A young owl on a low branch, looking straight at the camera.

どこか の いなか

DOKOKA NO INAKA

There is nothing here.

No temple you have heard of.
No view that people photograph.
Nowhere to eat once it gets dark.

This owl fledged in my garden.
The rice below is drying outside my window.

If that is enough, it is enough.

Rice drying on wooden racks beside cut paddies, forested hills, a red postbox.

The valley

Two stone blades came out of this ground.
Twenty thousand years old.

The hamlet is named after a thistle, a plant once taken as medicine.
My family sold medicine.

Behind our house grows an ogatama tree, three hundred years old.
Okitama: to call the spirits down.

In 1871 they burned the headman's house, and the trunk burned with it.
The mark is still there.

It was our house.
We are still here.

A very old ogatama tree with wide low branches and a stone marker beneath it.

What happens there

Tea, under the tree.
Coffee, if you'd rather.
You decide.

Moss, old stones and camellia trees in the garden behind the house.

Further out

These are in the guidebooks, so there are no photographs of them here.
What is above, you will not find.

Persimmons hanging on a line to dry, against the sun setting over the village.

Dareka

A farmer.
I make the seasons, keep the past.

I am not a travel company.
I book nothing.
I take care of the rest.

My English is not good.
We will manage.

The moon behind a sky of mackerel cloud, above the dark ridge.

If we have met

Then you have my card.
Write whenever you like — this year, or in three years.
This stays only as long as someone cares.
I hope to see you again, while it's still here.

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