どこか の いなか
DOKOKA NO INAKA
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.
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.
Tea, under the tree. Coffee, if you'd rather. You decide.
These are in the guidebooks, so there are no photographs of them here. What is above, you will not find.
Masato Kurihara.
A licensed administrative scrivener.
Japanese teacher for people who moved here from abroad.
A farmer.
Sometimes in Osaka, sometimes in Tokyo.
I am not a travel company. I book nothing. I take care of the rest.
My English is not good. We will manage.
Then you have my card. Write whenever you like — this year, or in three years. I move around, but I always come back here.