Ollie Diary day9

May the 23th

After a half-Japanese, half-Western breakfast (miso soup, green tea and egg sandwich, made with bread given by Irie-san the day before), the morning was devoted to cleaning the room next to mine, with Toto and Ryota-san. Piles of cardboard boxes full of crockery and tools were strewn about, but everything had to be ready for the arrival of Hosomi-San, a new resident in the shared house.

Among the debris, we find a collection of precious souvenirs: stacks of photo albums of the family who used to live there, medals, diplomas, greetings cards... a whole fragile and moving collection, a remnant of the previous inhabitants, for whom we'll have to say a prayer before parting with all this.

We then set off to pick up the Shimada-san couple, friends who have been living in the Netherlands for a long time and with whom we'll be spending the evening tomorrow. We drop them off in Yubara and I take the opportunity to discover another part of the region that I hadn't seen the previous time.

I walk to the end of the road to reach a huge dam overlooking the landscape. I discreetly walk past an open-air nudist bath (which I would have tried but... they were all men!), down the stone steps and sit in the middle of the rocks, just opposite the dam, to dip my feet in the icy water and look out over the landscape.

Once again, the town gives a strange impression: an old shop nearby seems abandoned and covered in foliage, and there are two puppets near the river that look like fishermen, made from bits of wood and clothes, strange immobile statues that wait for eternity for the fish to come.

When I got home, I set about making a chopstick case from the pieces of kimono. As the fabric is thin and supple, it's difficult to work with, and I'm not really happy with the result, but I'll try again in the next few days to make more.

And in the evening, homemade takoyaki! Made by Fujii-san, another shared house's resident. I found them much better than the ones I tasted in a shopping centre. So, thank you everyone !