his who was in some business or other associated w/ the US army, at least, if i understood him correctly. and man, was that guy nice! we were asking him how he cut the glass for all the odd-shaped windows around the property, and he showed us, and even let me try. i didn’t get it to slice correctly the first time, but the second time nailed it. very satisfying sound + feeling, cutting glass, out there. 

little country mom, gracious as all get out, cooked and fed us dinner, there in the restaurant by ourselves, and she spent a good long time chatting and hanging out with us, us thinking “we could totally be friends with this woman, for real,” oldies playing on the stereo. apparently she used to windsurf here in imajuku, kept her gear at the surf shop up the road, here. the food was delicious. all of the tables in the restaurant were handmade and different and gorgeous. 

couple other details: defunct treehouse; bouldering wall built into the outside of the workshop; seemingly-unused downhill bike parked in between wall supports around the other side. handmade sleigh (!) hanging up in the restaurant. also, the fact that the guy built the goddamn two-story fireplace+chimney in the restaurant, too? i mean, come on, here. their high schooler son, who came home at some point, and was cool, and had a busted 3/4’s or so of a drumset in his room, which i played a little bit (poorly, mind you) while the dad looked on excitedly, which (the kid’s room) was kind of built separate from the house, and had greenery growing on the roof, and a door handle made out of skateboard trucks. outdoor brick pizza oven. what else? oh yeah, their dog, MINT, a big ol’ doberman (right? wait no, rottweiler, i just googled it), which you certainly don’t see many of out here. mint was the sweetest dog you’ll probably ever have the good graces to meet, a gentle old grandma, real stinky and shedding like a mofo, but she’ll come over and lean real heavy into your leg as you pet her, and she’ll stare directly, deeply into your eyes, and well, i mean, who cares if your jeans get kind of smelly in the process.