Repairing the shed roof

So, for those of you who don't know, the wife and me recently picked up a pretty old house which we're in the process of doing up. It needs a lot of work done on it, but today I took a break from the insides to get to something I've been meaning to do for ages, repairing the roof of the shed.

Basically, when we moved in, the shed only had half a roof, was full of sodden junk inside and had these pieces of corrugated iron lying around which I assumed had at some point fallen off the roof.

Not being one for heights, it was quite a sketchy experience having to climb up on to the roof of the house in order to reach across and nail the things back down. Needless to say, I survived, and hopefully if the rain stays out I can put my snowboards and cricket stuff in there. The shed, funnily enough, is about the same size as my first apartment in Nagano.

Anyway, here's some pics.

One piece of the corrugated iron was particularly rusted through, so I used a few plastic bags to improvise a waterproofing layer. Not sure if it'll work, but we'll see ...

The bit I had to do was the nearer two pieces. I actually turned them over because they were all bent and warped and it was easier to push them under the bit in the middle. 

The other side.

Looking down on the shed and its repair job from the roof.

And a few pictures of the view from the roof of my house. The building on the right is Nagano Commercial High School, where I currently work. Nice and close! In the background is Suga Daira, a mountainous highland area which is good for hiking and skiing.

The tree with the orange fruit is a persimmon tree. Not a big fan myself. The kind of red coloured building in the middle is a nice onsen (hot spring).

My neighbour's garden. They have a really nice carp pond, but I can only see it from the roof!

Chris Ward
October 26th 2013

Nice car ...

Saw this beauty outside my local 7Eleven this morning ...

I'd say that's most of the cast of Anpanman, a kid's cartoon. The driver was a middle-aged office worker who gave me a sour look when she saw me photographing her car.

Come on, let those cuddly little bread-men cheer you up ...

Chris Ward
Sept 25th 2013

Munchin' the Bugs ...

Another day, another bizarre happening here in Japan. We had a little festival in our part of town yesterday, so pre festivities we went over to a neighbour's house for a bit. There, I was plied with beer, and once suitable drunk, I was required to eat "inago".

Inago are deep-fried locusts.

Yum ....

About to enter the mouth ...

In it goes ...

And the reaction!

They don't actually taste that bad. Pretty much like deep-fried anything. The most annoying part is that the legs get stuck in your teeth. I was still pulling them out an hour later.

Here's a few shots of the festival to show how we party round my way. To be fair, the fireworks were pretty impressive.

Chris Ward
24th September 2013

Construction a-go-go part 1

Next to my modest little house there used to be an overgrown wasteground area that my cat loved to hunt in. A few months back it was sold off and now it's being turned into a construction site. I'm rather sad about this but it has been fascination to watch it all change from trees, flowers and weeds into concrete and mud.

Here are a few pictures of the change so far.

 

 In this first picture you can see how it was before, looking from my house. All the houses in the background have now been torn down.

  

 And a sprint picture from a similar angle. That white house is to the left of the line of four in the first picture. All this (except the white house) is now soil and concrete.

 My cat, Miffy, might not appear too disgruntled, but I can assure you she is.

 The trees and vegetation has all been scrapped away and now they're preparing the land to put in big lumps of concrete. That little house with the red roof is where I live. Neither writing nor teaching are making me, the wife and the cat rich, but I enjoy both. It belongs to my school.

The digger shows up.

And the destruction begins. All these houses are coming down so they can build an access road. No idea where all the tenants went.

That line of four houses is now gone. The fifth, detached, one on the right is still there, although the tenants are gone and its been gutted. I assume at some point they'll pull it down too.

And the current state of play. The houses are gone and they're putting in drainage ditches or whatever they're called.

They're making a ton of noise outside as I write this. I'll post some more pictures in a few days.

Chris Ward

21st Sept 2013

Sunrise over Tokyo

Just got back from a little holiday in the UK and these are a couple of pictures of the sunrise over Tokyo, taken around 6am from the Haneda Airport monorail. Got back to Nagano to find that it's around 30 degrees still, quite a shock after getting to the mid teens and the endless rain back in the UK.

I guess it's nice to be back. I always get the usual longing to go home again (long term) straight after a trip home, but I think that's more to do with missing the family. Still, hopefully it won't be too long before I can get over again. Need to sell some books ...!

Chris Ward
20th September 2013

My desk at work

An exclusive look at where I work! This is my desk at the high school where I work three days a week (Tues and Thurs I go to my "visit" school).

I'm an assistant English teacher. At the moment this pic was taken I was writing letters to a group of kids up at mountain school which is connected to my visit school. Piled up on the left is a bunch of stuff I was preparing for a talk on England.

If you look carefully you can see a pic of me two two kids in animal costumes, taken at our school's festival, while beside the computer is the "fear" mug, which has a picture of me and the wife at Fuji-ku Highland. The pic was taken while we were zooming down the third tallest rollercoaster in the world, and is so named because of the expression on my face ...

Chris Ward
May 6th 2013

Growing Rice - Part 1

My father-in-law is an amateur rice farmer, and every year I help him out with various parts of the process. Today we were putting the rice seeds into trays, which in a few weeks will be planted in the rice fields themselves once they've grown into little seedlings.

Here are the trays all stacked up outside. At the moment they have a bottom layer of a kind of sponge, which is then soaked. We made 200, which is about another for six or seven rice fields.

In these bags are rice seeds. We planted three different types. One is regular rice, used for, um, eating. Then there is another kind which is used to make "mochi", a Japanese mashed rice cake, and then there's a third kind which we used to make Japanese "sake", or rice wine.

These are bags of soil grains which will go on top of the rice.

We use this machine to add the seeds and the soil. It's pretty simple really. The seed trays are loaded on to one end, then you turn a handle and they move along a kind of conveyer beneath first the seeds and then the soil. When they come out the other end we stack them up by type.

It's pretty hard work because the machine is worked by hand, by turning a handle at the back. The hardest part is all the bending to pick up the trays. After a couple of hours of bending and lifting it starts to hurt!

Here's some completed trays. A day or two after they will be taken to the rice fields and left to grow for a couple of weeks. When the seedlings reach about 10cm it's planting time!

Look out for part two in a couple of weeks!

Chris Ward
3rd May 2013