Working on the Weed Cutting Gang
Sunday, July 2 was a bit of a blazer in our valley. How do I remember? Toru and I volunteered for the yearly weed cutting that day. And though it all began in relatively livable morning temperatures, we weren’t dismissed until noon when the sun had risen to peak position in the sky.
Ku-cho told us the crew would meet at the small community hall at 8:30AM. We got there bang on time as did everyone else.
I’d say the average age of our fellow weed cutters was 70—Toru and I were clearly the spring chickens for the day. But don’t be fooled. These people may all be in their seventies, but they are made of steel. Each has farmed the valley his or her whole life and each came dressed that way with hats, gloves, high rubber boots, masks/eyewear, and full canvas body coverage. Farmers here don’t believe in “catching some rays.” They treat the sun, wind, and pretty much life itself as potential injury and exposure.
I heard one person quietly chuckle
as we arrived.
Toru and I? He wore shorts and an Aerosmith tee, while I rustled up long pants and a Muhammad Ali tee. Both of us had lace-up track shoes and neither had hats. We must have looked like soon-to-be cut, scratched, bitten, and scorched heat stroke victims. I heard one person quietly chuckle as we arrived.
Everyone except us came with their own gasoline-powered grass destroyer. Not a single one was battery powered and certainly none used nylon lines to cut the thatch. These were steel-toothed growlers.
Hattori-san, our retired neighbor, was there (I’ve told you about him—this guy misses nothing when it comes to socializing opportunities. He probably tossed and turned the night before he was so excited.) We also had the rough ‘n ready Tachibana sisters, Matsumoto-san the rice farmer, Ueno-san the rice farmer, Ichihara-san the rice farmer, and a few more. A kind of unfriendly silver-haired man with three teeth who lives in a run-down two-story blue home near ours was also there. I nudged Toru.
Jack: “That’s the guy.”
Toru: “Who? What guy?”
J: “I told you about him. He never says hi to me, even though I always greet him. He sort of raises a lip. Sometimes he just turns away.”
T: “Ah. Garbage burner.”
Toru calls him that because there is nothing the man seems to like doing more. The blue plumes from his property can get intense when there’s a northwest breeze toward our house. I immediately began planning how to not get assigned to whatever Garbage Burner was working on that day.
Turned out I didn’t have to worry. Once Ku-cho said good morning and gave everyone a quick speech about the importance of weed cutting before the neighborhood festival, everyone headed to tasks they already seemed to have been assigned. I think they’ve all been doing precisely the same weed cutting assignment for the past 30 years. There’s Widen the Roadsides, Push Back the Bamboo, Clear the Path Down to the Well, Restore the Entrance to the Community Center, and Recapture the Cemetery from the Wilds.
Momentarily Toru and I were left standing (in our stupid Tokyo cotton clothes), but quickly I got adopted into Mr. Sasakawa’s team and Toru was told to join the Tachibana sisters. We were off.
He chain smoked Peace
even while working.
Mr. Sasakawa is I’d say late 60s? He is a tough, tan, leather-y man about my height and weight, and he chain smokes unfiltered Peace cigarettes even while working. He simply motioned for me to follow him.
I started babbling in Japanese to demonstrate to the crew up front that they could easily communicate with me at any time. “It’s gonna get really hot today, doncha think? I don’t have a grass saw like all of you or any clippers, but I brought gloves! I have some water if anyone wants it…oh my god are THOSE WASPS?”
Despite my language display, Mr. Sasakawa grunted and sign-language’d me for the rest of the day…as if I couldn’t possibly understand a word of Japanese. He meanwhile couldn’t stop talking with the other crew members for the next four hours. He is the village card, flirt, and blabber mouth—just not to me.
I didn’t care. I just wanted to make a good impression, work hard, and be seen as basically helpful—a person they’d like to have next year when the task comes around again. I nodded to all Mr. Sasakawa gestured for me to do for the next four hours and cheerily said hai a lot.
Work was grueling. The veterans know how to pace themselves with regular rests, gossip sessions, and hydrations, but both Toru and I sort of drove headlong into our tasks. As if early completion would mean early dismissal. (It doesn’t.)
Mr. Sasakawa and another guy put on goggles and blasted in first to any section—tearing up weeds, bushes, grasses, twigs, branches, and anything else that stood in the way of their whirring steel disks. Detritus flew in all directions. My job was collection, stacking of mauled weeds, and final cleanup. We produced mountains of shredded material.
I kept thinking “my god it sure grows in Japan.” You hear often that the nation is only 10% or so arable land and the rest useless lava and rock, but not where Frog’s Glen is! In a year, at least nine layers of grass, bush, bamboo, and trees have grown over and under themselves in a tangled, impassable hedge of green. All that gets nubbed down to less than a centimeter once a year by the farmers’ blades.
Good thing about life in the Japanese countryside: when you’re done nothing is thrown away or carted off by garbage trucks. All the cut material is stacked in the sunshine in huge piles so it rots right back into the earth. Amazing fertilizer/compost for the next year.
I realized they all have known each
other since childhood.
At 10AM, Ku-cho called us back to the shade of the community center for a water break. This was the best part of the day because I could watch my neighbors gossip, laugh, and interact.
I stood off to the side, but Ku-cho said, “No, sit here” and slapped the wood floor where everyone had gathered.
It came to me. I realized that they all have known each other since early childhood. Even if Mr. Sasakawa brags today about how much he cut back a hillside for the last hour, the Tachibana sisters are likely thinking “Yeah, amazing…and every one of us remembers when you wet your pants in fourth grade at play time. Oh boy did you wail, Sasa-kun.”
At noon our work was declared finished, and I have to say the roads and paths looked great. While the green will begin to all grow back with the next rain, we did our jobs. The beast has been beaten back for the next 12 months.
Ku-cho handed everyone a hefty bento and a cold beer and said please enjoy your lunch back at your places—it’s too hot out here for us to picnic together. With a big salesman’s smile he added, “Oh and see you at the matsuri festival on July 19!”
Everyone clapped for the work we had done.
Toru and I were dead for the rest of the day. I think the only thing we did “correctly” was apply sunscreen to our faces, but next year I guarantee we’ll be prepped for the labor in store.
The neighboring village to ours last had any outside household move in during the Momoyama era. They view our village with disdain for its collection of immigrants.
Argh, we did this once in late May. We have to do it again this coming weekend. One or two guys my age (maybe slightly younger). I'm 52. I never enjoy these things. HAHA! Glad someone does though. More power to you.